I am a big fan of Productivity Bursts. Such as choosing a task that lasts 10 or 12 hours – a task that you have specifically postponed for a long time because it will take 10 or 12 hours – and switch it off on a single day. (Here are the Eight steps towards an incredible productive day.)
I am also a big fan of using shorter bursts within a day. Generally, A person can only concentrate on a certain task for 90 to 120 minutes. After that you usually need a break of 15 to 20 minutes to charge and achieve high performance with your next task. (The Pomodoro -Techniek Uses even shorter eruptions: 25 minutes of work, five -minute break.)
In so many words, productivity sprints are great. But they don’t make working life.
In the course of a month, much less per year, how much you are done on a consistent basis is much more important than what you can get for short bursts. For example, Stephen KingThe best -selling author of nearly 70 books, does not write a book in three or four hard weeks. For decades he wrote five or six hours a day and shot 2,000 words a day. Nowadays he works for four hours with a goal of 1000 words. (That pace is still more than managing most authors, and King is 77 years old.)
For King – and for you – it is important that there is more important than speed.
More in this regard, sustainability is more important than speed.
Top speed versus persistent pace
Imagine being a factory worker. You start the day full explosion and produce 80 widgets the first hour. No other employee can match your speed; You are the usain bolt of piece work.
But then you start to fade. You manage 75 widgets, 70 the next hour. By noon you are up to 50. You will manage 505 widgets about an eight -hour shift.
The person next to you has never succeeded in making more than 70 widgets in an hour, but because she held that pace for her entire service, she made 560 widgets.
Sounds a bit too turtle versus hare? Not really. As a writer Brady Holmer notes in a recent substit postSustainability is not about how fast you can go when you are fresh. Sustainability is about how little you delay when you are tired. Bolt may have been faster – with an absolute speed – than everyone, but he could also have slowed down the least.
That is especially true as a racing distances, getting longer. The 400-meter Hurdle World Record holder, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, may not be faster at top speed than everyone else. But she clearly slows less in the course of a race.
Why does that matter to you? Because your working day is not a sprint. Your working year is not a sprint. Work – your efficiency, effectiveness, productivity, output – is a endurance race.
One where your ability to maintain a steady, consistent pace makes an exponentially greater difference than your assets (also valuable it) to disable a piece of work occasionally.
The Big Three of Sustainable Output
Let us expand the running analogy more. Most runners focus on the primary factors of endurance performance: current economy, lactate threshold and VO₂ Max.
The current economy is exactly how it sounds: how efficiently your body uses energy to maintain a certain pace. Biomechanics, coordination, strength, flexibility and other factors all play a role. In work terms, less wasted effort, less unnecessary repetition, Smarter working, not harder. (Although I am a fan of both smarter and harder.)
Lactate threshold is the highest intensity or pace in which your body can remove lactate from your blood as quickly as it is produced. Go past your threshold and lactate builds up, stops fatigue and drops.
VO₂ Max is the maximum amount of oxygen that your body can use during intense exercise. The higher your VO₂ Max, the more oxygen your muscles get, the exercises mean that you can run, cycle, swim, etc. Faster and longer.
Here it will be interesting. A New study published in Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports Discovered that runners who maintained a fixed pace for 90 minutes, had a decrease of 3% in their VO₂ Max and a fall of 7% after 120 minutes. It appears that VO₂ Max is not absolute; It changes with effort.
This also applies to other endurance factors. Work too hard for long and your ability to continue to perform at that level will decrease – regardless of willpower, persistence and determination. The costs for your body – and, in the terms of the workplace, in mind – of maintaining a rapid early pace is getting higher until it becomes impossible to maintain that pace.
No matter how hard you try to keep grinding.
That is pick -up meals no. 1: your pace, during a day or week or month or year, must be sustainable. No matter how fast the start is, so that 70 widgets per hour for an eight-hour shift beats a reverse hockey stick 63 widgets per hour.
But you can also increase your stable, sustainable pace.
Self -set boundaries
Work economy – how efficiently you perform certain tasks – is relatively easy to improve. ((Here are 90 ways) The less difficulty a task requires, the less difficult you have to work, and as a result you can maintain a fixed pace. Where improving productivity and the overall output concerns, streamlining and optimizing is always the first steps.
Then concentrate on your “lactate threshold” and “VO₂ Max.” Unless a solid part of manual labor is involved, your work probably does not entail a high degree of physical fatigue. But every job comprises mental fatigue. And every job feels like it has limits.
You can only do so much until you can no longer do.
Except that you can do it. The 40% rule is a concept that is populated by former Marine seal Dave Goggins through entrepreneur Jesse Itzler’s 2016 bookLiving with a seal: 31 days of training with the toughest man on the planet: If your mind tells you that you are exhausted, you are really only 40% done. You still have 60% left in your tank.
In short, youhave more in you than you think. If you are doing something difficult and think you have to stop, you have more in you.
Most of our borders are self -imposed. Over time we have set those limits for ourselves. They do not come close to lactate threshold, much less VO₂ Max.
That does not mean that you have to squeeze out the remaining 60%. But you could try to work out another 5%.
The 40% rule
How long do you stay with a challenge before you give up and continue? That is not really a limit. How long do you stare at a whiteboard and try to come up with a way past a problem before you give up and continue? That is not really a limit. How many phone calls you make, e-mails you send, propose you make, follow-ups that you make? Those limits only seem real.
But they are not real. They are just habits.
Think of a time that fear helped you push what you thought was a barrier. Think about a time when a huge stimulus helped you push past what you thought was a barrier.
Then you could do more.
Because it turns out that your limit was only 40% of what you were really able to achieve.
The next time you think you have reached your cold limit, you make one more. The next time you think you have reached the limit of your employee development meeting, you will have one. The next time you think you have reached your quality control limit, check another order.
Challenge yourself to see if you can tolerate a little more. You will find out that you can do it.
What is more, you will realize that a limit that you thought was absolutely only self-imposed and that you could achieve much more than you had ever thought possible. Over a very long period.
Without burning out.
– by Jeff Haden
This article Originally About Fast Company’s Sister Publication, Inc.
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