Productivity tips for trying times

We can accomplish great things when motivated by snacks. (Image by Gerhard Gellinger)

There are times when that elusive quarry known as “productivity” is impossible to get ahold of.

Grief, stress, and anxiety are like RAM-intensive applications running in the background of your mind, hogging all the resources and leaving you with only a sliver of processing power to complete your work.

Sometimes, you can still spend the afternoon putting in the time and going through the motions. A day of being present in body only isn’t much of a setback. But if you’re working from home — or worse, working for yourself — day after day without being able to focus, you might need to do something differently. In this article, I’ll share my tips for being productive when I’m exhausted, distracted, or overwhelmed and the work still has to get done.

No Judgment — It’s All an Experiment

Under normal circumstances, I can happily concentrate for hours on end. Therefore, the first step is to acknowledge when things aren’t working and be willing to switch things up without beating up on myself for being tired or listless. The alternative is to sit there and keep trying, which is a waste of time.

Now, with a clean slate and no self-judgment, I begin treating the workday as an experiment. What if I stand over here instead of sitting over there? What if I rotate my desk 90 degrees? What if I close all the tabs in my browser except for one? Anything that works is fair game — and by trying a variety of different working conditions, I’m tricking myself into working all the while.

Timer Tricks

The most frequent category of experimentation has to do with time. You may be familiar with the venerable Pomodoro Technique…it’s a nice idea, except when twenty-five minutes of continuous work feels like an eternity. So I play with it. I set a timer for 15 minutes (on a really tough day, 10 minutes), and commit to doing one task (for instance, writing or editing) for that time.

When the timer goes off, I see how I feel. I have three choices: Keep doing the task for another round of the timer, switch to a different task for the same amount of time, or take a 15-minute break. I set the timer again and follow through on my choice. When that 15 minutes is up, I repeat. Sometimes, to get a sense of momentum and accomplishment, I track my 15-minute increments on a spreadsheet. This way, I can look back and see that I actually did stuff.

Sometimes, I’ll use this timer tactic to complete a circuit. Ten minutes of washing dishes followed by ten minutes of email followed by ten minutes of sorting paperwork followed by ten minutes of folding laundry followed by a ten minute break, then go around again.

There is a well-documented cost to interruptions and task-switching — many studies have been done. However, changing up the activities frequently doesn’t cost much when either the activities don’t require much concentration, or I can’t concentrate anyway. When the alternative is to curl up on the bed and stare disconsolately at my phone, I can be flexible.

Plus, I find that the timer actually helps keep me more focused. When I’m in the middle of a writing block, I am ignoring my email and Slack messages until that block is over. The result is that I’m less overwhelmed and stressed, because I’m switching tasks less frequently than I otherwise would.

Countdown Creativity

What if, due to a myriad unavoidable interruptions (perhaps from cute, small people), it’s impossible to sustain even a ten- or fifteen-minute increment of work time?

Suppose your goal is to complete two hours of a particular project today. This time, set a timer for two hours. Whenever you work on the project, start the timer; whenever you’re interrupted or lose steam, stop the timer.

Though you might not be functioning at your peak level, you’re doing the work. You may get 35 minutes done in one sitting while someone is napping or watching a show, and you may have a bunch of seven-minute work sessions that begin to add up. Though all of the interruptions consume a lot of energy, you will still be able to look back and see how much you’ve accomplished, leaving you with the enthusiasm to power through the last 22 minutes after dinner in order to reach your goal.

Make It Into a Game

As we learned from Mary Poppins, whenever we can turn a task into a game, it goes by faster. When we “gamify” our work, it has the added benefit of distracting us from our usual measures of how well we’re doing — it can even distract us from our feelings about the task at hand. Instead, we’re focused on executing the task effectively so that we can “win the game.”

For example, I might set a stopwatch to see how long it takes me to process ten emails from my inbox. Once I have done that, I can see how long it takes me to do ten more. Can I beat my previous score? This tactic works well with any task or project that can be divided into smaller, repeatable increments.

I can also do some kind of celebration to mark the completion of a task, whether it’s a quick dance party or a little piece of dark chocolate. Some fresh air is also an excellent reward. Usually, such celebrations would be reserved for the completion of a project, but hey — we can use all the help we can get right now. Celebrate every five minutes, if you need to.

Know When to Say When

I have found all of these approaches to be useful, but there comes a time when the solution to not being in the mood to work is to not work. If you’re really not feeling good, you should take the time to rest. Listen to your body — not every day is a day to push through.

Be gentle and take good care of yourself — after a day or two, you may feel like a whole new person, capable of operating at a high level. Even then, pace yourself and maintain reasonable expectations. You can only do what you can do.

I hope these ideas are helpful on days when you need a little boost. Try them out and let me know what works for you.