The expectations placed on employees can be very different depending on the specific responsibilities involved, the industry the company operates in, and the company’s culture.

There’s a difference between unavoidable circumstances (you have a deadline to meet tomorrow) and avoidable ones.

Should I work overtime?

There are many situations where you might find yourself accidentally working overtime.

• Maybe you find yourself working a few hours extra a day, not because you have to or because other people expect it from you but because you just don’t get round to all of the things you want to do during the work day.
• Or your boss makes a small comment in passing about your slow progress on a project and you find yourself wanting to prove your boss wrong.
• You could be based in Europe, while most of your colleagues are in the US, and so you start checking their very interesting discussions even though you’ve already stopped working for the day.

There are all of these small ways in which overtime creeps into the workplace, especially when more and more people work from home and the usual boundaries that used to exist are getting less and less clear.

There’s a certain conflict around working overtime by choice.

We’re all adults and can make our own choices about how much we work.

If I decide today that those extra hours are going to help me in the future, then I should make that choice.

Some studies around how putting in extra hours does actually pay off, in terms of future promotions, pay raises and so on.

Working more often means you get more done and that does have knock-on effects on your career.

You could choose to do it for any number of reasons:

• You’re feeling especially productive today and are making huge progress on a project, so you decide to not stop working yet.
• There’s an emergency at work that needs to be handled immediately and you feel responsible for doing your part.

All of these are great impulses.

When overtime is harmful

The question is: How much and how often can you work overtime until it starts having a detrimental impact on you and your life.

• By taking up so much of your time, it limits the amount of time you have available for your own hobbies and interests.
• It also cuts into time that you would otherwise spend with family.
• These together can impact your relationships and how satisfied you are with life in general, since you have fewer opportunities to develop your skills and relationships independently of work.
• You also contribute to the culture around overtime in your own company.

Most people take their cues from the people around them.

This is especially relevant if you’re a manager or hold any position of seniority (although it still applies in all cases).

If your company has this culture independently of what you’re doing, then it’s worth thinking about whether you want to contribute to that or not. It’s easy for there to be an unwritten rule or an implicit expectation that people simply put in more hours than they’re required to.

If you consistently work overtime for a longer period of time, it’s likely that this will eventually translate into burnout.

Burnout has become something of a widespread term in recent years but it’s still easy to get caught up in the habits that lead to it despite the awareness of it. Small habits that, when they build up over time, can become huge stressors.

You need to be able to recognise when it’s morphing from being something you choose to do for a rational reason to something that’s actively harming you.

How to know how many hours to work

The trick is: Self-reflection!

• Pay attention to your hours. How many hours are you putting in?
• Look at your habits throughout the work day. Do you take breaks? Is your day structured and focused?
• Every time you choose to work overtime, ask yourself the following questions:
  • “Am I doing this because I feel I have to or because I want to?”
  • Then question that. Why might you feel like you have to? Why do you want to?
  • “What will I get out of doing work on this now?”
  • “Is there anything else that I would rather do right now?”

The moment you start feeling a little bit weary or like you face a certain amount of dread to get through it, is the moment you know you should handle it differently.

I still, very often, turn off my laptop and immediately start thinking about everything that I still have to do.

Sometimes I can help myself by just writing down what’s on my mind – working a little extra for the sake of longer term peace of mind.

Sometimes it takes much more discipline to make the choice to not work.

You immediately start finishing things that have been sitting in your to-do list for weeks. You hit inbox zero. You’re extremely focused and can work consistently, productively, for hours on end.

Other days are the exact opposite of that.

These are the days where you find yourself getting distracted every 30 seconds by something new. You start replying to an email and then think “oh, I needed to do that,” switch tasks and find yourself scattered and unfocused. Your workday ticks down very slowly and you look listlessly at your growing tasks, knowing full well that you’re making zero progress.

Those days suck.

They’re inevitable and natural. It isn’t realistic to have extremely productive days all the time and sometimes, your brain just needs a break. These days can be situational. Maybe it’s your first day back from a holiday and you’re out of your routine, or there’s a particular project that you’re blocked with.

