How to have more productive days.

We’re generally against productivity hacks and the whole “Isaac Newton was at his most productive during the plague/Shakespeare wrote King Lear in lockdown” working from home Covid guilt trip.

But we are very much in favour of a bit of critical self-reflection.

Recently we got to thinking about what we advertising and brand strategists tend to spend our time doing. Not the specific activities, but the types of activity.

We discovered that the good days tend to break down into three activities, (which are often wildly out of balance with one another, but all vital).

First there’s the time we spend gathering and absorbing information. If you’ve read that James Webb Young book, then you will know that this should be the gathering of two types of information – the specific (related to the task at hand) and the general (things that interest you but don’t seem useful at the time), because combining these two together is how ideas are born.

Secondly there’s the time we spend creating ideas. As we’re strategists, that’s a whole lot of time writing decks (Slides, Ppt or Keynote as you prefer), or occasionally documents (or blog posts, like this one).

Thirdly there’s the time we spend communicating those ideas. Building consensus behind our thinking, persuading people to move in the direction those thoughts imply, showing them how to do those things. And then doing it all again for their boss, or the other department that’s involved.

In an ideal world, you will have these in balance. Because they’re all equally important. If you get them out of kilter, you become a bit predictable, a little unproductive or a tad unpersuasive.

We attach value judgements to each of them, envying those who really do their homework, perhaps, or wishing we were a silver-tongued persuader. So many ways to make ourselves feel incomplete, so many things to improve.

But perhaps the worst thing we do is have long periods of our working days when we are simply doing none of these three things.

You find yourself just sitting on a call, neither properly listening to gather information, nor creating anything, nor communicating anything of value. We have all had days when hours go by without properly doing any of these three core activities.

We all occasionally get stuck in situations where we have to be there but feel we have no role (even though it would be rude not to attend).

Our advice? 

Turn that time into the most important form of information gathering – watch what’s happening on the call, how people are communicating, how the others in the meeting are reacting and reflect on what you can learn from that. It might become your most productive moment of the day.

So think about it – what are you going to do next, when you have finished reading this?

If it’s not wholeheartedly and enthusiastically about gathering, creating or communicating, then it might be a complete waste of time.

Time that you could instead better spend having a lovely rest.