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For a long time, my writing has been heavily focused on productivity.  I love being productive, and it provides me with a sense of purpose and of balance.  When I’ve accomplished things during the day, I feel like I’ve actually made the world a better place through my own industry.

In the first part of my life as an adult, I spent a lot of time learning how to maximize my productivity.  This, in effect, was a way for me to get as much as I could out of life.  The logic went that the more I can do, the more enriching my life is.

However, in recent years, that focus has started to shift.  It’s not that I no longer value productivity — it’s that I value something else above it: balance.

We can spend so much of our time focused on productivity that we lose sight of the present.  If we are no longer able to appreciate the moment at hand, what’s the point?  Without an ability to appreciate what’s going on around us, it doesn’t matter how much we accomplish.  Everyone else may gain from my productivity, but how fulfilling can I really say my own life has been if I’ve been unable to enjoy it?

We have become so focused on productivity.  We’re always looking for new ways to squeeze more efficiency out of our employees, ways to accomplish more during our commute, ways to do more things every day and tools to help us manage everything that we’ve chosen to taken on.  How often do we stop to ask if we’re doing what’s most important to us?

Productivity without balance is a vice, not a virtue.

If we don’t check ourselves and seek out balance by setting our own boundaries, how do we determine when enough is enough?

I know many people that are either unaware, unable or unwilling to set boundaries for themselves and allow the drive to be productive rule their day.  The result?  Their bodies set and create the boundaries for them when they won’t.  Stress, illness fatigue and burnout are all ways that our body provides an indication that we need to re-prioritize balance in our lives.

Tragically, our working culture has evolved to the point that you can often overhear people boasting about how late they’ve been staying at the office, as though it is a badge of honour.  It isn’t; it’s a sign of an unhealthy working culture.  Employers should be seeking to imbue in people an appreciation and respect for balance.  It means that they’ll get more out of their employees, hold better retention rates and have more satisfied workers.

Productivity without balance is a cancerous pursuit.  Without taking the time to check in with yourself and prioritize the other things in your life, your own industry will be coming from a less meaningful place.  Productivity that does not have a purpose behind it is like growth for the sake of growth.  This kind of unhealthy focus on productivity can develop its own vicious cycle.  The more out of balance you become, the easier it becomes to take on more stuff.  With a myopic focus on productivity, you lose an awareness of the other demands on your time.  Without a sense of balance, it becomes easier not to say no.

By making the effort to prioritize balance in your life, you will ensure that you remain productive in the greater sense.  Think about it – if you’re living your life out of balance, worn out and tired, who’s really gaining from your productivity?

By prioritizing balance, you maximize your productivity

By striking a balance in your life, you’ll actually ensure you are maximally productive by attending to all of your needs, rather than just a few.  These needs include things like:

• Sleep
• Nutrition
• Fitness
• Your relationship/Marriage
• Friends
• Family
• Fun

The more out of balance you become, the greater your body and mind will subconsciously pull you back toward your centre.  Your ability to sustain productivity, when done at the expense of balance, will suffer from diminishing returns.

Many of us respond to this reduction in productivity by attempting to push ourselves harder, staving off the inexorable return to balance as long as possible.  We don’t realize that the longer we remain in a productive state, the longer we need to recharge our batteries.  This isn’t a failing on our part (though we often treat is as such) — it’s simply a fact of life.

Imagine yourself as an elastic band.  Our natural, balanced state is the when the elastic band is left at rest.  When we push ourselves to be productive, we are tugging the elastic band from two ends.  The longer we push ourselves to be productive, the greater this elastic band is stretched.  We can attempt to squeeze more productivity out of our heads, but this requires stretching the elastic band even further.  The longer we hold ourselves from a state of balance, the more effort it requires to stretch that band further.  Hold yourself to a state of productivity for too long and the band snaps.  Your body will eventually take over and forcefully undertake the return to balance.  If you’ve pushed yourself too hard, that will often be via crashing into sleep, illness, or worse (Eg, your head could explode).

