False vanity: how permanent employment reduces productivity

In this article, Jeff Archibald, will tell you how to ask yourself three simple questions weekly, you can get rid of false vanity .

Being busy is easy - it's hard to be productive . Raise your hand, if you answer all day one urgent letter after another; spend hours at your task manager, relocating cases in an attempt to increase returns; Doing the old files in order for half a day or looking back at the past week, you understand that, despite all your efforts, you cannot name a single completed task with confidence.
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Bad news for those who recognize themselves: you are a victim of false vanity.

I used to be one too. Everyone at a certain point falls into the trap of meaningless deeds. This happens unintentionally - after all, a lot of work needs to be done in a day - but deceptive bustle can destroy business goals and, above all, our motivation. This is what I mean by false efforts, and how to avoid them.

What is false vanity?

The term "false vanity" appeared in baseball. When a player makes a leap from a distance to the far end of the field, and then abruptly changes direction in the direction of a rolling or flying ball, he bursts senselessly. Essentially, he spends energy and does a lot of work, but in the wrong place. Not where it is needed. Here is my modified definition of false vanity - this is the expenditure of forces on tasks, the implementation of which does not at all contribute to the advancement of goals.

You cannot know what is false bustle and what is not if you do not know your tasks - for a year, a quarter, a month, or even a week. We spend many hours a week to achieve our goals, so we need to make optimal use of this time. Both you and I know that these hours fly quickly regardless of whether you are managing a design agency, working as a developer of a web interface or taking any other position. Therefore, when we aimlessly rush about — that is, succumb to false vanity — we make the loss of targets out of sight more likely. And when we miss them, our motivation goes to the bottom. Suffice it to say that life brings more joy when something inspires us.

Evading false rush and moving forward

If we analyze major goals, we will see that they consist of strategies and tactics. At the end of the week, if you worked productively and were not busy with time-consuming and unproductive tasks, you should turn into completed cases and relate them to tactics or strategies to achieve the goal .

How can you accurately determine whether you are moving in the right direction? Everything that I do - I ask myself a few simple questions at 16:00 on Friday.

• What have I achieved this week?
• Have I advanced on the path to the goals of the month / quarter? How?
• What can I do in this direction next week?

Then I highlight the next 7 days. Literally, this means that I look in the Google Calendar and “book” periods of time (for example, from 10 am to noon on Monday) for specific tasks related to general tactics and strategy, and, above all, to achieve the goals of the next week. For me, this is an easy way to successfully keep moving forward.

How should I spend my time?

This applies not only to company owners and freelancers. In general, the idea of ​​avoiding false rush works better if used by all company employees. Each large office has a big goal, an ideology that motivates the whole team to work.

This applies to developers who have set themselves the task of learning something new - try a different solution for the next effective CMS site. This method is also suitable for designers who use downtime to acquire new skills or create something for free distribution that can benefit society and enhance the prestige of the store. He will be useful to any member of the team who considers himself entitled to ask a question to the general director / manager / another manager if it seems to him that he is being asked to do work that does not move things forward.

In the end, each of us will come up with questions about how to spend time in order to follow the great, wonderful, inspiring concept. And then act according to the responses received.

All this does not mean that it is not worth doing such a black work as writing answers to e-mails or cleaning a coffee machine. It also needs to be accomplished, and perhaps it greatly helps us achieve our goals. But it’s too easy to fool yourself by putting an equal sign between employment and productivity.

PS We recommend another article on the topic - Physics of Productivity: the application of Newton's laws in work .

Translated by Vyacheslav Davidenko, founder of MBA Consult