The Unexpected Key to Boosting Your Productivity | The Way We Work, a TED series

195,278 views ・ 2023-03-29

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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I've always secretly wanted to be a machine.
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I felt like if I was a machine,
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I'd never let things fall through the cracks,
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I wouldn't forget things,
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and I'd do everything I needed to do on time every time.
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I knew there were people out there that were like this,
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and I wanted to know what makes them tick.
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[The Way We Work]
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So a few years ago, I started a newsletter called Super Organizers,
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where I profiled 50 of the top performers in a variety of fields.
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I've talked to managers who track everything they do in a day
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in 15-minute increments.
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I've talked to investors
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who keep spreadsheets of every single person they’ve ever met,
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and CEOs who keep their calendars basically empty
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and rarely ever do meetings, ever.
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I've also experimented with a lot of hacks myself
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to try to get me closer to my ideal.
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I've taped my mouth shut while I'm sleeping
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and stared at a sunlamp to increase my energy levels.
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I visualized my compassionate self
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and tried all sorts of supplements to hack my body chemistry.
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Sometimes the things I try work, and sometimes they don’t.
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Sometimes they're just kind of ridiculous.
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But I want to share with you the best trick I've learned
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in all of my exploring.
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The ideal of being a machine is actually a trap.
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It gets in the way of our productivity because it makes us blind
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to the roots of our actual problems.
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We are not machines, we’re emotional beings.
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And learning to skillfully recognize and work with our emotions
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is the only way to actually be productive day-to-day.
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Guilt, shame, fear,
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so often they're at the base of what's going on for us
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in ways that we barely understand.
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What's underneath our productivity problems
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isn't just a need for a new tool or system,
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but something going on in our emotional lives.
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And being aware of and observing how our emotions can affect us
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can open up a lot of flexibility and freedom
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to make progress when we'd otherwise be stuck.
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I found that the most productive people in the world,
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the ones who are most machine-like, actually recognize this
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and they often do three things to work with it.
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They're aware when they have a problem,
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they observe what's going on without judgment
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so they can understand it,
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and they keep experimenting with systems or teams,
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mindsets and tools until it changes.
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This might sound simple, and it is,
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but it's actually very hard to do because at each stage we get blocked
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and twisted up by the shame, guilt, fear and doubt --
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the things that get in the way of seeing things clearly.
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To do this well requires a level of emotional mastery
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that is very difficult to practice.
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So let me walk you through it and show you how it can work.
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Awareness is the first step.
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That means being aware of problems in your productivity.
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But that's harder than it seems.
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No matter what the issue is,
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it's much easier to ignore it
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and hope that it goes away than to admit that something's wrong.
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We feel like we should be able to just do better.
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We feel like, well, that's the job, I should just suck it up.
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Whatever the problems that you're encountering in your productivity,
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you might not think about them that often because it's pretty painful.
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But there's magic in becoming aware of the problems
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that we're ordinarily not aware of.
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The most productive people have regular practices
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that they use to maintain that awareness.
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Sometimes it's journaling, sometimes it's mindfulness,
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sometimes it's just a walk, sometimes it's therapy.
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But everyone has something.
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Here's an example from my own life.
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I have a ton of trouble staying on top of my inbox.
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I'm the CEO of a start-up,
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and so this was really hard for me to admit at first.
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It seemed like an indictment of me and my ability to be successful
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if my inbox was a mess.
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But last year, after a lot of reflection,
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I realized that I had to face the fact
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that the backlog was causing problems throughout my company.
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Once I was aware of the problem, I could start the next step: observation.
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When I moved into the observation stage,
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I wanted to see with as little judgment as possible
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what usually leads to my inbox being crowded.
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Observing without judgment was really difficult for me.
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My sense of doubt and fear came up.
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I thought: Should I really need to do this?
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I really felt like I should just be able to get through my inbox
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without any problems.
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But once I got beneath that,
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I began to notice something really surprising.
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There were actually many periods where I was on top of my inbox.
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It's just that every couple of weeks there would be a shift
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where it would just turn into a giant mess.
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And it had a very specific trigger,
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either a single email I really didn't want to deal with
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or a really busy period in my life
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where I couldn't look at my inbox for a day or two.
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And when this happened,
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emails would start to pile up, and I’d start to feel shame.
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I'd avoid my inbox and the pile would just get way worse.
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It was a vicious cycle.
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Once I saw this,
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I realized that there was a logical place to intervene.
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What I really needed to do was to catch myself
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right at the point every couple of weeks
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where my clean inbox was turning into a mess.
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And if I could do that, I knew I could keep it clean the rest of the time.
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This brings us to the next step: experimentation.
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Once productive people have recognized a problem
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and observed its contours without judgment,
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they try new solutions to find out what works.
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Again, this can be really easy to get twisted up about.
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We're all filled with preconceptions about what's in and out of bounds
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to experiment with,
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and we're really boxed in by those preconceptions.
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We don't want to look silly or weak.
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But if we allow ourselves to find what works for us,
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we often find things that no one else would.
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I tried a lot of different experiments to deal with my inbox problems.
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I tried going to a new coffee shop
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every time I needed to power through some emails.
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I tried talking about it with my business partner
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and other people at my company to try to lower my sense of shame about it.
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I tried a one-touch email strategy,
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I tried only checking my email twice a day.
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But none of these really solved the problem completely.
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So I kept going and I had a big insight.
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I figured out I might be able to use my own desire not to let people down
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to help me get through my inbox.
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I'm lucky enough to split a virtual assistant with my business partner,
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so I wondered, what if I put an hour on my calendar a few times a week
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where they would babysit me.
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At the beginning of the hour,
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they'd message me and ask me how many emails I had in my inbox.
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And at the end of the hour,
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they'd message me again to ask how many I'd gotten done.
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I used my virtual assistant, but you could use anyone in your life.
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A family member or friend who struggles with something similar
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and propose a trade.
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It literally takes a couple of seconds to message back and forth.
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When I started to consider this, my immediate reaction was shame.
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I felt like I should not need a babysitter to do my work.
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And I dreaded the conversation where I had to ask for this kind of thing.
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I also dreaded admitting it to anyone else.
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It all seemed very silly, but I decided to try it anyway.
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And it turns out just that little interaction a few times a week
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makes a gigantic difference for me.
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Getting a message from my assistant keeps me on task on my email
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and prevents the piles from being created,
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which makes it really easy for me to keep my inbox clean at every other time.
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And now I'm sitting here almost a year later with a clean inbox
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on a consistent basis.
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This may not work for you, but it does work for me.
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You might find that other approaches are better,
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like transferring your emails to your to-do list
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or making sure you’re following a one-touch inbox strategy
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or maybe even examining why you need to get through your inbox
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in the first place.
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But the only way to find that out is to try it.
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What I've realized in all of my exploring
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is that I actually didn't really ever want to be a machine.
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I just felt guilty and ashamed for not being one.
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And once I started to work with that, everything changed for me.
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We think productivity is about software, notebooks and to-do lists
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frameworks, calendars, schedules and inboxes.
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And it is all of those things,
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but it's also about our brains and our bodies.
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It's about our emotions and how they guide us
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and sometimes get in our way.
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If you turn over the rock of productivity, you can find a lot hiding underneath.
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Identifying what's there is the best productivity hack I know.
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