Summary

Here’s what we’ve covered:

• Productivity, when pursued to the detriment of balance, is not a virtue — it’s a vice
• A tunnel-vision-like focus on productivity is cancerous and self-perpetuating
• When you prioritize balance in your life, you actually maximize your ability to be productive
• If you think you can actually get more accomplished by cutting back on the other important parts of your life, you’re only fooling yourself

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It’s been a week since I completed the first of four intensive modules that lead to my accreditation as a professional coach.  In between completing law school, searching for articling positions to work once I graduate and developing an iPhone app with two other colleagues, I’ve been coaching clients that answered my initial call for volunteers.

Personal plug: Before going any further, if you’re interested in coaching, please get in touch with me via this page.  Onwards!

As always, the TLDR can be reached here.

Training

The coaching instruction was highly informative and very rewarding.  Although Erickson Coaching Federation (“ECF”) is an international school in many different countries, this is one of the few opportunities to take the training that they offer in an intensive format.  As a result, there were many would-be coaches present from the far reaches of our planet.  Turkey, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Paris, and Bangladesh, to name a few.

Although spending eight hours each day focused on the material was draining, it was also exciting to learn in the context of this cultural melange.  While I have a natural intuition toward the kind of relationship that coaching requires, it was great to get a foundation and framework underneath that to guide that intuition.

One of the most significant pieces of wisdom I took away from the training was the question posed in the title of this post:

What do you want?

Think in positive terms, not negative

By this, I don’t mean that you should pretend the sky is blue when it’s pouring rain out.  What I’m referencing is the fact that our minds are excellent at visualizing the presence of something, but not the absence of it.

If someone tells you not to think about penguins dancing, it’s very difficult to construct an image that encompasses that concept.  As Marilyn Atkinson (the instructor for the intensive, and the president of ECF) indicated, you can do something like visualize penguins dancing with red circle and a cross through it, but how do you actually visualize the absence of penguins dancing?  Our minds simply aren’t geared in this way.

What our minds are good at doing is visualizing positive things.  We can visualize dancing penguins – and we can do it quite well.

Ironically, most of us spend a good deal of our time dwelling on the past and thinking about what we didn’t like about our day.  I’m not sure when or why we moved in this direction, but this mode of thought has become fairly ubiquitous.

Think back to the last time you went to a friend or family member for advice.  How much time did you spend complaining about your situation at work, how you don’t like the workload that you’re being given at work, how you’re not being given enough respect for your abilities, etc.

So I hear what you don’t want.  But what DO you want?

This is the fundamental question that we must start asking ourselves.  Okay – it’s clear that you don’t want to keep feeling like you’re being given too much workload at your job.  But what do you actually want?  What does that ideal result actually look like?

At first brush, this question might sound like a platitude, kind of like stating the answer in jeopardy but then simply having to rephrase it with “what is” at the start.  But this method of reversing the way we think generates profound results.  Think about something in your life that you’re not happy with.  Now try to imagine what your ideal result looks like.  Can you visualize it?  If not, that’s the first problem to overcome.  It’s easy to identify that you hate your job, but more challenging to identify what the job you want looks like.

In my perspective, a lot of coaching revolves around helping clients change their thinking from one of focusing on the negatives to focusing on the positives.

It doesn’t matter what you don’t want..

Seriously; it’s not about what we don’t want.  Thinking and focusing on that will only keep the imagery fresh in your mind (remember – the brain isn’t good at visualizing the absence of something).  What matters is what we do want.

Get in the habit of catching yourself when you hear these kinds of words in your mind:

• I hate that…
• I don’t like it when…
• Why is it always…
• It’s so dumb how…
• It’s not fair that…

It’s not that hard

It really isn’t!  But shifting your thinking in this subtle manner will have powerful and wonderful results.  It’s amazing how much more inspired you will feel when you shift your focus to visualizing what you do want, rather than what you don’t want.

