PRODUCTIVITY IS ABOUT PAUSE

And so we begin again.

Here we are, facing a new year full of hopes, dreams, intentions, and probably also some worry because let’s be real. 

I hope you had a nice pause and wrapped up 2023 with meaningful reflection and your lessons can guide your attention on what matters to you in 2024.

Now even if you don’t feel ready to hustle and harness what's ahead, January is all about productivity and it’s a good time to pause and consider what that means to you. 

I had a conversation just before year-end with Brian Nelson-Palmer about productivity, and we discussed the myths about what makes us productive and how it’s causing us just to work harder but not necessarily better, which essentially is what productivity means. (I will share a link to the podcast below)

Seth Godin shared his view today and asked the question he always asks: what’s it for? I always love that question and it's one my dad would ask me as well, to shift out of stress and overwhelm, the enemy of productivity, and realign my attention with what I was working to achieve.

REMEMBER - INTENTION FUELS ATTENTION.

There are a lot of myths about self-care and productivity that are essentially paradoxes. I was originally going to call my book: the self-care paradox, because what we believe holds us back from unlocking our full potential.

• We think we don’t have time for self-care when we are busy, but self-care is how we manage our energy and use it better, so it’s how we are busy better. 

• We think self-care is a treat and something we do on our own time after work to recover when really it’s a support system, like a scaffolding that gives us the emotional and mental stamina to get through the day with energy to spare.

• We also think of self-care as a list of habits, and especially in January, they look like the perfect habits for looking better and feeling stronger. Granted, we need to strengthen our physical health, but it’s our mindset all day long to harness our attention, align with our intention, shift our perspective, and ask the questions that help us get unstuck and achieve our goals with more flow and ease. 

The New Yorker thinks we should run our inner self like a company. I agree as long as it means a company where we care about people, pause, listen, and ask them what they need.

PRODUCTIVITY IS ABOUT PAUSE.

Imagine if your most important tool this year for increasing productivity is to learn to pause more; what could change? 

Rethinking productivity is breaking up with the belief that it's about doing more in less time, hacking time and acting faster, when really it’s about reflection before engagement and mindful choice before action.

I have always been someone who would act and answer too fast, and I have had to learn to pause before pressing the button. I waste far less time fixing relationships and problems this way, and I smile when I hear my dad in the back of my mind say: why don’t you slow down and do it right the first time. 

When we rush to action, we often solve the wrong problem, what I call the pothole problem. The pothole problem is the one that looks like the obstacle to achieving our goals, and we spend time fixing it, only to realize it is there to redirect our focus instead of hijacking our attention. 

To-do lists can make us feel productive and busy feels good, however busy can be a mask that distracts us from doing the work we need to do to get us to where we want to be. 

We humans like to feel productive, because it releases dopamine, but instead we need to be effective, which is where true confidence comes from.

The other side of this is that we cannot be both busy and creative at the same time, and often being effective takes pause and reflection so that we can come up with new solutions to old problems. 

UNLOCKING YOUR POWER-PAUSING 

So, let’s BE 2024 differently. We waste so much time being distracted by busyness instead of harnessing our productivity by doing better work. The paradox is that the more we pause before we act, the more productive we are because being more intentional you can harness your attention and with that make better, and faster, decisions.

So let's pause more so that we can think, engage, and act with care, discernment, and grace in 2024 shall we?