Doing Important Work Through Clarity
Demands are pushing workers into burnout, unable to decide which tasks to take on next.
Clarity is essential when assessing productivity with today’s state of business that more resembles a “state of busy-ness,” Sarah Ohanesian explained in her session, Compounding Productivity: Become Unstoppable & Do The Most Important Work of Your Life.
Demands are pushing workers into burnout, with many unable to decide which tasks to take on next.
“We’re running on fumes and drowning in to-dos, and we’re struggling to keep up,” Ohanesian told the audience.
She highlighted what she terms The Clarity Gap, explaining that many believe we have a productivity gap, when in reality, it’s an organizing gap.
Ohanesian cited statistics that show 44 percent of U.S. workers are burned out, and 51 percent consider themselves used up. Burnout – which is beyond exhaustion – is something that won’t be resolved with a vacation or a good night’s sleep, she pointed out.
She told attendees that burnout equals the tax of working hard, yet important work stays undone.
Workers and companies can view output as productivity, but workers want to have an impact at the end of the day. That is measured in progress. And productivity is marked as progress toward priorities.
She then outlined three productivity pitfalls:
- The productivity parade
- The quicksand conundrum
- Push-it protocol.
The productivity parade involves tasks that look productive but are not in reality. Among those are late-night reply-all emails, speedy responses to messages, and agreeing to meetings, all to give the appearance of productivity, but don’t move the needle.
“Are you doing work that really matters?” she asked the audience.
The quicksand conundrum involves real work on the wrong task, which is disguised as the right task.
And the push-it protocol is illustrated by tasks that can be pushed aside for another day, not through laziness or procrastination, but because of the enormity.
Ohanesian asked the attendees how we’re measuring productivity, and if we’re measuring the right thing.
She encouraged the use of momentum, illustrating her point with the equation that defines it: momentum equals mass times velocity.
In this instance, mass is the weight and clarity of goals, and velocity is not only speed, but speed with direction. That’s where the clarity comes in.