Analogize your thinking (and life in general) to a road trip.  Imagine you had just left a city that you didn’t really enjoy.  Your thinking might be something along the lines of “Well, I don’t want to spend any more time there!”.  But this isn’t going to provide you much inspiration with respect to the rest of your trip.  Achieving this aim is as simple as sitting in your car 10 minutes outside of that city.

By shifting your thinking to something like, “Alright, I think I want to go to Disneyland next”, you create a positive image that can be visualized.  Your mind is then able to start thinking about the paths to achieve that positive goal and move in that direction.

So why do I even need you Adam?

Have I just given away all of the magic juice of coaching?  No.

The challenge is not in determining what, it’s in the how.  This solution-based mindset is one of the core principles behind coaching, but it’s not the only value that a good coach offers.  Applying principles like these can often be challenging – especially when life gets challenging, stressful or just plain busy.

It is, however, one small step that you can start taking on your own to change the way that you think and approach the problems in your life.

If you do give this a go and find success (or failure, for that matter), please post a comment and share your story.  After all, the more we share, the more we benefit.

To Summarize…

• Try to be aware of the times when you are thinking with trigger words like:
• I hate that…
• I don’t like it when…
• Why is it always…
• It’s so dumb how…
• It’s not fair that…
• Shift your thinking from a focus on the negative (what you don’t want) to the positive (what you do want)
• The simple exercise of identifying what it is that you actually want will inspire you and free your mind up to start thinking about how to actually get there
• If you’re interested in some coaching, get in touch with me at aquiney@gmail.com

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A lot has happened since I last posted.  I included a link to one of my articles detailing my weekly review process over at GTD Times, and got over 100 daily visits across the span of about 5 days (without doubt a record for this humble site).

Unfortunately, that timing coincided with an assignment in one class and writing a take-home exam in my administrative law class.  As such, I effectively invited a bunch of people into my home and then fell into a coma for the duration of their visit.  Not the best way to increase traffic or treat people that are interested in what I have to say.

Administrative law was a challenging course, though only inasmuch as the subject matter was very dry, and it was a large-credit course condensed into half the time.  I was spending 8 hours a week in class, and additional time reading.  The challenge was to stay motivated and engaged throughout.  Nevertheless, things have started to settle down a little bit, and as I travel over to Vancouver for the weekend, I’m given the familiar gift of a dedicated 1.5 hours in which to put thoughts to keyboard.

Today I want to talk a little bit about the importance of retreating.  If you don’t need convincing and only want the strategy, you can skip to it here.

..from what?

From everything.

What I’m hoping to convince you is that there is value in having the self-discipline and awareness to take a step back from time to time and pull away from whatever you are currently focused on.

Why?

There are many good reasons to purposefully retreat from your current task or project.  First and foremost is the need to combat diminishing returns.  Although this is generally an economic theory, it is applicable to much of our daily lives.

Can you think of a time when you were banging your head against the metaphorical wall for hours, trying to solve a problem, only to go for a walk, return and immediately conceive of the solution?  These experiences are not uncommon, and are illustrative of the value of retreating.

When a problem is receiving all of our focus, we can develop mental tunnel vision.  Our mind’s become focused to the extent that we are unable to synthesize or incorporate any additional information from outside of our particular area of focus.  It is not until we step back that the blinders on our mind are removed and we are free to think of a solution in terms that exist outside of the confines of the box we were operating in.

Do you take breaks at work?

If you answered no, you probably thought to yourself “I’m way too busy to take a break, I can’t afford the time”.  The fact is, you can’t afford not to take breaks.

Without taking time to retreat and reconnect with yourself, the efficiency with which you are able to apply yourself to your work will diminish over time.  This is not an uncommon process amongst law students.  A-type personalities have an aggressive bent and love throwing themselves at a task.  Failure in achieving that task within expectations is met with zeal and resentment, and a redoubling of effort.  Many a weary face have I seen turning in assignments in the morning, telling fables of seeing dragons at 5 in the morning, shortly before they awoke in a pile of drool in time to hand in their completed paper.

I’m using hyperbole here because it’s more fun, but you can probably relate to this state of mind.  Most of us would benefit from procrastinating less (also here) and taking more frequent breaks.

