183: These 5 Common Thieves Are Stealing Your Productivity

[00:00:38] That would be the dream scenario to get in, get what I want and get out. That is the real dilemma about these thieves of your productivity is that they show up. They derail your life, they steal your productivity, your effectiveness as an engineering leader, and they’re gone before you ever knew what happened. [00:01:01] And all that you experience is the overwhelm, the frustration, and the challenge that comes with being unproductive. Let’s go through all five. And as we go through it, think about which of these are showing up for you. I’d encourage you to take some notes as we walk through these. I’ll go through them quickly and share a bit deeper at the end. [00:01:24] What is really behind these? Why they keep showing up in your life and in your career. The first thief of your productivity is a lack of clear vision. Priority, a lack of clear priority. If you think back to the whole lifestyle engineering blueprint model, if you’re not familiar, the foundation is your mindset. [00:01:48] The pillars are purpose, priority, productivity, and people. And the roof is the playbook. That’s the model that we hang all of our coaching and training on in the lifestyle engineering blueprint coaching program. We talk about all of these pillars here on the podcast, but productivity. Is one of the four pillars, but productivity in the absence of priority has no meaning. [00:02:16] Productivity in your life and in your career is not just about pumping out more widgets per hour. It’s not about getting more emails done in one sit down session. It’s not about doing more work in less time. It’s about doing the work that creates real value The work that moves the needle, the work that is most important, the highest impact, the highest leverage, which means. [00:02:41] The priority of what is getting a yes and what is getting a no, those decisions must come before we worry about productivity hacks, productivity tools, productivity systems. So many engineers get stuck dialing in their GTD method system and they don’t have clear guidelines. Accurate priorities. The lack of clear priority will steal your productivity. [00:03:15] If you don’t know what is most important, if you haven’t made the decision of what’s in and what’s out, then you’re leaving a lot on the table. And frankly, it doesn’t matter how much you get done. You can do a whole lot of work and get a whole lot of nothing. Maybe you’ve experienced that where you worked your tail off. [00:03:33] You put in that overtime, those nights, those weekends only to be told by your boss that you’re meeting the expectations and someone else with clear priority who knew what was most important and focused and concentrated their productivity in that area gets an exceptional review. Thief number one is a lack of clear priority. [00:03:58] Thief number two, this one is so bad. Sneaks up on me all the time. The second thief of your productivity is the inability to say no. The inability to say no. I have a theory about why this is so hard, especially for engineering managers. You see, when you’re brand new in your career. Your mentors are going to tell you to say yes to every opportunity. [00:04:28] To widen the aperture of your experience. To learn fast and to stretch yourself in as many ways as you can. By saying, yes, be the one who volunteers for that opportunity. Be the one who takes that inconvenient trip on short notice because, Hey, you’re single. You don’t have kids. You’re the young engineer. [00:04:51] Why not? Yes. Helps you expand and begin growing in your career. But the truth is that you can become good by saying yes, but you will only become great by saying no. And if you don’t have the ability to say no. To your boss, to your peers, to your direct reports, to people from other departments, to people who are outside the four walls of work, neighbors, friends, family, people who ask you for things in other domains of life, if you don’t have that ability to confidently say no, because you have clear priorities that will steal your productivity, other people’s demands and requests of your time and energy. [00:05:41] We’ll steal your ability to focus that time and energy on the things that matter the most. The inability to say no, the lack of courage, the lack of confidence to say no will slow you down. Not to mention, it’s just frustrating to be at the mercy of everyone else’s priorities and not your own. Number three, let’s say you’ve got clear priority. [00:06:07] And you’re strengthening that muscle of no. The third thief of your productivity is the inability to cope with chaos, the inability to cope with chaos. Now, these thieves, I’m inspired by some of the work from Gary Keller in his book, the one thing. Highly recommend that book. He has four thieves listed in his book. [00:06:33] I’ve got five and they’re a bit different from the engineering lens and the work that we do with engineering managers. We’ve seen some different things, but this one is one that we have in common. This inability to cope with chaos. Gary Keller calls it the fear of chaos and what he talks about in that book. [00:06:51] It’s the one thing. It’s a great book. Is that. The decision to focus on your priority, what he would call just the one thing, but for you to focus on your top priorities and saying no to other things, by definition, what will happen is things pile up unfinished or incomplete around you. You see, when you’re focused on your top priority, the world doesn’t just come to a screeching halt and wait for you to finish before continuing on. [00:07:23] In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It may feel like while you’re focusing on your highest priority, that things outside of that priority even accelerate. It can be overwhelming. Really chaotic. People asking you for time, asking you for help. Tasks are piling up. Things are falling behind in other areas. The pressure, the