Even though none of us can avoid these days completely, there are ways to make the most of them still.

How to stop being unproductive

Avoid feeling guilty for not being product

The most helpful thing to remember is: You cannot force yourself into productivity.

It’s impossible to snap yourself out of it through sheer discipline and willpower.

You want to work with yourself. Move as far away from the mindset of “I will do this no matter what” and much more to an open-minded, curious, understanding mindset.

Treat it like a negotiation. Can you convince yourself to look forward to the task that you have to do? Is there something about it that feels especially fun or appealing at that particular moment in time? Try to find that.

It’s much more frustrating to sit there, stare at your screen, and get increasingly annoyed at yourself for not being able to spend your time productively. Directing that annoyance at yourself just slows you down even more. It’s completely counterproductive.

This is especially important to keep in mind if you do have an urgent task and you are trying to work on that task, so there’s some sense of external pressure being placed on you. If your brain just isn’t cooperating at that moment in time, you won’t manage to force yourself to work on that task either.

Try working on something else

Switching up what you’re doing can be effective.

This is often the case if you’re trying to work on something creative or if you need to conceptualise or visualise something. These are all types of tasks that tend to require a specific mindset to get into and it could be that your brain needs some other input before it can concentrate on them.

Say you’re working on writing OKRs.

You might know the goals you want to write but the output is simple, uninspiring goals that just aren’t motivating.

That’s a failed opportunity. It’s much more helpful for me to get as far as possible with the goal-setting, then tackle a task that you don’t have to think about for a few hours. That can give you a fresh perspective.

Focus on a repetitive task

Some people will have a much higher capacity for productivity under these circumstances. Other people will find that repetitive tasks drain their productivity and make it even worse.

But if you work with them: Repetitive tasks can be great in this situation.

These are the best days to work on something on autopilot. If you, for example, have to upload content online, do any copy-pasting, produce invoices for people, these are great tasks to do when you’re feeling unproductive.

They’re not inspiring and they might not be fun but you’ll feel like you actually finished something that you needed to do, which is very motivating. That’s a huge win.

Timebox

One of the best ways to trick your mind into focusing on something is to timebox it.

Set yourself a timer to work on a specific task for 15 minutes. It almost doesn’t matter how long it is, but try to make sure it isn’t too long. You want to set the bar low enough that you genuinely think it’s achievable, even if you’re struggling with being productive and you know it.

The most effective time spans I’ve found are between 10 and 25 minutes. It needs to be just about long enough that you can get something done, while still being short enough that the endpoint is always in sight.

If you want to try this:

• Make sure that you set up a timer.
• Get rid of distractions as much as you can.
• Put your phone somewhere where you can’t even see it.
• Open a new window with only the single tab that you need to work in.
• Disable all other notifications.
• Set a timer that will ping you when the time is up.

This is so effective because somehow knowing exactly when you’ll stop working on that task makes it easier to focus. You already know that your time will be limited, so no matter what you’re working on, it won’t feel insurmountable.

Reward yourself

Providing yourself with that extra incentive when you’re struggling can be extremely effective.

The more you want that reward, the stronger your motivation will be to keep up with it. Tiny and small rewards throughout the work day when you aren’t feeling productive help in exactly the same way. You can even reward yourself with a coffee break, and spend some time watching YouTube videos, without feeling bad about it because you already did your work.

Find a different productive outlet

If all of the above fails, this can be the one option that saves the day.

This is when it’s worth switching to a completely different outlet.

• Watch an old recording of a webinar.
• Find an article that you saved a long time ago.
• Get into that book you’ve been avoiding

Consuming content requires much less focus than producing content. By lowering the bar for your productivity, you find a way to spend your time on something useful.

Chances are the content will be valuable for your work. That means that you are spending your time on those tasks that you weren’t able to tackle earlier, just in a completely different way.

Write unproductive days off

Whether any of these tips help you or not, once you’ve gotten to the end of the day, there’s no point in worrying about the outcome any more. Maybe you managed to be productive for some of that time. T

hat’s great! It’s definitely something to be proud of. But if you didn’t, it doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things.

