Work Hard Is Generic Advice. Here’s A 3-Part Framework for Productivity Without Burning Out

Everyone who is successful is a hard worker, but not every hard worker is successful - Anonymous

It’s no secret that hard work is a prerequisite to success. This applies whether you’re a creative, a writer or a lawyer in a high-pressure job. Whenever you ask someone who’s done anything meaningful in life what got them there, you’ll hear them talk about luck or being at the right place at the right time. Some even say all they did was pursue their passion or just keep doing the thing they loved. There is one thing successful people always emphasise however. And that’s hard work.

Work hard is good advice. Nobody ever achieved anything worthwhile without putting in the sweat and tears. It’s age-old advice that’s stood the test of time. And that’s true for a reason.

The problem is that we rarely get into the details of what kind of work is most productive. We rarely get into the weeds of what methods or working make the difference.

And that means a lot of us fall into the trap of thinking all work - any work - is productive.

In my short life developing my career and skills in a demanding industry, I’ve had to get through my share of trial and error to discover not all work is made equal. Not all work is productive. Not all work will make the big difference.

But eventually, through painful struggles, I’ve started to see parallels between what’s worked for me and what’s worked for the most successful and productive.

I’ve squeezed these discoveries down into the 3-part framework I use. I hope you find it valuable, so you can do your work with a calmness knowing you’ve got traction instead of spinning your wheels in the mud.

Part 1 – Align

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster – Stephen Covey

1.     Align your tasks to your goals and use systems to stay on track

It sounds obvious. But there’ve been more times than I’m proud to admit where I haven’t aligned my work to my goals. Many of us do this. We burrow away. We “keep our heads down” and we work to get everything that’s thrown at us done. The next thing we know we’re burnt out without being any closer to our goals.

To overcome this trap, I do a weekly preview each week to make sure my daily actions are aligned with my quarterly, yearly and long term goals. It’s a constant recalibration, because, well, life is good at throwing stuff at you to throw you off.

2.     Recognise that not all hard work is made equal - keep a score card of the important vs the just-need-to-be-done tasks

It took me years to discover that just because something is on your plate, it doesn’t necessarily hold value. Yes, when we’re starting out, we need to say yes to most things. We need to expose ourselves to lots of projects. Early on, this is how we learn and how we demonstrate our value. But this approach needs to change over time as you get better at your area of expertise.

For those of us working within a team, there’ll always be tasks we have to do that won’t push our major goals forward. The trick is to compartmentalise the niggly to do’s from the key impactful work we need to do. A useful hack that’s worked for me is to separate the important tasks from the just-need-to-be-done tasks, right there on my to-do list. It’s easy to confuse busyness with productivity. This trick allows me to keep score. It separates the empty calories from the nutritious stuff.

Part 2 – Systemise, Configure and Build Rhythm

Stress is a systems problem – Jenny Blake

1.     Build systems so you always have clarity on the smallest next step towards your goals

You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems – James Clear

Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do – Scott Adams

There’s a lot that’s been written about goal setting on a quiet Sunday afternoon. There’s less that’s been written about how to stay on track on a typical Tuesday morning when life’s urgencies and distractions are screaming for your attention. Yet this is where we face most of our struggles. We design our goals for perfect situations – often leading to planning fallacy – but life happens under constantly imperfect circumstances.

That’s why I’ve found a systems approach to work to be game-changing for my productivity. Systems account for the imperfections life throws at you. Systems allow you to work with a stillness of mind while the busyness and anxiety rages on around you.

One of the best systems I’ve set up over the last few years is time-blocking and including an emerging tasks time-block. I was happy with my time-blocking practice, but my pet peeve was having to work on emerging daily urgencies that kept coming out of nowhere. Acknowledging this imperfect facet of my industry, I set up an emerging tasks time-block in my calendar. It’s always there. And if there isn’t an emerging unforeseen task, I’ve managed to gain an additional hour.

You can read more about the impact systems have made on my life here.

2.     Configure your work to fit to a fixed schedule

You can work longer, or you can systemise your work to fit into the time you have – I choose the latter.

