Recently, I interviewed a Product Owner who shared an interesting perspective on productivity hacks. Instead of mentioning typical time management techniques, he emphasized the importance of yoga and meditation. His message was clear: personal wellbeing, particularly mental health, directly impacts work performance.
Another candidate told me he quit his job out of burnout and ended up taking six months off. According to productivity expert Scott Young, the three main causes for burnout are exhaustion (extreme fatigue), cynicism paired with emotional distancing and the feeling that you cannot do anything about it.
It's not hard to see how yoga and meditation can help manage the first two on that list, and it may even help with the third.
I asked this burnt-out candidate what he would do differently if he could go back and he said he would not obsess over details that don't significantly impact the big picture. Fair enough, there is a lesson there: if everything needs to be perfect, you are never done, so you are likely to burn yourself out by working endless hours and worrying indiscriminately about everything.
But I think there is more to it, because if you think that everything needs to be perfect, in a way everything is equally important to you, so obsessing over inconsequential matters only makes sense.
The fix is not simply to decide not to obsess over every little detail, the challenge is spotting what is worth obsessing over and what is not.
And speaking of solutions for burnout, here's mine. It won't work for all types of burnout, but I've found it highly effective for office workers who are very demanding of themselves.
A small disclaimer, I don't remember how this idea came to me. I don't know whether I stole it, worked it out in collaboration or if it just came to me. I've used it myself and I've guided colleagues through it successfully. Here's how it works.
Say you typically work 12 to 14-hour days in an office job. For the duration of the test, one or two weeks, you commit not to work more than 10 hours per day. It is important to fully commit to that limit, or you won't be able to conclude anything from the test.
That's it, you just keep working as usual, but you have a hard stop and it forces you to log off a little earlier than usual. You may need to adapt the parameters to your specific situation, but whatever configuration you use, you need to set hard limits to your working time. Once you are done for the day, you don't check your email, you don't take calls.
That's it. At the end of those couple of weeks, simply reflect on what happened. Do you feel better? Did anyone else even notice?
That second question is key. That second question is why I think this experiment is so effective. If no one noticed, which is often the case, what does that mean? Why did you drive yourself to exhaustion? Are you in an environment that doesn't recognize or reward your sacrifice? Are you perhaps focusing your efforts on activities that don't add significant value?
Another reason why this experiment is effective is that it addresses the third cause of burnout mentioned above: feeling like you cannot control it. If you've able to cut your working hours, you've already done something about it. And if no-one noticed, you were successful. Perhaps you didn't fully fix your burnout, but at the very least you alleviated your exhaustion.
Do good,
Manuel Panizo Vanbossel