— by Norbert Demps
Today, in our hectic world full of outside influences, there is a tremendous amount of information flying at us every minute. When this information is sent to us out of context, it is just downright frustrating, and it makes it hard for us to feel productive. While preparing for our Remote Work Webinar Series, I was looking back to the good old days when I was making money by doing nothing and having fun.
You don’t believe me?
As I mentioned in the management webinar, I was working as a VIP driver where I was trained to drive really nice cars - safely and smoothly - and to be solution oriented. Of course, it was a well-paying job and I had a lot of fun driving new fantastic cars all the time. Beyond this, the job taught me the importance of having an “abundance of patience”.
Why? Most of the time, we were waiting around. Almost 80% of the time, I was sitting in or by the car - waiting. I even had days where I didn’t drive a single kilometre but was working 14 hours a day.
What does this have to do with productivity?
Well, imagine the 90’s with no internet, no smartphones, no laptops, no social media, (even worse) no coffee-to-go. Just 14 hours ahead of you - waiting. You had to keep the car clean and ready to go at any minute and you had to be dressed sharp. There’s not a lot you can do other than training on your endurance and being ready when you had to go drive 250km/h on the “Autobahn”.
As I said, those were the good old days when I was making good money while sleeping or having fun. If I look back now at this time in my life, I never had the feeling that I wasn’t productive. I learned to enjoy being in the moment and having time to think and work on the ideas in my head, to be ready when I needed to be. Today, I have time on my hands for myself but, often, I get this feeling of being unproductive. Why is this? Probably, there are smarter people than me to explain it, but here is what I found for myself: during this time of my life, the inpouring of outside information and influence was slow. Today, we drive slowly but the information we receive is flying at us on the high speed “digital autobahn”.
This means that it takes a lot of effort and energy to control our work rhythm and it pushes us into a reactive mode. Our levels of patience - and that of those in our surroundings - seem to be gone.
There is good news – there are many strategies that we can use to help us be AND feel more productive. Join me for a Remote Work Series on YouTube.