When is enough ... enough

This week I've posted on 4 things:

How much INFORMATION is enough

How much THINKING is enough

How much WORK is enough

How many REVISIONS are enough.

Enough. It means 'adequate, sufficient, ample'. Our research, thinking, working and revisions can be either a productivity winner ... or a productivity killer. When we spend more than enough time researching, more than enough time thinking, and then overworking and reworking, we need to pause, stop, and understand:

- what we are doing, and

- why we are doing it.

It's too easy to get swept up or drawn down into the activities of our daily work and life ... and it's a key reason why our productivity takes a hit. A huge part of self-leadership is knowing how much is enough. And then when it's enough, we need to press the button, go live, launch or release the thing.

Take care of yourself and others by not wasting unnecessary time, energy and worry on tasks and activities that aren't needed. Enough. It could be the most effective productivity tool you've got.

Q: What's good enough to go live on in your world right now?

How many revisions are enough?

Reworking, editing, checking, changing. How long do we spend working on the next version?

Documents, reports and presentations travel up and down a company's hierarchy to be changed, edited, revised, and approved. Changes are made but it’s still not sent out or shared. It’s time for another round of changes.

And another round.

Up and down it goes.

The heart of the message gets lost and in its place, a wordy banal message like every other. All in the pursuit of accuracy, control, correctness, getting it ‘right’, perhaps to counter the the fear of it being ‘wrong’ or imperfect.

But it can never be perfect because things change. And we are human.

The tinkering is a cover, it’s stalling and fear. Hours working and reworking, writing and editing, tinkering. And the waiting ... the waiting in between every revision.

It’s not productive.

Want a gain in productivity? Check how many versions that report or document has been through; how many hands have been on it, eyes that have seen it, how many times it's been checked, revised and re-checked. What’s really going on here? How many revisions will be enough before it goes live?

Working and overworking - How much work is enough?

'Burnout is an occupational phenomenon,' said the World Health Organisation this year.

Yet here we are working harder, longer and under more pressure, stress and expectations than ever. The sweat of prolonged activity; you feel it at the gym. And then the gym session finishes, it’s recovery time.

But when does work let up? How much more effort, hours and days will you put into this thing, this project, presentation, report or ... you know, the *thing*!? A deadline is a due date. It doesn’t mean 'work 24/7' until the due date. But we get drawn in, believing more work effort will lead to a better result.

It doesn’t.

Avgoustaki and Frankort's University of London Research showed the implications of work effort can lead to higher stress, less satisfaction and recognition, fewer opportunities, less security.

What? This 'work' actually seems to work in reverse? Want a productivity gain? You need a clock, a timer, a calendar to see that you’ve worked too long on this.

We are all overworking on something. Check what you've done so far; is it good enough? Get another opinion or two. 

Lose the list

Most of us are drowning in information, slurping from the firehose, not coping. And in that, lists don’t work. Well not for making sense anyway.

Yes, ok list-lovers, lists are wonderful things, and here’s where and how they work best ... for actions.

📍To do lists

📍Shopping lists

📍Task lists

The list is the ultimate tool for managing, measuring action.

✅ Tick, tick, tick. Done, done, done.

The BIG but: a list is not the best tool for learning, making sense or connecting dots. The only way you can ‘connect the dots’ on a list is down, down the page. It’s tough then to find lateral, horizontal and reverse/upward connections of information when your eyes and mind are drawn down down down. We can find it harder to discover connections, insights and ideas in a list.

Love lists? Great, but keep them for actions, to tick off and track progress.

When it comes to capturing information, making sense, connecting the dots and managing cognitive load, leave lists out of it.

One or two takeaways - are you joking - that’s all!

The cost of attending a conference or training program is significant. There’s the registration fee, perhaps an airfare, accommodation, transfers and the cost of time away from your role, the business and your home and family life.

What’s the ROI, the return on investment you’re going for? Have you thought about it, planned for it?

Most of us are so burned out and overloaded with information that the best we get from conferences or training are:

😩A few bent business cards from networking

😩3 pages of scribbled notes from sessions

😩Swag and merch - a pen, a few brochures and a stress ball, ironically in the shape of a brain!

Back at work, we have just a couple of key points that are tough to put into practice. It’s an underrated experience that we can get so much more out of than we currently do.

'Cognitive load coping' is a skill to learn and apply to achieve a massive ROI on attending a conference or training program.

→ Do you need help with the fuzzy feeling of all that information?

Send me a message and I'll send a link to three options for learning this new way of working in our world that's overflowing with information.