I’m willing to bet I don’t work nearly as much you do on anything I do. A while back I wrote a post titled How To Consistently Write a Blog Post in 20 Minutes. The truth is I’m a huge believer in finding the most efficient way to do things. In the Jack Bauer Guide to Getting Shi#$# Done I mentioned that I believe long hours don’t mean anything other than the fact that you suck at managing your time. In fact I’m convinced that this is the case. In order to truly understand how to improve productivity you need to have a basic of understanding of flow states.
Flow States
If you haven’t read the book Flow, I highly recommend you get your hands on a copy. A flow state is basically one in which you are completely absorbed in whatever it is you are doing. In fact during a flow state you’ll likely come across many of the signs that you have achieved a state of presence. Presence and a state of flow are synonymous.
The Law of Diminishing Returns
In economics, diminishing returns (also called diminishing marginal returns) refers to how the marginal production of a factor of production starts to progressively decrease as the factor is increased, in contrast to the increase that would otherwise be normally expected.
- Wikipedia
This economic concept can be applied to our own productivity as well. As you increase the number of hours that you work, the output you produce will not only decrease in quantity, but also more importantly in quality. Think about the 8 hour work day that most people are part of in corporate America. How much of that time are people actually doing any real work? Meetings take up at a minimum of an hour each day. If it’s a really big company, then this could be even more. Add in the lunch breaks, coffee breaks, etc and you’d be amazed how much of the time people don’t seem to be doing shi#$#. Paying people hourly is not worth it because there is plenty of incentive to abuse the system. On a salary, not so much. In fact, when I take on freelance clients, I don’t do hourly work because it’s not efficient. I take a retainer or a flat fee so I can work when I’m most productive. The point is that people are only productive a certain amount of the time and that productivity diminishes over time.
How to Maximize Your Output and Reduce the Amount of Time you Spend Working
If you ever have been in a zone, you know this feeling. On a basketball court you can’t miss a shot, in the ocean you can shred one wave after another and it feels effortless. Once you are in the zone you will get an insane amount of work done. At the time of writing this, I am on my third blog post for the day and I’m going to write one more. I’ve only been working for about an hour and I don’t plan to work more than another hour . You might think I’m out of my mind. But consider this. I’ve found myself in the “zone”, a time at which I can produce optimal output both in terms of quality and quantity. If you are a blogger consider doing all of your writing when you are in the “zone.” You’ll be amazed at how much more you can write and how much better your writing is. If you want to do 3 posts a week, then write them all when you’re in the zone. Then writing a blog post in 20 minutes won’t seem like such a daunting task. Even if you are not a blogger, I think the same concepts can be applied to productivity.
The thing that I know about myself is that this zone will only last about 2 hours. Once it’s over I’ll be very ADHD and distracted by your tweets, status updates, blog posts, etc, etc. So, I take advantage of the “zone.” Do you find yourself in the “zone”? Tell us what it’s like when you do and share your tips for productivity.
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I find that I can write like a wild man sometimes and I try to get as much written as possible then because I can't be certain when "the spark" will return. I need to force myself to sit down at the keyboard more often because inspiration usually shows up unbidden after I've typed rubbish for a short while. One of my posts needed to be broken into 5 pieces of roughly 2,000 words each. Another time I ripped through 20 pages of decent story-telling in a single day. And then idled for a month. The inspiration will not flow out of the pen (or keyboard) if I am not touching it.
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