Go Home Early!

I know that's what you wanted to hear on a Friday and I aim to please. We've all heard the adage work smarter not harder; as it turns out, there is truth to it...sort of. Perhaps the better adage should be 'work smarter AND harder, but in less time', but that is not quite as catchy. A study done by Dr. K. Anders Ericcson, published in the Psychological Review and recently recounted in the Business Insider, found that working intensly for short amounts of time produces more results than drudging along for an 8 hour day.

Why is this? Many of us (myself included) work at a desk all day from 9-5, but Facebook or an email account stays minimized in the bottom of  our computer screens. The temptation is simply too great not to check that new notification or most recent email that comes through. While technology is often to blame, so is our temptation to eavesdrop on that hallway conversation or swing by the bathroom one more time. In what I am sure is only the most rigorous of scientific studies, I read somewhere that the average worker spends more time in the bathroom than on vacation. That's either sad, incorrect or we have a nation of people needing to see a gastroenterologist. Regardless of what pulled us away, our concentration is then broken and it takes us another minute or two to regain our focus and peak performance. Not only have we lost time, we have lost quality of work as well.

Dr. Ericcson's research followed violin students and compared the "best students" with the "good students". What he found was that the best students set a specific goal to complete during practice and then take longer breaks (or even quit for the day). This is also true with successful authors, many of whom write in the morning hours, finish before lunch and spend the rest of the day in leisure. Not too shabby. If you are thinking that you are neither a concert violinist nor John Grisham, follow some of these tips to apply the theory into your work day:

• Don't check your email. Not right away at least. Choose a time in late morning or just after lunch to check your email and respond to critical ones. Which leads me to my next tip...
• Know which emails are critical. Responding to the Evite for your co-worker's barbeque invitation is not critical. Responding to an invitation to conduct a training for a client is critical.
• Choose what project you are going to work on and then clear your desk of anything else.
• Give yourself a specific goal of what you want to complete and then give yourself a break. For a short project, your goal might be to finish completely; for a longer project, your goal might be to give it one, concentrated hour of your time.
• When you are done, stop.

So, right after you finish reading this blogpost, get to work and enjoy your Friday a few hours earlier!

Merge Ahead

I was driving through Charlottesville today and lamanting the local difficulty with merging. I'm not sure if it is the concept that people find difficult or just the actual practice of it. I know, I know...the merge lanes on 250 are short, visibility can be bad...I get it. This article is not actually about local driving practices. It is, however, about the importance of merging and what it might mean when we have trouble "merging" in our lives.

It takes timing to merge. Too fast and you can find yourself on someone else's tailpipe slamming on your breaks. Too slow and you'll wind up parked on the shoulder of the road. Too often we are either driving as fast as we can to meet deadlines and obligations or stuck in neutral avoiding those same deadlines and obligations. To merge in life we need to become sensitive to the timing both in and around us. Are we giving ourselves the emotional and physical fuel that is necessary when we need to speed up a bit in life? Do we know when to slow down and not micro-manage a situation? Just like the short merge lanes on St. Rt. 250 in Charlottesville, we feel like we have to make a quick decision: slam on the breaks or push the gas to the floor. At some point as drivers, however, we must learn to trust our skills and trust our judgement as drivers and make that move. So it is in life: trust yourself to know what you need and what you have to give to a situation. And then ease on the gas and merge.