Cal Newport is a professor at Georgetown University in the US. Alongside his Georgetown duties, he’s published 7 books, writes for the New Yorker, hosts a weekly podcast, publishes on his blog every week, and has a young family. It exhausts me thinking about it, but Cal does all that on a 9-5 schedule and on Sunday mornings. This example isn’t to promote the more-is-better mindset or the hustle culture, but to give a concrete example of how much can be achieved within a tight fixed schedule.

Common advice would have us believe the route to being productive is through working every waking hour. But that’s not necessarily true. By setting stiff constraints within our schedules and using strategies like time-blocking and single-tasking you can achieve a lot, if you protect your time. Parkinson’s Law tends to prevail.

Once I started following a fixed schedule, things started to change. I started getting more done and maintaining energy for the long run.

3.     Make your work visible and maintain healthy boundaries

As someone who works in a demanding industry, I’m all too familiar with the feeling of being just that bit too overloaded. At times it can feel like things are on the verge of boiling over. At worst, pure overwhelm can strike. The truth is, in most cases nobody sets out to overload us. Not deliberately. But our systems for managing collaborative and knowledge work tend to be problematic. We work in a “push” culture where far too often work gets pushed onto the plates of others without a recognition of what’s already there. For those of us who struggle with declining requests this is problematic. My mind for one, can race to a non-existent fist fight when I think about the backlash of saying no.

To maintain boundaries to manage my capacity, I make my work visible amongst the key people I interact with. Not only does this align my goals and workflows with those of the team, it means there’s something tangible to point towards when I need to decline a request or adjust a deadline.

Now you’re not saying no to the requester – you’re simply pointing to your already full up schedule.

4.     Recognise that sprints are necessary. But they shouldn’t be the norm

There are always periods when we need to work longer to get things over the line. But we need to treat these periods as exactly that – sprints.

Big impact takes time and consistency. There’s no point burning yourself out over a 2 month period if you’re going to crash for 2 weeks after that. That means that rest and recovery are part of the cycle of long-term productivity. Nobody would expect an athlete to sprint a marathon. The same applies for work. Play the long game. I’m testing out a simple idea – if I can’t maintain my routine for 6months, then it probably needs tweaking.

5.     Make trade-offs to find your rhythm

I used to subscribe to the idea that you need have it all. The idea that you’re supposed to have it all. The intense fast-paced career, the intense gym sessions, the intense weekends socialising with every friend in town. The intense consumption of social media so you’re the most informed. Until my body told me I needed to find a different rhythm and tempo.

These days I accept that there are 1440 minutes in a day. And with that comes limits. There are loads of things in life that are abundantly available. But time isn’t one of them. It’s one of the few zero-sum games.

Balance is what we’re usually told to aim for. But aiming for alignment for different seasons is more workable. Alignment for me means keeping an eye on all of the major life buckets – career and wealth, relationships, health, personal development etc – and touching them all each week, while acknowledging that during periods of your choosing, some will need more time from you than others. For me, it’s about quality of contact rather than quantity of contact.

Part 3 – Measure, Re-align and Re-inspire

1.     Measure and re-align

In navigation there’s a rule called the 1 in 60 rule. It says that for every 1 degree a plane moves off its course, it’ll miss its targeted destination by 1km for every 60km flown. In other words, a flight could leave London for Barbados today, but if the pilots aren’t constantly correcting the direction of flight, you might just hope you packed a coat instead of your Hawaiian shirt.

The same applies for work and your goals. Setting targets is good. But that’s only half the job. You need to check in with yourself frequently. Every week. Every month. Every quarter. Whatever feels right for your scenario. It doesn’t have to be a brutally grim exercise with spreadsheets and trackers every time. A quick half hour with trusted friend can do wonders.

2.     Let the great work and wisdom of others inspire you. But don’t compare yourself. Comparison kills joy. Acknowledging great work builds inspiration.

It took me a while to discover the nuance between observing great work for inspiration and comparing myself to others.

Make reference to good work and you’ll fuel your inspiration. You’ll reconnect with your intrinsic motivations. Compare yourself to others and you’ll lose motivation.

And that’s it. The 3-part framework that’s allowed me to stay productive without killing myself. My goal isn’t perfection. It’s to maintain alignment, rhythm and momentum without burning out.

It’s timely that I write this during the first week of the year. I’ll be checking in with a follow-up on how it’s going in my quarterly review end of March.