Productivity
I have said before that I like procrastinating (and I don’t think I am alone here). It is sometimes so difficult to keep concentrating when your mind is exhausted. A former tutor at Oxford told me once that one’s brain is a muscle and relentless exercising without well-timed breaks will only do more damage than good, like any other muscle in one’s body. One therefore has to find a balance between working hard and resting well so as to hit the optimal level of productivity. Recently, I discovered an interesting way to measure one’s productivity. I am a big nectar fan, and I have been using my nectar card to accumulate points for years. This explains why I use certain products/brands exclusively, like Sainbury’s, Expedia, Amazon, not that they are necessarily better than their competing brands (though they are very wide-ranging and competent- I have no complaints about them at all), but simply because they allow me to accumulate and use nectar points, as they are partners with nectar. I have been using this nectar toolbar on my browser, which allows me to accumulate nectar points for every Internet search I make (2 searches for 1 point, maximum 200 points per month). There are months in which I do not quite make 200 points (i.e. 400 searches), and I end up having to rush towards the end of the month typing in meaningless searches just to make 400 of them. Other times, however, I burst the search limit within the first few days of the month. Those are usually times when I am frantically busy researching and type in searches for scholarly references like mad. This month I hit 400 searches and earned 200 points by the 3rd May. You can imagine how busy I was (and still am-what a shame that the nectar points are capped at 200 per month, or else I would be a nectar millionaire…!). It is funny how the accumulation of nectar points provides a measure of one’s productivity.
I wrote earlier than productivity was very important for our work and lives, and how we measure our efficiency largely determines the quality of our work and hence our rates and chances of success in our respective careers. I recently discovered another cool way of measuring my progress at work, though this time it is to do with my UNproductivity, namely the rate at which I am not moving as quickly or as much as I should. I was going through some old folders of mine, as I was in search of some sheets of paper that I badly needed to review. There is no easy way in locating several pages in the big piles of notes that I had, so I ended up going through all my documents in all my folders, which was a total pain. As I had not touched those notes in a very long time, I discovered that my notes were DUSTY. There were big and thick layers of dust on them, and I had to shake them off before I could even read what was written on them (yuck!). However, the process was surprisingly constructive, since not only did I manage to locate the sheets of paper that I was looking for (which happened to be in the last folder that I checked, so I in effect went through all my documents in my residence, which took me hours…), but by going through my notes I discovered some pretty cool stuff that I had collected years ago but had somehow forgotten in recent times, some of which seemed very interesting and relevant for my current work. It was hence a very productive mission, since I managed to obtain more than I had expected, which is always a pleasant surprise, and although I am usually very rigid in terms of my daily routine, I have come to appreciate the beauty of surprises. As mentioned before, we are often most productive when we are put in difficult situations which motivate us to get out of our comfort zones and go further than we could ever imagine, and this time it was no different, since I would not have bothered to go through my dusty notes if it had not occurred to me to find those sheets of paper, the process of which also led me to some extra material for my current work, so I guess it has been a constructive process. Nonetheless, all this has also made me realise just how UNproductive I have been with my notes lately, as shown in the amount of dust that has accumulated on them. We have all experienced this before, namely removing dust and dirt on our belongings, especially those that we have not touched in a while and have cruelly exiled to one side while we focus on other things, whereas things that we regularly use always look fresh and shiny on the surface due to constant use. It seems that the accumulation of dust/dirt is a pretty reliable way for measuring one’s UNproductivity, as is the case in my search through my old documents. Looks like it is now time to clean my place, as it is getting dusty, especially in certain corners that I have not touched, probably ever since I moved in. Let’s just hope that there are no rats or insects in there!
Maximum productivity. Ultimately, this is what we are all striving for, namely to be maximally productive and get as much done in as little time as possible. Life is too short to be messing around wasting time and not getting things done, especially things that we have always wanted to do. But it is a tall order and an ambitious ordeal indeed to aim for maximum productivity since this is not easy to achieve (or there would be no vagabonds). The metric of productivity also varies from people to people, since what works best for one person may not work for others, so it is down to us to discover our secret formula for success. Nonetheless, there are some general principles of time and mood management that one may consider while trying to formulate the best possible strategy for oneself. As mentioned in a previous blog, active and passive knowledge pertain to two general styles of working which can complement each other if one uses them well. Indeed, they could be said to be two sides of the same coin, since there can be no active engagement with knowledge if one does not already possess enough passive knowledge, which makes the latter an indispensable prerequisite for the former. It would be premature to get active with one’s work before one possesses the necessary prerequisites for engaging with one’s work. But it is dangerous to indulge in the passive acquisition of knowledge and delay active engagement with one’s work, since there can be no constructive progress without active knowledge, which is harder to achieve but also much more important. Sleep, as discussed, is fundamental in understanding active and passive knowledge, since in addition to recharging our batteries and letting our mental/psychological organs heal, it is also instrumental in consolidating our memories and catalying our learning processes. We can work and sweat as hard as we can, but we also need proper rest to let our bodies recover, incubate and digest what we have learnt before moving on to the next thing, or it might be time and effort wasted. We may think of it as moving between extremes, namely going from full throttle work-out to sleep/incubation and vice versa. This seems to go against famous Buddhist and Western maxims of moderation, namely the principle of avoiding extremes in the goal of attaining steady and long-lasting progress, but in terms of making exponential growth, it may be effective to bounce from one extreme to another i.e. work flat-out and then rest completely (sleep). This way we may be able to acquire as much knowledge as we can while we work and then digesting as much as we can while we rest. Again, this probably is not recommended for considerations of our health, but in desperate situations where extraordinary actions are needed, it may be something to consider. Think about it.
I have mentioned before that it is possible to measure one’s level of productivity or the amount of progress one is making in one’s work. The key is to find certain metrics in one’s work life which one can rely on in order to determine how much work one has done. This can be entirely idiosyncratic and it may be depend totally on how one lives/works. For me, one major pattern of my working life is the number of times I switch tasks, since, as mentioned numerous times before, I like multitasking where I switch between tasks that need to be completed at any given time. I do this because I like to enhance my efficiency by optimising my time, and although switching between tasks does reduce my focus slightly, I find the benefits of switching tasks to far outweight the disadvantages which I consider to be minor. A by-product of multitasking is that there are naturally small transitions which affect my mental state between tasks. For some (perhaps many) people, these transitions would cause lapses of concentration, but these are usually no big deal for me. In fact, I welcome such little transitions since I find that my body can get quite stagnated after prolonged periods of intense work, at which point it desperately needs to be freshened up which can be achieved by my switching tasks or doing something which offers me timely distraction. This is what keeps me on my toes (mentally) and allows me to maintain my levels of concentration in order to avoid mental saturation. In some ways, this mental strategy does resemble keeping my balance on a bicycle which can only be achieved if we keep moving. In fact, it is impossible to ride a bicycle if we suddenly halt our movements and remain stationary, since a bicycle, like any vehicle, needs to be propelled by motion. The busier and more productive I get, therefore, the more such transitions I experience, which can be used to measure how much work/progress I am making. On a very busy/productive day, therefore, I would feel that I have been transitioning frequently from one task to another and would typically get tired by all this mental exercise. As ever, our brain and mind function mechanically like the rest of our body, since these are biological organs which are inherent to our bodily functions. Time to use them properly.
biology、cognitive linguistics、life、lifehacks、motivation、multitasking、practice、productivity、success、time
Originally published at http://keithtselinguist.wordpress.com on October 30, 2022.
