Actively define what productivity means for you, your team, or your organization, giving it principles and naming it. This clarity is essential to solve issues with overload and move towards more intentional and humanistic work, rather than assuming activity equals useful effort.
Recognize that overload has a deep psychological and humanistic cost beyond just economic inefficiency, leading to insufferable life experiences and strained personal relationships. This understanding highlights ‘doing less’ as a valuable goal for a better life, not merely an economic one.
Focus intensely on doing the things you do best as well as possible. This commitment to quality will naturally demand a slower pace and less busyness, and paradoxically, will grant you more control and leverage over your working life.
Actively reduce the number of tasks on your plate. This not only makes your work life more sustainable and enjoyable by getting rid of overload, but it also improves the quality of your output and can increase your rate of production by reducing administrative overhead.
Move away from the ‘invisible factory’ model of constant, full-intensity work by reintroducing natural variations in intensity at different timescales (daily, weekly, seasonally). This aligns with how humans are wired to work, leading to greater satisfaction and sustainability.
Actively work to improve your ability to assess the quality of your own craft, not just practice it. Spend time with excellent examples in your field, understand what makes them good, and cultivate a connoisseur’s eye to confidently finish projects.
To manage workload and set boundaries, be transparent about what you’re working on, how much time tasks take, and how much time you have. This clarity can act as a ‘governor effect,’ making it clear when too much is on your plate and providing justification to say no.
When a new potential commitment arises, go to your calendar, estimate the hours and sessions needed, and try to block off time for it. This provides realistic feedback on availability, justifies saying no if time is scarce, and offers psychological cover to decline without feeling lazy.
To contain small, distracting communications, establish standard times (e.g., daily office hours) for real-time conversations. Instead of back-and-forth emails, direct people to these scheduled slots to resolve issues quickly, saving hundreds of inbox checks and reducing cognitive context shifting.
Focus on taking on fewer large-scale projects (’limit the big’) to do them better. For unavoidable small, distracting tasks (emails, meetings, HR forms), develop strategies to ‘contain the small’ by grouping them into smaller, replicable blocks to minimize constant context-shifting distraction.
For tasks that must be done repeatedly, put them on autopilot by choosing a specific time, place, and day on your calendar. This prevents them from being a constant source of stress, reduces the need to remember them, and avoids last-minute frenzies.
Entrepreneurs and freelancers should consider spending money on software, services, or assistance (e.g., accountants) to reduce administrative burdens. This investment can free up significant time and energy, allowing for better core work, client service, and overall job performance.
Advocate for a shift from push-based workload management (work is pushed onto individuals) to a pull-based system where work resides in a central pool until individuals pull tasks when they have bandwidth. This maximizes throughput, reduces individual overload, and clarifies workloads.
For industries like medical care, advocate for organizational recognition that work is not just ‘on/off’ or ‘shift length,’ but that the amount of work on one’s plate significantly impacts the experience and quality of care. This highlights overload as a real problem needing systemic solutions.
Have courage to initially manage your workload lower, even if it feels scary due to ingrained pseudo-productivity beliefs. Trust that after a few months, you’ll likely accomplish more, produce higher quality work, and gain more autonomy and respect within your organization.
When estimating project completion times, double your initial optimistic instinct. Giving yourself twice the time allows for a more realistic pace, improves work quality, and makes projects more sustainable, preventing frantic chasing of unrealistic deadlines.
For long, autonomous projects where you want to do a really good job but avoid endless tinkering, introduce external or internal ‘gentle forcing functions’ (e.g., announce a release date, share an excerpt, set a public deadline). This creates a necessary push to finish without sacrificing quality.
Be intentional about your physical work environment, recognizing its impact on cognitive functioning. Avoid working in spaces with too many salient distractions (like a home office with household triggers) and seek out consistent contexts associated purely with deep work to improve focus.
Develop rituals to perform before starting a hard bit of work (e.g., making tea, walking around the block). These rituals help your brain transition between different cognitive tasks, reducing resistance and allowing you to get into a focused ‘zone’ more quickly.
Consider investing in high-quality tools or materials for your work, even if they seem expensive (e.g., a $50 archival notebook). The psychological effect of using a ’nice’ tool can elevate your mindset, encouraging more careful, neat, and high-quality work.
To gain fresh inspiration and courage for your work, explore and learn about an unrelated artistic or creative field (e.g., reading novels for a non-fiction writer, studying film for an academic). This allows for appreciation of art’s power without the self-critical ‘uncanny valley’ effect of direct competition.
For teams, create a visual system (e.g., cards on a wall) to track all projects, showing what’s in a holding bin and what’s actively being worked on. This allows the team to collectively decide what to pull in next when someone has capacity, ensuring individuals work on a small number of things at a time and preventing work from languishing.
If not in full control of your workload, subtly manage your engagement by being more careful with commitments during certain periods (e.g., two weeks between big projects, or specific months). This allows for recharge without being explicitly noticed as ‘quiet quitting’ if balanced with periods of higher engagement.
Schedule occasional ‘vacation days’ for no other reason than to recharge, such as a random Wednesday once a season or month to go to the movies. This introduces variation and allows for mental breaks, ultimately improving overall productivity.