ļ»æHello, welcome to the Productivity Genius podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Fifield, and this is kind of fun because when this episode is released, I'm going to be hanging out with my husband, Scott, in Cape May, New Jersey.
We're celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary. I just think technology is so cool that you can be posting a podcast while sitting on the beach. But anyway, in this episode, we're going to look at why working longer than planned is actually the lazy choice.
Let's say you're working on something. Before you started, you decided about how long you thought it might take. You may have literally thought of a time like an hour or by two o'clock. And then you get to the end of the hour or two o'clock, and you notice you aren't done. So what do we usually do? We often will just work longer, right?
While we probably don't actually want to work longer, it doesn't require much of us. In fact, it usually just requires that we keep doing the same thing that we've been doing. There's no creativity required. In this case, the way we solve the problem of not being done is just to continue doing what we were doing.
But what if you didn't allow yourself to work longer? What if you took that option off the table? Then what? When you give yourself less time to get something done, it actually requires you to think at a higher level.
When you limit the time you give yourself to complete something, you have to get creative. You have to use your amazing problem-solving skills. You ask more of yourself. You have to pay attention to time. You have to stay focused. You have to be a little clever if you notice you aren't on track. Think about writing an essay for, like, a test in school. The teacher would tell you, you have X minutes, right, like 45 minutes or an hour to write this essay. Incredibly, you would get it done in that time,
but if you had an essay to do for homework, you probably took much longer. If you were like me, the essay took hours. If you were including all the time I spent procrastinating, avoiding, and worrying, before even starting.
Even once I started writing, it would take a long time since I knew I could just work as long as I needed. The deadline was class the next day and that's when it would be done. We can apply the same concept to all of the tasks we're trying to complete.
This will take some practice. People usually overestimate what they can accomplish in the short term and underestimate what they can accomplish in the long term. In the next episode, I'll share with you the exact steps to determine how long to give yourself for a task. But in the meantime, try this out. Next time you are about to start a task or planning a task in the future
first, decide how long you want to give yourself to get it done and when will you finish it if you don't get it done in time. You can't choose to work longer. You have to pick a time in the future to complete it. More on that shortly. Second, set a timer at the start. Third, as you work, keep an eye on your progress.
If you don't believe you'll meet your deadline, don't give up. Ask yourself these questions. How can I get this last part finished in time? What adjustment can I make to get it done?
What's the creative way to finish this in time? Lastly, if you don't make it in time, stop working and move on to your next task. Don't allow yourself to continue to work on it. When the time is up, either the task will be done or it won't. If it's done, definitely take a moment to notice how great it feels to follow through on your plan.
We want to reward our brains for behaviors we want repeated.
If it's not done, and initially my guess is this will be the case many times, use this to gather data. This is not a failure, and it is certainly not a reason to beat yourself up. There is never an upside to beating yourself up, ever. This is an incredible opportunity to see what didn't work. Was it your plan, or was it your execution?
What worked, and what didn't work? If you got to redo it, what would you do differently? Each time you do this, you'll gather incredibly useful information. This evaluation doesn't take long. Give yourself 30 seconds, or a minute, of curiosity, not criticism, to see what you can learn.
Okay, so the reason we don't want to just continue working until it's done is first, we want to create some motivation while we're working to get it done and think creatively. If you know you're just going to keep going, you're less likely to push to get it finished. Two, you want it to be a little inconvenient.
We're trying to train our brains that it's easier to just figure out how to get it done in the allotted time, not as a punishment, but for training. And three, you want to give yourself repeating opportunities to continue to require your brain to think creatively. The more times you do this, the more creative solutions you can come up with to finish things before time is up. You will be amazed at what ingenious ideas your brain offers when you ask more of it. The more times you practice this, the more trust you build in yourself.
In our next episode, I'm going to give you a system for determining exactly how long to give yourself for absolutely any task. But until then, my friend, I hope you have a beautiful week. See you next time.