stress bounce. [00:07:45] People are asking you, when are you going to get to that? [00:07:47] If you don’t have the ability and the strength and the mindset to cope with that chaos that can build up around you while you focus on what’s most important, then your need to go eliminate that chaos, the perfectionism inside you, part of you that’s unwilling to let something go incomplete or become messy. [00:08:18] Remember, momentum is messy. If you don’t have the ability to cope with that, then you’re going to stop doing what’s most important. You will slow your productivity on what really matters to go and knock out all these other things that are creating chaos around you. And that will steal your productivity every single time. [00:08:38] It takes a level of confidence, a level of courage and a willingness to sit in imperfection and a mess to really move the needle on what’s most important. If you want to be productive at the highest level, messes and chaos and incomplete things will pile up around you, and you have to be okay with that. [00:08:59] You have to learn how to deal with that. And if emotionally or in your mindset, you’re not able to deal with that, then you need to reach out and get the support of a great coach who can help you process what’s going on in your mindset. That’s creating that sense of need, that sense of, I must go deal with that chaos around me. [00:09:17] If you want to be extremely productive, chaos will, it happens. Trying to do it all does not make you more productive. It will only spread you too thin and nothing meaningful will get done. [00:09:32] Speaking of spread thin, the fourth thief of your productivity is not managing your energy. You could call it energy mismanagement. Most gurus, when they talk about productivity, they focus on time management. That is not true. It’s useful, but it’s not most important. The truth of productivity is that you need to focus on energy management. [00:10:03] Time is level and the same for all of us. I’ve got good news for you. You have all the time there is. I’ve got bad news for you. You’ve got all the time there is. Okay. Like we’re not going to change that piece. And we do need to master investing our time wisely, but energy management is the X factor. True productivity comes from proper energy management. [00:10:28] It’s not about how many hours per week you’re working in the blueprint program. We talk intimately and strategize around how to maximize energy. Energy per hour. That is what will differentiate you from other performers. Energy per hour, energy mismanagement will steal your productivity. If you need a place to begin, start with physical energy. [00:10:52] There’s all different types of energy in your life. Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, relational, all these different energies, but start with physical because it’s the easiest one to wrap. Your head around and take action on. And if you can increase available physical energy in your life, you will see a benefit across all other forms of energy, be an SME. [00:11:15] And I’m not talking about a subject matter expert. I’m talking about someone who sleeps, someone who moves and someone who eats in a way that maximizes energy, make sleep a priority. Don’t give up sleep to get more work done, make movement and exercise and taking care of your body. A priority and eat in a way that recognizes that food is fuel. [00:11:39] Each of those three things is an entire series of podcasts on its own, but look for the low hanging fruit, manage your energy last, the fifth and final thief of your productivity is being in a distracting environment, a distracting environment. If you’re at your desk right now, pause and look around. If you’re in your car right now, driving, you’re Glance at the floorboards and in the back seat. [00:12:12] If you’re at home multitasking, maybe you’re doing dishes or doing other things, look around you, have a look at your environment. A messy, distracting, noisy environment will steal your productivity. This is not just a physical environment as well. It’s also the people around you in that environment, people and places, people and spaces, clean it up, get organized and use your environment in a way that actually limits distraction and doesn’t invite it a couple of easy examples here, if you look at your desk and it’s covered with loose papers, it’s not about. [00:13:00] You know, knowing what they are and where they are, it’s about the fact that their presence in your environment will take a small percentage of your brain power, and it’ll keep an open tab. If you imagine a browser with a hundred tabs open, and it burns a little bit of that processing power of your brain on what’s on that paper. [00:13:23] And every time your eyes take a quick glance at that piece of paper. You burn some mental fuel. You use up that mental processing power on that thing. If that’s not a priority right now, get those papers out of your field of view. The things that your eyes pick up, that your ears pick up, thinking about your five senses as this input of information. [00:13:49] If you’re receiving inputs that are distracting, that you do not need, it’s stealing your productivity back to thief number four with energy. It’s going to drain energy. Which means you’re mismanaging energy and you’re going to have less available to do what’s most important. A distracting environment is a thief of your productivity.clean it up, set aside time, organize things. [00:14:14] If you need to go down to office depot or staples and buy some organizational stuff for your office, do it. Make that investment in yourself. It’s going to have tremendous reward in the longterm in your productivity [00:14:27] I know you might be saying, Zach, you don’t, you don’t know the workplace that I’m in. We have a very flat organizational chart. We have a very open office concept and workplace and people are constantly talking and making noise and always walking up to