The eight-hour workday is sooo 18th century. It’s a remnant of a reform from that period, which reduced sooty-faced factory workers’ hours from a operose average of 16 a day to the classic 9-5 we’ve all been conditioned to pretty much since birth.
But even this concept of 9-5 is misleading. Studies have shown that the average worker is actually productive for only two hours and 53 minutes a day. The remaining time is apparently used up with such activities as checking social media, (doom) scrolling through news websites, “making hot drinks” (I can vouch for this) and, yes, “searching for news jobs.”
However, it turns out that if you’re an employee you shouldn’t feel guilty about this; and if you’re an employer, you shouldn’t fret about this apparent waste of your team members’ hours. Because the truth is that productivity isn’t objectively quantifiable, nor do the number of hours devoted to a task equate to that task being completed efficiently, or completed at all. In fact, completing just one task per day—big or small but completed thoroughly and well—puts you in the top ten percent of the world’s most productive people. (Just FYI, making the perfect cup of coffee does not count as that one task).
So whether you’re a business owner or member of a team, you shouldn’t feel compelled to be non-stop on the grind to feel like you’re productive. Yes, some days/weeks are busier than others, but constantly working flat-out is not only counterproductive, it’s not good for your wellbeing.
Here are four ways to accomplish that one task per day so it’s done as well and as efficiently as possible…
1. Make sure the task is meaningful
Of course, every entrepreneur or founder starts a business to feel fulfilled, but there are times when you’re so swept up in the day-to-day running of it—especially when it’s going through a challenging period—that that sense of purpose can get blurry. When this happens, find one task that day that has particularly deep meaning to you and prioritise your highest energy towards it. It doesn’t even have to be a ‘big’ task—remind yourself that even the smallest objectives and actions form vital parts of the whole.
As this study shows, you should never underestimate the incredible power of finding meaning in your work.
2. Try the Pomodoro Technique
In the late ’80s, Italian university student Francesco Cirillo was having serious trouble focusing on his assignments. He devised a method—using a tomato kitchen timer, hence pomodoro—whereby he focused intensely on a task for ten minutes, took a five minute break, and repeated this over and over until all his work was done.
This technique has since been refined to breaking up a workday hour into two 25-minute periods of focus, each broken up by five minutes of rest. To do this properly, you should set the timer on your phone to 25 minutes and keep an eye on it as you’re working.
Not only does this urge you to dive as deeply into the task as possible—you might be wishy-washy about if you felt you had all day—those frequent breaks stave off brain-fade, keep your eyes fresh and, in the long-term, can actually help prevent burnout.
3. Don’t feel guilty about going outside
While the Pomodoro Technique extols bursts of focus followed by five-minute breaks, there’s also great value in taking this idea even further. When the day (and your schedule) allows for it, instead of a five-minute break at your desk, why not go for a walk, or a jog, or a short cycle? Or simply relax in your garden for 15, 20 minutes or even longer? With more and more of us working from home, this kind of valuable downtime is easy to execute.
And if you’re accomplishing your tasks, there’s no reason to feel like an extended break is a waste of time; it’s quite the opposite. Sitting at your desk for eight hours bad for your health, and staring at that screen isn’t doing your eyes or your attention span any good either.
4.Know when you’re ‘on’ and take advantage of it
In the same way some of us are morning people and others night owls, everyone has different times of the day when their brain is particularly primed for focused work. Again, the wonders of WFH have not only made us more aware of when this prime time might be, it’s also made it possible to be flexible enough to actually work during this period instead of trying to locate it between the hours of 9am and 5pm.
Not sure when your prime time is? Over a period of a few days, review your typical day and identify periods of 60-90 minutes when you were particularly on fire. These are most likely the intervals when your body and mind is especially up for it.