Being more productive by doing nothing
Image: Anke Sundermeier via Pixabay (licence)
When George Shultz was the US secretary of state, he was a very busy man. Even so, he managed to set aside one hour every week when no one was allowed to interrupt him (other than his wife and the President), which he spent in quiet reflection, taking a strategic view of his work – free from the day-to-day minutiae.
Many respected business minds take a similar approach, including Bill Gates and the late Jack Welch, as my colleague Andrew Eather has noted previously. Being continually connected to your email and phone between meetings not only fills your day, it also makes it difficult to think beyond the immediate demands on your time. The problem is potentially more acute now that many of us are working more hours from home due to the current pandemic, making it even harder to completely switch off.
Many professional writers have shared details of their own creative process, and the common factor seems to be taking time away from the desk to allow the mind to wander. Roald Dahl had a strict schedule of writing for 2 hours each morning and 2 hours in the afternoon in a shed in his garden. After that amount of time, he felt, ‘you are not at your highest peak of concentration, so you have to stop.’ Apparently a gin and tonic with lunch was also an essential part of his daily routine.
In an interview with The Saturday Paper, award-winning Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius explained how she will ‘sometimes write one line and go out into the garden for five hours to reward myself’.
If I’m working on something, I’ll still wander about. I’ll go walk up and get the paper, do all that sort of stuff, to get away. I’ll do almost anything to escape it. It sounds like a justification for being undisciplined, but there’s a lot of mulling over things as part of the process.
Our working lives seem to be busier than ever, due in part at least to the fact that technology allows it to be so. But perhaps we can be more productive and effective if we occasionally carve out some time to clear the calendar of meetings, turn off the phone and step away from the computer – and allow ourselves to just think.
