Is there life after work?
Nowadays it’s quite difficult to choose work over personal life or vice versa. So you have to turn around. However, you always need to know when to stop; if you feel that at work you are starting to forget about your family, or you simply do not have enough time to pay attention to your loved ones, think about whether you need such a job. Making money is great, but still decide what is most important to you?
If you can negotiate with your employer about a more flexible schedule or the ability to sometimes take days off or work from home, most likely your salary will go down a little (although this is not at all necessary), but you will have the opportunity to devote time to what really matters. value - to people who are dear to you. And if it doesn’t work out, maybe you should look for another job, it’s not that difficult. After all, you got a job to provide yourself with money, but now that you have a family, it’s better to set your priorities differently. First, the husband and children or just a loved one, and then mercantile interest.
Even if there is nothing you can do about your schedule, don’t despair. Look at your life from a different angle. You get home at seven o'clock, eat dinner, and then what do you do? Maybe TV relaxes you after a hard day, but this time can be spent on something more interesting. Sign up with your whole family for a swimming pool or sports club and go there at any time convenient for you. By the way, the pool perfectly relieves fatigue and stress, and if you go there with loved ones, you will have an additional opportunity to communicate.
Never allow your work to interfere with your non-working hours. The phone should be turned off after six and on weekends. If you take work calls from home, you are still working, and that is wrong. Accustom yourself to the fact that you have the right to a private life, and this life is limited by time. Go on vacation with your family and also don’t take your work phone there. How can you help your colleagues or clients from another country while lying on the beach? That's right - nothing. Leave problems to those who are sitting at the workplace to solve problems, while you relax.
Try not to move away from your loved ones while working. Bring photos of your husband and children and place them on your desk. If such liberties are not allowed in your company, you can put the photographs in a drawer and look at them periodically. Call your loved ones from work, write small letters by email. Don’t forget that your life goes on, and most importantly, it is not your office and desk in the office. The most important thing is your family and your home, the people you love. If you pay more attention to them, life will not pass you by.
Why you don’t need to constantly think about the quality of your work
Many of us hold principles that get in the way of living a more productive lifestyle. For example, it is commonly believed that increasing productivity or making the most of time can lead to decreased quality of work or the ability to perform well on tasks. About half of the participants in our online program, designed to help professionals develop more productive work behaviors, agreed with the statement “I believe I could get more done in less time, but the quality of my work would decline.”
Perhaps you have also encountered this in practice. 5:30 p.m., you can probably hit the “send email” button and leave work. But then it suddenly seems to you that you should spend another half hour composing the letter, and you stay in the office for a little longer.
Did those 30 minutes play such a significant role? Maybe. But most likely, they only gave you more confidence in the quality of the work done. This is how we come to believe that spending more time on a job means doing it better.
However, more time spent on a task does not necessarily equate to higher quality work. In fact, this time can harm our work by reducing its quality. Research shows that when work hours exceed 50 to 55 hours per week, cognitive abilities (emotional intelligence and the ability to think rationally and solve problems) and engagement begin to decline.
The inverse proportionality between the quality of work and the amount of time spent on it has long been known. For example, Henry Ford reduced the workweek from 48 to 40 hours in an effort to reduce the number of mistakes his employees made. Employers in some manufacturing industries have also found that they can maintain output and quality while reducing employee work hours.
If that doesn't convince you, here's another reason: According to research conducted at leading strategy consulting firms, managers have a hard time distinguishing between those who work 80 hours a week and those who work 50-60 hours. In other words, the extra work goes completely unnoticed.
Additional time does not always lead to improved results. We know that long, complex emails are less likely to be read to completion, and time spent developing more strategies or options usually ends up making less effective decisions.
If it becomes an unwritten rule that spending more time on a problem helps you solve it better, you'll always be busy. The work will take up all the time allotted for it. And the hope that increased productivity will allow for a better balance between work and personal life can be given up. One of our program participants asked the question: “Why do I need to work faster, because then I will have more workload to fill my working hours?” To break this vicious circle, you need to stop associating time with quality work done.
Instead, it should be recognized that quality is actually influenced by productive behavior. Outside of the work environment, we instinctively understand that speed, as a component of productivity, is associated with quality. Track and field athlete Mebrahtom Keflezighi, who won the Boston Marathon in 2014, attributes his victory to the relationship between speed and form (i.e. quality): “If it weren’t for the form I got into, I don’t think I would have been able to win. I think about my feet - where they will touch the ground. About my hips, knees, legs, arms and neck. About the way I hold my head. About where my chin should be when I'm running uphill or downhill." A similar situation can be observed in the automotive industry: the highest quality is usually associated with the highest speed. This is why parts and algorithms developed for racing cars are later used in regular vehicles. The automotive industry has always relied on motorsports technology to build race cars as an innovative test bed.
The connection between increased productivity and improved quality is not limited to racing. A simple but illustrative example is the use of “hot keys” when working on a computer. Keyboard shortcuts save time and help improve the quality of your work by avoiding mistakes like inserting items in the wrong places or making incorrect clicks.
The misconception about the negative impact of productivity on quality also leads us to believe that quality is the first priority when it comes to work. Undoubtedly, it plays an important role. However, should it be the first priority? In some cases, excessive concentration on quality or treating it as an end in itself can interfere with development. Think about a perfect strategic plan that took three months to develop... and ends up collecting dust on a shelf because the context changed during that time, negating the potential benefit of the strategy. The real purpose of any work is the result, be it impact on sales, profits or community. By prioritizing productivity, we ensure that the work is completed to the best possible quality.
In our work with companies, we have encountered the consequences of a “culture of quality.” People spend a lot of time perfecting work that could have the same effect without the extra hours spent reworking it. “If we could simplify internal correspondence standards, we could save so much time!” — one of our program participants from a leading consulting firm shared with us.
The reason why additional investment in quality does not always lead to increased efficiency is the cost of labor time. If we had an unlimited amount of time, perhaps this problem would not arise. But we know that by spending time on one task, we give up a million others. And, if you believe the Pareto principle (20% of efforts give 80% of the result, and the remaining 80% of efforts - only 20% of the result), then attempts to bring the work to perfection in most cases will lead to insignificant results with significant investments. This doesn't mean you can't strive for perfection. We should only do this when the effort involved can have a significant impact on the significance of the work.
Unlike quality, productivity, as follows from the definition, is associated with the effect the work has. Most of us consider productivity to be the amount of work we can accomplish in a given period of time. However, we should start to think of it as an indicator of the impact that the work we do over a given period of time can have. With this approach, it is productivity (not quality) that becomes the main goal.
Some companies understand this. In our conversations with representatives of leading technology firms, we heard stories of poorly designed, typo-ridden presentations that employees gave to company leaders. Often management did not show any dissatisfaction with the imperfection of preparation.
Increasing productivity will not harm the quality of our work, but will improve it. But more importantly, it will increase the impact of our work. We may not be able to immediately change our work culture to prioritize efficiency over quality. But we all have the ability to invest in our own productivity and can stop thinking that focusing on it will negatively impact the quality of our work.
About the authors
Matt Plummer is the founder of Zarvana, which offers online programs and courses to help working professionals become more productive. Plummer worked for six years at The Bridgespan Group, a subsidiary of Bain & Company consulting for nonprofits, foundations and charities.
Joe Wilson - Sustainable Productivity Coach; developer of habit formation strategies at Zarvana.
Source: hbr-russia.ru
