Speed rules our day. Productivity does not necessarily follow, however. Most of us frantically spend our time trying to get things done, but we often worry about whether we are actually productive.
“Speed itself doesn’t have direction. When you say that you’re moving at a certain speed (‘I’m driving 80 miles per hour’), it doesn’t tell you anything about where you’re going,” says neuroscience researcher Anne-Laure Le Cunff, on the Ness Labs blog.
She asks you instead to pay attention to the velocity of your work. Velocity is a vector, which takes direction into account. “It not only tells you how fast you’re going, but also where you’re going – for instance, ‘I’m driving 80 miles per hour to the south,’” she says.
Moving from the metaphoric car to the reality of work, consider the magnitude of actions – not only how fast you’re going and how much work you’re producing, but also the direction of your actions. At a basic level, that relates to organizational goals and how they filter down to your role, and also your career and life trajectory: Learning goals, personal growth, opportunities for self-discovery and making a wider impact.
Regularly reflect on your sense of direction. “Do you feel like you’re being pulled in different directions? That you’re unclear as to where exactly you – or your team – are going? Or maybe you are going in the right direction, but at the expense of your well-being,” she writes. Burning out will wreck everything, so be wary of signs that might be happening or could happen. She believes reviewing your external success and your internal experience will help you attain more sustainable work practices.
Keep adjusting your trajectory. If you notice that you’re not going anywhere or not going in the right direction, make changes to get on a path that makes sense to you. Those changes may be small or large, such as exploring a new career.
She argues thinking about your vectors of action, rather than just speed, is a more holistic way of looking at your work. Psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman takes a similar approach when he says, “Growth is a direction, not a destination.”
He asks you to ditch the notion of a pyramid for your career based on Abraham Maslow’s famed hierarchy of needs. We satisfy basic needs like physical health, safety, belonging and esteem to a certain degree before we can blossom and tackle deeper needs like belonging, esteem and self-actualization.
On his blog, Mr. Kaufman says that Mr. Maslow never actually created a pyramid to represent the hierarchy. “The pyramid from the 1960s told a story that Maslow never meant to tell: a story of achievement, of mastering level by level until you’ve ‘won’ the game of life. But that is most definitely not the spirit of self-actualization that humanistic psychologists like Maslow emphasized,” Mr. Kaufman writes on his blog.
He says life isn’t a trek up a summit but more like a vast ocean, full of new opportunities for meaning and discovery but also danger and uncertainty. So abandon any notion of a pyramid for your career thinking and instead adopt a sailboat.
First, with holes in your boat, you can’t go anywhere. The human needs that comprise the boat are safety, connection and self-esteem – security needs that can create greater stability. Second, exploration is the driver of all growth.
“A dynamic sailboat is a better metaphor for life than a pyramid because the key is not which level you reach, but the harmonious integration that you have within yourself, and how that interacts with the world,” he says.
Quick hits
- A study by two PhD students at MIT comparing business professionals using ChatGPT, to others not using it, for writing short business documents within their field such as press releases, reports and plans, found the group using AI significantly quicker but also turning in higher quality material as judged blindly by analysts. The speed, and hence productivity, advantage was 58 per cent for AI, while the quality advantage is on the border between small and a medium effect on the measurement scale.
- Eye contact is important in relationships. So stop looking at the person you’re talking to on a video call and focus on the webcam, says presentations coach Gary Genard. “Any time you look away from that webcam, you’re disconnecting with your meeting participants. And because your face is filling at least half of that person’s screen, the effect is magnified,” he warns.
- On a job search, make the job come to you rather than applying for anything you see, advises former Netflix vice-president Gibson Biddle. Focus on extending your network – aim for two conversations a day, starting with friends and then moving on to connections you don’t really know but can arrange to meet – and by learning about them and sharing your interests, something will eventually surface.
- Focus starts with elimination says author James Clear, improves with concentration and compounds with continuation.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.