Three productivity hacks that don't work

Student overwhelmed with homework [Courtesy]

1. Multitasking

It may stand to reason that listening to a podcast while responding to an email and working on your business proposal while also clipping your nails can help you accomplish many tasks efficiently at once, but the reality is that it doesn’t.

It’s estimated that only two per cent of the population is actually proficient at multitasking, and ironically, these people are the least likely to actually multitask. Problem is we all think we are the 2 per cent. Furthermore, recent research indicates that people who multitask the most often are likely the worst at it, yes that refers to you.

Our productivity can decrease by as much as 40 per cent from multitasking, as we switch tasks and actually lose time by interrupting ourselves between tasks.  Reducing your amount of multitasking can lead to greater progress on projects that you have deemed challenging as well as decrease the stress you may feel by working often but not actually accomplishing anything.

2. Waking up at the crack of dawn

Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, rises a little before 4 a.m. every day. President Trump wrote in his 2004 book that he only needs four hours of sleep a night. David Cush, the former Virgin America C.E.O., has said that he wakes up at 4:15 am.

It is hyped so much there is a viral video of Steve Harvey declaring: “Rich people don’t sleep eight hours a day.”

So what could be bad about something recommended by every famous person out there? Simple, it is a performance killer.

In a 2003 study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Medical School found that reaction times and performance on cognitive tasks plummet for those getting four hours of sleep and those getting six hours of sleep. Regularly getting four hours of sleep is the equivalent of the mental impairment of being up for 24 hours.

Even if you sleep for eight hours and wake up at 4 a.m., it is unlikely you will be productive. If you’re not wired for rising at the hour of the wolf, and most of us aren’t, according to many sleep specialists, messing with that normal rhythm is still detrimental. That’s why jetlag is so hard to adjust to.

To be productive set up and stick to a fixed sleep schedule. Have a regular sleeping time, exercise daily and cut heavy foods or alcohol before bed.

3. Organisation fixation

How many apps to organise, to-do lists, take notes etc do you have on your phone? We are a generation obsessed with organisation. Google “productivity course” and you’ll get 114 million results. Udemy alone has over 100 productivity courses. Some of these are 100 hour- long courses. More than 1.6 million copies of David Allen’s book, Getting Things Done, have been sold and inspired a cultic following. But planning to be productive is often a time-wasting distraction. The apps, books, and courses address methodology, such as getting organised, while overlooking the more important problem of motivation. This is why Parkinson’s Law is often true: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” And the reverse is true. You never have time to clean the dishes, until your wife calls to say they’re on their way, in which case you get it done in 15 minutes flat.

So when you’re motivated or the pressure is on, you do get stuff done. This is put more succinctly in a viral TED Talk titled “Inside the mind of a master Procrastinator”. Stop organising yourself and just do stuff.