my desk, et cetera. Look, I get it, not every environment you have total control over, but rather than immediately create an excuse for why you’re not able to make changes in that environment, how about we put on our empowered, courageous, confident mindset to take radical responsibility and say, well, what can I control? [00:15:06] What are the actions I can take to minimize distraction in my environment? What can I clean up and organize? In these spaces where I work, who can I talk to and have an honest, courageous conversation to tell them that when I’m in deep work, I need them to stop distracting me, or here’s when I’ll be available. [00:15:26] Please only bring me questions during those times, go take action. Don’t be passive. Don’t be a victim on these five thieves. It’s like I said at the beginning, the ideal situation for a thief, if I were one, is to sneak in, steal what I want and sneak out without you ever knowing. [00:15:46] Well, now that’s not an excuse for you anymore. You know, the five thieves, you’re looking right at them. You’re catching them in the act of stealing your productivity. And my challenge to you is to go steal it, go steal it back. And we do that through action. If you lack clear priority. Block 30 minutes on your calendar to sit down and get clear, write down everything that you need to do and prioritize it. [00:16:16] If you don’t know the answer, then get with your boss, get with your leader, get with your team and get clear on your priority. Take the action, make it happen. If you are not saying no, If you lack that ability to say no, get an accountability partner, get a coach, get some help, and find the things that you need to go say no to and practice that as soon as possible. [00:16:42] Get help, get courageous, get into action and say no. If you struggle with chaos, if this is something where you know that you’re a perfectionist, you’re someone who, Desperately in search of inbox zero. You’re not willing to let those emails pile up while you focus on your highest priority Then go get a coach, get into a community of people who can support you on how to shift that mindset that’s rooted in a subconscious fear, a pattern, a conditioning that must change, or it’s going to continue to steal your productivity. [00:17:18] If you are not managing energy, get to bed tonight. Just go to bed an hour earlier. And eat some healthy food, would ya? Don’t make it hard. Drink more water. You know the basic things to do. If you know what to do and you’re not doing it, remember it’s not a knowledge problem, now it’s an implemented knowledge problem. [00:17:41] The answer to that is It’s to get outside yourself, get accountability, get help, get a coach, get into a situation that’s going to hold you to a higher standard. If you know what to do, that you’re simply not doing it, build those habits, get accountability and start.. Now we went through these five thieves at happy hour just last month, and We had a deeper discussion with that group live in the room on zoom. [00:18:07] If you’ve never been to happy hour, we’d love to see you there. These podcasts are great. I love sharing the information with you. I love challenging you to take action here, but I also love it when you can respond, when you can have a conversation and meet your peers who are on this journey with you, happy hour, it’s an incredible opportunity every month for a live workshop where we cover topics like this and everything you need and how to Accelerate your engineering career while building. [00:18:33] a life and a balance that you love. So at happy hour, we went through these and I asked a deeper question. I want to ask you the same one. What fear is underlying this thief? the thief is fear wearing a mask. The mask is fear. Is I don’t choose my priorities. I don’t have clear priority, but the fear might be a fear of failure, a fear of making the wrong choice, a fear of being judged if I choose my priority and get it wrong, or a fear of being found out that if I choose the priority and it was a bad choice, or I choose the priority and I fail at that thing, it’s easier to not choose than to make the wrong choice. [00:19:24] I’m afraid of fill in the blank. I’ll give you some examples of the types of fear that come up. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of judgment, fear of criticism, the fear of missing out, fear of being wrong, the fear of being seen as unintelligent or ignorant, the fear of not being good enough, the fear of not being smart enough, the fear of simply not being enough. [00:19:53] These fears put on the mask and go steal your productivity. What fear is underpinning the thief that impacts you the most? Take a look at these five thieves. Ask yourself, which one plagues my life the most? Which thief is showing up in my work the most? And spend some time digging deeper underneath that and ask, What’s the fear that’s driving that? [00:20:20] What is it that makes saying no so hard for me? What am I afraid is going to happen? I’m afraid that I’ll lose that friendship. I’m afraid that my boss We’ll fire me if I say no, ask yourself the deeper question, by the way, if you want to join us at happy hour, [00:20:40] you can get registered. We do it every month. there’s a link in the show notes. You can Join us. We’d love to have you five thieves and they’re stealing your productivity. My challenge to you is to find the one that impacts you the most. Let’s focus in on that one and steal back your productivity. Start this week. Start now. Don’t let that status quo continue because productivity is not just about now, it’s about the compounding of what that means for you over the next year, five years, 10 years. [00:21:14] Those little percentage improvements have massive compounding return over the long run. Kick these thieves out of your life, put some locks on the doors, join us at next month’s happy hour. And in the meantime, crush comfort, create courage. And let’s do this.