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The Power of Productivity: Why 87% of Your "Productivity" Habits Are Actually Making You Less Productive
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You know what? I'm bloody tired of productivity gurus.
There, I said it. After seventeen years of managing teams across three different industries – from manufacturing in Geelong to tech startups in Brisbane – I've watched enough people turn themselves into anxious wrecks trying to follow the latest productivity fad. The irony? Most of these systems make people less productive, not more.
The worst part is that genuine productivity principles get buried under layers of motivational nonsense and expensive apps that promise to change your life. Real productivity isn't about cramming more into your day. It's about understanding what actually matters and doing those things well.
The Myth of Busy = Productive
Here's something that'll ruffle some feathers: being busy doesn't make you productive. Revolutionary, I know.
I learned this the hard way in 2019 when I was running myself ragged, checking emails every twelve minutes (yes, I tracked it), attending meetings that could've been emails, and colour-coding my calendar like some sort of corporate rainbow. My output? Mediocre at best. My stress levels? Through the roof.
The breakthrough came when I started working with a client in Perth who had absolutely no systems whatsoever. Chaos, you'd think. But this woman was getting more done in four hours than most people achieve in a full week. Her secret wasn't revolutionary – she just knew the difference between motion and action.
Motion is busy work. Checking emails, reorganising your desk, updating project management software with colour-coded priorities. Action is the stuff that moves the needle. Writing the proposal. Making the difficult phone call. Having the conversation you've been avoiding.
Most Australians spend roughly 73% of their workday in motion. Not action. Motion.
Why Your To-Do List Is Sabotaging You
Let me guess – your to-do list has between fifteen and thirty items on it right now. Some of them have been there for weeks. Maybe months. You keep adding new ones faster than you can tick them off, and every morning you feel overwhelmed before you've even started.
The problem isn't your work ethic. The problem is that to-do lists are fundamentally flawed tools for productive people.
Think about it this way: your to-do list treats "email the supplier about delivery dates" the same way it treats "finalise the quarterly budget review." Both get a little bullet point. Both feel equally urgent when you're scanning the list. But one takes three minutes and has minimal impact, while the other might take three hours and affects the entire business direction.
This is why time management training has become such a massive industry. People are drowning in their own lists.
What works better? Priority matrices. I use a simple system I pinched from my mentor (a gruff old project manager who built half of Darwin's infrastructure in the '90s): Impact versus Effort. High impact, low effort? Do it now. High impact, high effort? Schedule focused time. Low impact, anything? Delegate it or delete it.
Your brain will resist this initially. We're conditioned to feel productive when we're ticking things off lists, even if those things don't matter. But trust me on this one – once you start focusing on impact instead of completion rates, everything changes.
The Multitasking Delusion
Can we please put this myth to bed once and for all? Multitasking doesn't work. It never worked. It will never work.
Your brain isn't designed to focus on multiple complex tasks simultaneously. What you're actually doing when you "multitask" is rapidly switching between tasks, and every switch comes with a cognitive cost. Research shows it can take up to twenty-three minutes to fully refocus after an interruption.
Yet somehow, we've convinced ourselves that juggling emails while on conference calls while updating spreadsheets makes us efficient. It doesn't. It makes us scattered, prone to errors, and ultimately slower at everything we're trying to accomplish.
I see this constantly in managing difficult conversations workshops. People's phones are buzzing, laptops are open, and they're trying to absorb critical communication skills while mentally composing responses to Slack messages. Then they wonder why their conflict resolution techniques don't stick.
Single-tasking isn't just more effective – it's actually more satisfying. When you give something your full attention, you do it better, finish it faster, and feel more accomplished afterwards. But it requires discipline in a world that's constantly trying to fracture your focus.
The Energy Management Revolution
Here's where most productivity advice gets it completely wrong: they focus on time management instead of energy management. Time is fixed – we all get twenty-four hours. Energy fluctuates dramatically throughout the day, and that's where the real opportunities lie.
I'm a morning person. Always have been. By 2 PM, my creative thinking is shot, but I can still handle administrative tasks. Yet for years, I was forcing myself through important strategic work in the afternoon because that's when my calendar had gaps. Madness.
Now I protect my morning hours fiercely. No meetings before 10 AM unless it's genuinely urgent. No email checking until I've completed my most important work. No exceptions. The difference in output quality is remarkable.
Your energy patterns might be completely different. Maybe you're sharper in the evening. Maybe you have a post-lunch surge. The key is to actually track your energy levels for a week or two and then design your schedule around your natural rhythms instead of fighting them.
This applies to decision-making too. We have limited decision-making capacity each day, and it depletes as we use it. This is why successful people like Steve Jobs wore the same thing every day – one less decision to make. Whether you go that far is up to you, but understanding decision fatigue explains why you can make brilliant strategic choices at 9 AM and terrible impulse purchases at 9 PM.
Technology: Servant or Master?
Let's talk about productivity apps. I've tried them all. Todoist, Notion, Asana, Monday.com, Trello, and about fifteen others I can't even remember the names of. Each one promised to revolutionise my workflow. Each one ended up as digital clutter that required more maintenance than value it provided.