These days are inevitable and are just part of the rhythm of life. If you have a lot of them, it might be a sign that you should think about larger changes in your routine.

Chances are, though, that it was just one bad day. Moving on and focusing on what’s coming next is much more constructive than dwelling on how you spent your time in the past.

It can work out in two ways:

1. Either it’s extremely motivating and pushes you to achieve the most that you possibly can,
2. Or it does the exact opposite. The goals are so unachievable that it’s demotivating.

Here’s an example from my past experience:

We had five quarterly goals, with clear priorities. They were amibitous but motivating. Then the company was hit by unforeseen external circumstances that doubled our normal workload.

Our manager could’ve responded by reducing the goals and letting us focus on the emergency. Instead, he wanted to push all of them through:

• All five goals suddenly became equally as important, so they could be completed as quickly as possible.
• One day, the deadline was set in two weeks. A day later, the deadline got shortened to only week. One week, the direction was “let’s only manage the emergency.” A week later, the direction was “our quarterly goals are the most important thing to focus on right now.”
• Within a month, almost all team members were sitting on a well of resentment and frustration.

This is a perfect example of how focus in your work can have a direct impact on your outcomes and environment.

Why am I so distracted and unmotivated?

This is a question that all of us ask ourselves sometimes.

1. The environment itself creates distractions. Everyone is easy to reach almost all of the time. We get pings and notifications constantly through our phones. Your culture forces you to reply to every messsage you get with a high degree of urgency because the expectations in your environment are that everyone reply asap.
2. You don’t know how to adapt your workload to your current mental state. If you’ve never properly learned under what conditions you are most productive, it’s going to be hard for you to make that happen. You might thrives best under pressure and need strict deadlines, enjoy working on 20 different tasks at the same time or only effective if you focus on one thing. All of these are valid styles of working but it takes time to know which one applies to you, how to deal with its shortcomings, and how to maximise its benefit.
3. There’s a lack of direction and prioritisation. It’s very easy to underestimate how much of a difference having clear priorities can make to your productivity.

How to focus on the task at hand

Minimising distractions in your environment

Physical workspace

Start by thinking about your physical environment when you’re working, whether you’re working from home, in a coworking space, or in an office. Do you sit comfortably? Is the temperature ideal? Is the noise level bearable?

If you find yourself stopping to think about any of these things, you should look into a long-term solution.

Mute everything

Whenever you sit down to focus on a particular task, mute everything. Put your Slack on “do not disturb,” mute your phone and put it somewhere you can’t see it, make yourself as difficult to contact as possible.

You don’t need to do this for whole working days or even for hours at a time. If you’re worried about not being reachable if something urgent happens, set an alarm for yourself in one hour’s time or something similar. In order to be able to work with any kind of focus, your brain needs time.

Communication rules

Set ground rules for communication.

• Is it acceptable to ping at all times of day?
• What’s considered an urgent topic and what isn’t?
• Which communication avenue should be used when?

This is especially important if you’re working in an office setting, where it’s possible for your colleagues to simply walk up to your desk and make conversation. You need to be able to say “sorry, I’m in the middle of something right now, can you set something up for us to talk about this later?” without being impolite or feeling at all nervous about the other person’s response.

Discussing it with everyone sets expectations and will make it easier to do this.

Cultivate independence

Maybe you feel that being reachable is essential for your team.

Why? Are you the only person knowledgeable enough to be able to help them? Do they have to go through you to get certain tasks done?

Look at this as an opportunity to improve processes. Instead of being the only go-to person, you could:

• Document more of your knowledge.
• Delegate tasks to other people in your team.
• Train others in the same areas.

Set boundaries

You need to carve out time to work.

Set clear boundaries for yourself. This might mean:

• Saying no to meetings sometimes and asking people to reschedule for the next week.
• Blocking out focus time in your calendar. Maybe it involves blocking out time in your calendar to make it clear that you’re unavailable during those hours.

Minimising the distractions in your environment is a prerequisite for everything else.