I can’t afford to!

Actually, you can’t afford not to.

This is a good statement to trigger your self-awareness and alert you that maybe you need to take a step back.  With unbelievably few exceptions, taking 15 minutes away from a task you are working on is not going to result in failure.

Retreating from your tasks and projects is important, but this philosophy should be applied not just to work, but to life in general.

For the first two years of classes, I’ve been a part of the co-op program.  This means that I take classes for four months, then work at a legal job for four months, and back again.  A lot of my friends planned their work so that they finished on a Friday, and then started school again on a Monday.  When I told them that I had two weeks off, they exclaimed disbelief: “You’re so lucky!”.

Luck has nothing to do with it.  You have to actively make time for your retreats.  No one else is going to do it for you (and the same applies for your breaks at work).  Are you thinking that you can’t afford the time off?  Why not?  The benefit you will gain from taking two weeks off to process your own thoughts and reconnect with yourself will far outweigh the material costs of missing out on the paycheque.

But I go on vacation..

Vacations are awesome.  For many people they are a form of retreat.  It takes them away from their context, frees their minds up to relax and focus on what they want to achieve when they get back home, and spend time with the person that they love.  For some people, this is all that they need, although I must admit that the people I know that take the most vacations are often the ones that are the most stressed out on a daily basis.  They should probably be retreating more on a daily basis, and less on a monthly or annual one.

When you go on a vacation, are you doing a lot of planning?  Are you stressed out at all about the cost, either during the vacation or when you get back home?  Do you go on vacation to let your mind sit idle for hours on a beach, or to be exposed to culture different from your own?  None of these are cause for judgment, simply different approaches to vacation.  I love being exposed to new cultures when I travel, and so this type of vacation really isn’t much of a retreat for me — it’s time I spend actively engaging and expanding my mind.

It’s about balance — remember?

Regardless of the approach you take, the bottom line is balance is a quality that we must seek to imbue in our lives on a continual basis.  This balance must be sought at the microscopic level (on an hourly or daily basis) and on a macroscopic level (annual vacations, etc.).  If you never make the time to be at peace with your thoughts, you’ll never have the time.

Some strategies

Okay, you’re convinced.  Here are some of my own strategies to help adopt the habit of retreating:

• Remember the trigger phrase
  • If you catch yourself saying something like “I can’t afford to take a break right now”, it’s probably the time when you most need one.
• Question your assertions
  • If you’re telling yourself that you can’t afford the time away from your task or away from work, question how accurate this is.  Why can’t you afford to take that break?  Will the benefit you gain from taking a break really be that detrimental in the long run?  Looking back, would you have more regret for not taking the break, or for having taken it?
• Ask yourself what would happen if you didn’t have the option of turning down the break
  • I always ask my wife this question when she refuses to take a sick day (in spite of being dreadfully snotty and sick).  What if she wasn’t given the option — would her entire project fail?  Would she get fired?  Would the world end?  Ask yourself what would happen if your power went out for 15 minutes and you couldn’t continue working during that period.  (If you’re thinking about how you really need to start saving your work more often, you’re missing the point).  The consequences of taking a break are not that bad.
• Specifically schedule time in your work calendar for breaks.
  • Label them “appointment” or something sufficiently vague.  Doing this for 15 minute breaks may become onerous, but I know more than a few people that would benefit from booking time like this for a couple of hours during the day — if only to ensure that they have a few hours of undisturbed time.
• Whenever your situation is undergoing change (new job, moving homes, etc.), give yourself more time than you think you need
  • Don’t assume that the weekend will be enough time — specifically leave a little bit of extra room between the end of one job and the start of the next one.  A few days off will not break your bank (and if it is, perhaps you should be focusing some attention on living within a tighter budget).  Taking the extra time will allow you to adjust and accept the change at a reasonable pace.
• If you need more encouragement, think of all of the things you wish you had time to accomplish but never do
  • The simple act of contemplating what you might use the added time off for will help you focus on the value that retreating may provide, rather than just the costs

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