Almost every leader I talk to these days feels overwhelmed, and a growing number are struggling with burnout.
I get it. The onslaught of information, requests, and demands on everyone’s time seems to be growing rapidly every year, and it’s hard to know how to keep up.
I’m passionately interested in the subject, because, as I’ve shared before, I burned out over a decade ago. It was the most painful experience of my life (here are my top insights on burnout).
Since then, I’ve not only recovered, but my productivity has seen some big gains, and I’m always experimenting to try to figure out how to be more effective not only as a leader but as a human being, husband, dad and friend.
Last year, I released a book, At Your Best, about burnout, productivity, and energy management. Producing a 65,000-word manuscript takes deep focus and commitment, during the writing stage, I experimented with new ways to become not just more productive, but more effective at managing my time, energy and priorities.
What makes this fascinating is that I did all of this during a season of significant growth in my company, hiring new people, seeing the audience for this blog, and the others things I do (speaking, podcasting, writing) increase dramatically. So, all of these experiments are happening while that’s happening in addition to writing the book.
Here are 7 productivity experiments that I undertook during the past couple of years. Six have helped. One was a massive fail. I’m hoping the insights can help you.
1. Not Setting an Alarm and This Weird Sleep Position Thing
I’ve long been a morning person, sometimes rising as early as 4:30 or 4:45 a.m. to capture the morning hours before the world wakes up.
But a podcast interview I did with Larry Osborne a few years ago piqued my interest. Larry says he never uses an alarm unless he has to catch a flight or has an early meeting. He just lets his body tell him when to wake up. (You can listen to the interview here.) I couldn’t shake the thought after hearing Larry say that.
Can not setting an alarm and sleeping until it’s time to wake up help you be more productive?
Earlier this summer, I read Sleep by Nick Littlehales, who coaches elite athletes and performers around the world. He says the key to his system is waking up at the same time every day no matter how late you go to bed and sleeping in a combination of 90-minute cycles. I’m sure his system is amazing, but it felt a little complex for me to do everything right away.
What I did adapt from Littlehales immediately was his suggestion that you should sleep sideways in the opposite direction to your dominant hand, in the fetal position. (See this article and video for more). Being right-handed, I started to sleep on my left side, legs bent at the knees, with my arms resting out and away from me in a V in front of my chest. Obviously, if you’re left-handed, sleep on your right side in this position.
The result? My deep sleep (which I track via my Apple Watch using this app) doubled overnight. Deep sleep is the most restorative sleep you can get, and I routinely now get 2 to 3 and a half hours of it every night, up from 45 minutes to 90 minutes previously. It’s almost impossible to get more than half of your sleep as deep sleep, so 2-3 hours is actually really good.
I also adopted Larry’s idea of waking without an alarm. Which meant for me, for the first time in years, not getting up between 4:45 and 5:15 every day. I was scared I would lose out on the best hours of my morning.
The result? These two changes have left me feeling more rested and more alert, which, when you’re a writer and speaker, come in very handy.
And surprisingly, I wasn’t sleeping in much past my normal alarm time. Some days, I would wake up at the same time or earlier, but deeply rested. The latest I ever slept this summer was 8 a.m., and that’s after getting into bed at 3:00 a.m. after a series of flight delays. Mostly, I’m up between 4:45 – 5:30 a.m. Still lots of time to leverage the morning.
Bottom line? A rested you is a better, kinder and more productive you. If you want to be more effective, sleep more, not less.
A rested you is a better, kinder, and more productive you. If you want to be more effective, sleep more, not less. Click To Tweet2. Greatly reduced email
Email is one of the greatest distractors, time-wasters ,and mindless nothingness-generators of our generation (I just made that last phrase up).
The summer I wrote At Your Best, I set up an auto-responder that set a few rules.
Here’s the text:
Hi!
Thanks for getting in touch with me!
I’m completely off email until July 15th, taking some family vacation and writing my next book. Sarah and Lauren will be in my inbox to respond to anything urgent.
As a heads up, but I’ll be in monk mode until late August 2019 working on my next book. Which means I’m not taking meetings or doing interviews this summer so I can devote my full attention to my book, other writing and preaching responsibilities and podcasting. Thanks for understanding!
Enjoy the summer! Talk in a few months!
Carey
So, what does this do?
First, it set up two rules: No interviews this summer (I get a lot of requests) and no new meetings (same). Those are pre-decisions that mean neither me nor my team is spending time every day figuring out what to do and what not to do. And for any mission-critical meetings or things I must do…well, because I’ve ruled out everything else, I can do them.
Second, I’ve set expectations. It’s not that I don’t like you or think you’re great…it’s that I’m doing a major project and have basically shut down to new opportunities for a few months.
In addition to this, I kept my inbox at zero for an entire year. Think it’s impossible?
You can get to inbox zero in 90 minutes or less using this method, even if you have a thousand unread emails. If you have fewer than 20, it will take you ten minutes. I show you exactly how in this post.
