What if I told you that you’re not as productive as you want to be because you’re not relaxing enough?
That you’re not taking enough naps?
That you’re not having enough fun?
I’m sure you’ve been there… arriving at the end of the day feeling like you’ve accomplished absolutely nothing. The issue is that you were probably in the gray zone all day.
The Power of Full Engagement
In the book the Power of Full Engagement, Tony Schwartz brings up the issue of gray zones and how they can really kill productivity.
When you have activities that overlap, you tend to burn out and lose your creativity. This is called the gray zone, and it’s somewhere you do NOT want to be.
Anytime you’re trying to multi-task, or parallel process, you’re in the gray zone.
So instead of getting a piece of work done that would take about 60 minutes of focused work, you might end up stretching that out across the whole day between bouncing between coffee breaks, IMs and texts, checking e-mail, and staring off into space thinking about how much you hate this particular piece of work.
Schedule Relaxation
The key to breaking these gray zones is to have periods of scheduled relaxation through your day mixed with periods of intense single-tasking.
The computer is the perfect location to see these gray zones in action. Do you have more than two windows open right now? Why? What are you specifically on the computer to accomplish at this very moment other than burning time? Did you get distracted from your main task? I’m glad you found your way to this article, and I know you’ll come back, but is this the best activity for you at this very moment to be focusing on?
Do you think you’d be happier and more productive if you had just finished an important task and got to take a 20-minute goal-free zone nap?
Cut Out Distractions
This is something I’ve become more and more aware of in the last month because I’ve been focusing a lot of energy on improving my productivity.
I found that many, many times through the day I would get distracted from my main focus, and an activity that would’ve actually taken about 30 minutes sometimes took 2-3 hours or more.
Here are some of the things I’ve done to get out of my own gray zones.
- Do all of my writing and creative work from 5 – 8 a.m. every morning where there are no interruptions.
- Turned off the ringer on my office phone to avoid getting distracted during tasks that require a lot of focus. I have a specific time where I return voicemails and schedule calls.
- Take at least one 20-minute nap every day. Even if I don’t fall asleep, just shutting down and letting my mind drift gets me super focused when I’m back to it.
- Estimate how long a task will take prior to starting it and setting a timer to check progress. Finishing before the timer goes off always gets you motivated for more.
- Have a single time in the day where I set aside to return e-mail and check social media sites.
So relax! Have a nap… then get back to work!