It’s your responsibility to create an environment for yourself in which it’s even possible for you to work.

Increasing your personal productivity

Right mindset

Being more productive is something we all aspire to be.

Figuring out how is the challenging part. It requires discipline and concerted effort.

The following are just some tips and tools that you can use to figure out what works for you.

You are not your own task master. Don’t try to whip your brain into shape, as if you’re a drill sergeant training a cohort. You just want to set everything up around you so it’s easy for you to be productive.

Instill routine

The first thing that helps is some kind of routine.

Productivity is a habit.

The mundane, trivial habits that you have every day are the ones that make up your life when you string them all together.

• What habits do you do every day?
• Are any of them useful?
• Do they help you at work?
• Is there anything you could start doing today that would make your life a lot easier?

Set out priorities for yourself at the beginning of every day and organise your tasks: figure out what the top task that needs to be done today is, what the “nice to have’s” are and what has to be done this week but would be fine if done later.

It’ll make you feel like you have more of your tasks under control and it’ll give you the perspective you need to set yourself up for success.

Effective time

Figure out the time of day you’re most effective.

Do you do the most work in the first two hours of the day? Are you basically half-asleep through the morning and only manage to get your head straight and work on something in the late afternoon?

One way to do this is:

1. Break up your day into one or two hour long blocks and rate your productivity and focus.
2. Think about how alert you felt, how much you got done, and how much of that time you were able to use effectively.
3. Do this for a full week.
4. Work with the patterns you find.

If you always feel very drained after a particular kind of meeting, like a one-on-one, maybe always schedule some break time after that kind of meeting. If you know you always do your best work towards the end of the day, give yourself as much of that time as possible to focus on your tasks. Once you figure this out, you can break up your day into something that makes sense for you.

Focus time

Block out time in your calendar to dedicate to certain tasks or projects.

The longer the period of time you can give yourself to dedicate to a task is, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to get immersed in it. That feeling of immersion is when you hit maximum productivity. It takes time to get there, so don’t get discouraged if your first few attempts result in a few minutes of work, followed by a few minutes of distraction, followed by a few minutes of work and so on.

Experiment, be open and understanding, and remember you’re just trying to find out something that works.

You can use the much-touted Pomodoro technique, which breaks it up into 25 minutes of concentrated work followed by a 5 minute break. There’s a great app called Forest, which you can open on your phone while working on something to watch a little tree grow. It’s a very small technique that helps you stick with what you’re doing for a longer period of time.

These things might seem gimmicky and not very serious but they do work extremely well. You just need to find the thing that clicks for you.

Simplify projects

It’s incredibly easy to get overwhelmed when you’re working on a larger project or when you have a looming deadline or when you’re trying to manage multiple things at the same time.

Break it down into smaller tasks.

Focus on what’s urgent, what needs to be done as soon as possible, and set yourself realistic goals of what you can manage. Don’t focus on having the perfect outcome or result at the end. Just drill down, think only about what absolutely needs to be done and get that out of the way.

Organisation system

Figure out your own organisation system.

• Do you work really well with checklists? In that case, a to-do list might help you organise your work enough.
• Do you need to be able to visualise your work and set deadlines or reminders for it? A more comprehensive task management tool like Trello might be best.
• Do you sometimes want to remind yourself much further in the future to do something? A calendar reminder would be the ideal solution.

There is a huge number of different tools and methods out there, all centred around organising your work, keeping track of your tasks, and managing your projects.

Be realistic

Say no!

There is an inherent desire to please in a lot of people. If you give in to it, you can make yourself unreliable and it can make work much more stressful. Don’t do that to yourself. You can be ambitious but also be realistic about what you can achieve.

Try not to get caught up in shiny objects; if you’re in the middle of a task and you come across something that just looks cool and you want to check it out, don’t do it! Note it down for yourself and get back to it later.

A lot of focus leads to a lot of energy

Focus is one of the most undervalued and underestimated commodities we have today.

Finding the right techniques can transform your day-to-day productivity, both in your professional and personal life.