The Productivity Death Spiral

“I’m exhausted, but I have to go in this weekend to catch up on my charts,” said my client, an ER doctor, sounding dismayed.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said in response.

“But, how am I ever going to catch up if I don’t put in some extra time?”

“Well, how are you ever going to work more effectively if you don’t take the time to recharge?”

Somewhere along the way, we started adopting the belief that humans are like machines. Need more out of them? Just run them for longer! I think there's a lot of factors that contribute to this (and I'll save that for another article or a rant-y video), but what it comes down to is this: there are a lot of forces at work that set us up fall into the ‘quantity over quality’ trap and to forget that we're not machines. We're energy-consuming systems that periodically need to be recharged. But, all of this is hard to measure in any quantifiable way, unlike, say, 'hours worked' ... even though that has very, very little to do with work accomplished.

It's always important to pick your metrics properly, and in most (all?) cases, quality wins out over quantity ... but it's often harder to track. That said, at the end of the day, it’s what you accomplish and the value you contribute that really matter, whether it takes 1 hour or 10.

Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project studied this for years, and his take is that we function at our best when we alternate between expending effort and recharging. More recently, as research has been done on 32 hour work weeks, we're seeing additional data validating the idea that, past a point, more is not better.

What happens when we don’t recharge? It goes something like this:

1) We put in extra time one week and sacrifice some of our recharge time.

2) The next week, we’re less effective during the time we spend working.

3) As a result, we end up further behind.

4) So, we push harder, putting in even more time the next week to try and catch up.

5) But, because we've spent even less time recharging, we’re even less effective.

Next thing you know, we’re spending 60 hours a week working, while getting less done than we could have in 40 hours if we were managing our energy better. Meanwhile, there's also this growing voice in your head that sounds increasingly anxious and self-critical. Not a great combo, is it?

Ultimately, it's a productivity death spiral that ends in burnout if you don't stop it.

(I guess that ‘work smarter, not harder’ cliché has some merit after all?)

I explained this idea to my client.

“Ok, I get it in theory, but how am I ever going to get caught up?”

Fair question. Here's how we did it:

1) We started by developing a self-care and energy management routine for my client. This involved going to bed and waking up a little earlier so she could get a run in before work. This let them start the day more energized and focused.

2) I had her track how their energy level and focus shifted during the day. We all have higher and lower points of energy and focus, and it makes a big difference in our overall productivity when we factor that into our schedule.

3) We did a time audit. My client, like virtually everyone, had some places where she was being much less efficient than they could be. We worked on structuring their schedule and environment to help ensure there was time when she could do more focused work without a bunch of distractions and task switching, which is incredibly inefficient.

4) I worked with her on engaging with her internal critic that kept poking and prodding at her to do more. Not in a pushing back way, but instead something more collaborative. That part of her had a good goal – be productive and get the work done – but a flawed methodology for achieving it. As it came to trust that she was on board with higher productivity, that voice gradually quieted down.

It took some time for my client to get these shifts implemented and integrated into her life. As she did, though, her stress level declined, the backlog of charts shrunk and eventually disappeared ... all without working extra hours.

That wasn't all, either: she found that she was more engaged and present at home which was improving her marriage and relationship with her kids.

Yes, productivity is an important thing to keep in mind. But, ultimately, if it's not balanced with sustainability, it's ... unsustainable.

(Note: as always when I share case studies, specifics and identifying details are modified or 'blurred' to protect client confidentiality.)