The truth about productivity technology is this: the app doesn't make you productive. Your habits do. If you're disorganised in your head, you'll be disorganised in the app. If you don't understand your priorities, the most sophisticated project management software in the world won't help you.
Start simple. A notebook and pen work fine for most people. Maybe a basic calendar app. Add complexity only when you've outgrown simpler tools, not because some influencer on LinkedIn insists you need a thirty-seven-step workflow management system.
That said, some technology genuinely helps. Automation tools that handle repetitive tasks? Brilliant. Calendar blocking to protect focused work time? Essential. Email filters that sort low-priority messages? Game-changing. But these are tools that support good habits, not replace them.
The Perfectionism Trap
I used to be a perfectionist. Not the good kind that produces quality work, but the paralysing kind that prevents you from starting anything unless you're certain you can do it flawlessly.
This manifested in ridiculous ways. I'd spend three hours crafting the perfect email that could've been written in five minutes. I'd postpone presentations until I'd researched every possible question, even though the audience just needed basic information. I'd rewrite reports endlessly instead of shipping good work that could be improved later.
Perfectionism masquerades as high standards, but it's actually fear dressed up as diligence. Fear of criticism, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough. And it's productivity poison.
The antidote is what I call "progressive improvement." Ship good work quickly, get feedback, iterate. This doesn't mean accepting mediocrity – it means understanding that Version 1.0 that exists is infinitely more valuable than Version 3.0 that never gets finished.
Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. Give yourself two hours to write a proposal, it'll take two hours. Give yourself two days, it'll take two days. The proposal probably won't be significantly better after the extra time – you'll just second-guess yourself more and add unnecessary complexity.
Real-World Productivity in Action
Let me tell you about Sarah, a operations manager at a logistics company in Adelaide. When I first met her, she was working twelve-hour days, constantly stressed, and her team was missing deadlines despite everyone working flat out.
We didn't implement some fancy system. We started with three simple changes:
First, she stopped checking email first thing in the morning. Instead, she spent the first hour on her highest-impact task of the day. This alone improved her strategic thinking because her brain was fresh and unfragmented.
Second, we identified her "decision-making power hours" – between 9 AM and 11 AM. She blocked this time for important decisions and creative work. Administrative tasks got pushed to the afternoon when her energy was lower anyway.
Third, she instituted "communication windows" – specific times when her team could interrupt her with questions, and focused work blocks when interruptions weren't allowed unless it was genuinely urgent.
Within six weeks, she was leaving the office two hours earlier and her team's output had improved by roughly 40%. No apps, no complex methodologies, just better habits aligned with how humans actually function.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Productivity
Here's what nobody wants to hear: real productivity often means saying no to good opportunities so you can say yes to great ones. It means disappointing people who want your time for things that don't align with your priorities. It means accepting that you can't do everything, even if you technically have the skills.
This is especially hard for Australians because we pride ourselves on being helpful. "She'll be right" and "no worries" are embedded in our cultural DNA. But productivity isn't about being busy – it's about being effective. And effectiveness sometimes requires boundaries that feel uncomfortable.
I learned this lesson when I was consulting for a mining company in the Pilbara. Brilliant people, working ridiculous hours, but their safety metrics were declining because key processes were being rushed. The solution wasn't working harder – it was working more deliberately. Slowing down critical procedures actually improved both safety and efficiency.
The same principle applies everywhere. Rushing through emails leads to miscommunication that requires follow-up emails. Skipping planning meetings leads to confusion that wastes hours later. Taking shortcuts in quality control leads to rework that takes longer than doing it properly the first time.
Building Your Personal Productivity System
Forget what works for other people. Productivity is deeply personal, and what transforms one person's work life might be completely wrong for yours.
Start by tracking how you actually spend your time for one week. Not how you think you spend it – how you actually spend it. Set a timer to go off every thirty minutes and write down what you were doing. This will be eye-opening and probably slightly depressing.
Next, identify your energy patterns. When do you do your best thinking? When do you feel most motivated? When does your attention start wandering? Design your ideal day around these natural rhythms.
Then examine your current commitments ruthlessly. What activities produce the highest value? What could be delegated, automated, or eliminated entirely? This is where delegation skills training becomes invaluable – many people know they should delegate but don't know how to do it effectively.
Finally, start small. Pick one productivity principle and implement it consistently for two weeks before adding anything else. Behaviour change is hard enough without trying to revolutionise your entire approach overnight.
The Productivity Paradox
The ultimate irony of productivity is that obsessing over it makes you less productive. When you're constantly tweaking your systems, reading productivity blogs (like this one), and experimenting with new techniques, you're not actually producing anything valuable.
True productivity comes from finding a simple system that works for you and then forgetting about the system. The goal isn't to become a productivity expert – it's to accomplish meaningful work with less stress and more satisfaction.
Your mileage may vary, but I've found that most people need three things: clarity about what matters, systems to protect their focused work time, and the discipline to say no to everything else. Everything beyond that is just elaboration.
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