We live in an environment obsessed with personal productivity. We are told that the key to fulfilling tasks is to manage time - "if you could manage time better you would be more productive."
"However, after more than two decades of productivity research, I am convinced that time management is not part of the solution - in fact it is part of the problem," wrote Adam Grant, an expert in organizational psychology, in an article published in The New York Times.
The most frequently asked question is "how do I accomplish more tasks?" He wrote. The truth is that being productive is not about managing time. We have a limited number of hours per day, and focusing on time management only makes us more attentive to the number of hours lost per day.
A better option is to manage attention: prioritizing people and projects that matter most, not concentrating on the time each of us takes.
Attention management is the art of focusing on doing the right things at the right time and for the right purposes.
According to the traditional theory of time management, we are supposed to set as a goal the time we will need to complete a task.
However, often not fulfilling a task is caused not by a lack of efficiency, but by a lack of motivation. Productivity is not a virtue, but an endeavor for a conclusion. It would be a virtue only in the case of a worthy conclusion.
If productivity is your goal, you need to rely on your willpower to push yourself toward fulfilling a task. On the other hand, if you pay attention to why you are excited about the project and who the beneficiaries will be, you will naturally be drawn into it by internal motivation.
Bad weather also contributes to productivity, as you are not distracted by thoughts of going out in nature. You have no choice but to work. Research shows that in rainy weather, bank employees in Japan complete transactions faster than in sunny weather.
Another important point to note in terms of attention management is the time when we will perform a job. Most of our productivity challenges are about tasks we don't want to do, but are forced to do. Two researchers, had conducted a study in a large store in Korea, and had discovered that when employees had an interesting job to perform, after it they had a very poor performance in another more tedious task.
One of the reasons for this is the lack of attention, in which case you still have in mind the first job you most willingly did, thus distracting yourself from the task you are performing.
So if you have to do a boring job, do it right after a little more engaging work, and save the job you passionately do as a reward for the end. This is not about time, but about coordination.
Productivity is fostered by adding attention filters so that unrelated or distracting thoughts are kept out.