Long term, I’m thinking about how to cut email down every more. I started that process here (see Step 3). Stay tuned for more.
The problem with email is that it exchanges large volumes of your valuable time for work that’s not that valuable. When you give it a minimal amount of time, you extract the maximum value you can from a low reward activity.
The problem with email is that it exchanges large volumes of your valuable time for work that's not that valuable. Click To Tweet3. I’m Spending Less Time On Social
Social media makes a wonderful servant and a terrible master.
I can mindlessly scroll through my feeds for far longer than I like to admit.
I’ve really limited my engagement to short windows over the course of a day. I’m trying to make reading books my default more than reading my phone. I still have progress to make there.
The result is interesting. Instead of decreasing the engagement on social and number of followers I have, engagement and followers are up. In fact, my Instagram follower numbers have grown by 25% this summer alone.
The place where I still show up regularly is InstaStories. You can follow me here. For the rest, I batch it into a few times a day where I engage. That’s it.
Social media makes a wonderful servant and a terrible master. Click To Tweet4. Not Replying To/Not Initiating Texts
If this seems a little anti-social, it’s only because it is.
Like you, I get a lot of text messages, and I’m more than a little worried that texting is the new email. That’s been a trend that’s developing over the last five years and honestly, I’m not a fan.
I try to restrict texting to close personal friends, close colleagues and urgent things. That’s it. But I’m receiving more and more texts that aren’t urgent or important. They’re just texts, sometimes from people I hardly know.
Of course, old behaviors die hard so it’s easy to think, Well this is a text. I have to reply right now.
No, you don’t.
I’ve had to fight a lot of guilt but often now I won’t reply to a non-urgent text for hours or the next day, and sometimes, not at all.
Why? Because every text put someone else’s priority onto my day, scuttling mine. And of course, they have no idea what I’m working on. Nor do I have any idea what they’re working on when I send my reply.
This isn’t about being selfish, it’s about keeping your head above water and focusing on what you’re called to do. The number of distractions and interruptions every day you and I face is unprecedented.
I think we’re going to have to come up with a new protocol for texts. Unless you really enjoying being overwhelmed, treat urgent things as urgent, and everything else as non-urgent, whether it comes as a text, instant message or anything else.
Also, I’m texting and emailing less—only when I want to or have to reach out.
No one will ever ask you to accomplish your priorities. They will only ask you to accomplish theirs.
So text back when and if it works for you.
No one will ever ask you to accomplish your priorities. They will only ask you to accomplish theirs. Click To Tweet5. Delegating More of What I Used To Do
I’m naturally a bit of a control freak, but I’ve realized that being controlling and being effective are mutually exclusive.
So in order to focus on the book, I delegated far more decisions and responsibility to my team.
Being controlling and being effective are mutually exclusive. Click To TweetThe result? Everyone’s happier, including me, and our growth rate hasn’t declined, it’s accelerated 3X over last summer.
If you want to grow, find gifted people and let go. If you won’t let go, you won’t grow.
If you struggle to delegate, here’s a post on what’s really at stake and how to release more.
If you want to grow, find gifted people and let go. If you won't let go, you won't grow. Click To Tweet6. Changing my Podcast-to-AudioBook Ratio
I love listening to podcasts, and I’m also a podcaster.
Most of my audio listening for the last decade has been podcasts. And yet every year I wish I read more books.
I still get my share of podcasts in, but I’m adding audiobooks to the mix as well. I’m shocked at how quickly I can get through a book via audio.
I listen to both podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5X, which you get used to surprisingly quickly (some of my listeners tell me they listen at 3X. More power to you…I find that too much!)
Podcasts are great, but books are deeper explorations than a podcast really can be. I love the mix of both and will likely keep that up.
I’m still reading books too, but this has more than doubled my book consumption, which I’m thankful for.
7. The Fail: Working Vacations
In the past, I’ve done more than a few working vacations. From mid-June to mid-July, I was off and we did a combination of travel and stay at home vacations while I tried to write on the book.
I would spend the first 2-5 hours of the day writing, and then by lunch switch to vacation mode.
Verdict? I didn’t write well and didn’t vacation well. I didn’t write well because I hard a hard time focusing on writing when everyone else was playing. And I had a hard time playing in the afternoon and evening because I was thinking about the book. Perhaps that because this is the biggest and most comprehensive book I’ve ever tackled, or maybe it’s just that I’m better at relaxing than I used to be and enjoy it more. I don’t know.
I think I would have been much more effective had I taken two weeks off to relax and tackle the book when I got back…leaving a clear calendar to work on it.
My wife and I agree…no more working vacations. They used to work for me, but for whatever reason, they don’t anymore.
By the way. It doesn’t take real leadership to quit something that’s dead. If you’ve got something that’s dead in your life, move on.
Working vacations are dead. So, I’m moving on.
It doesn't take real leadership to quit something that's dead. If you've got something that's dead in your life, move on. Click To Tweet