Learn to be merciful to your own
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Editor’s note: We sometimes push ourselves too tightly to pursue efficiency one-sidedly, but in the end it is counterproductive. Not only can efficiency not improve, but the whole person can’t extricate themselves in the quagmire of anxiety and depression. This article provides some relatively mild principles for efficiency gains that help us develop a relatively peaceful mindset that maintains a long-term, sustainable and efficient state. This article is translated from medium, article author Nick Wignall, original title How To Be Productive Without Being Hard on Yourself.
Image source: Bethany Legg
I, like quite a few people, have an amazing fascination with efficiency. But most of the advice I’ve read about improving productivity is inexplicably harsh, even when it’s radical—
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To work efficiently every morning, you have to do something.
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The most efficient people in the world will do something, yes, not falling every day.
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To be able to excel in efficiency, you must eliminate all unnecessary things in your life.
I personally think that this idea has a potential danger: can the extreme attitudes promoted by these radical efficiency advocates really have a positive impact on efficiency? Can this extreme attitude be translated into an effective way for others to adopt and implement in life and work?
I am skeptical about this.
As a psychologist, I often encounter some side effects that reduce efficiency. These side effects are actually produced with a positive mindset. The most common one is self-evaluation.
Although a severe self-evaluation may be ostensibly short-term in the short term, it tends to have a devastating effect on long-term efficiency gains because it leads to anxiety and depression. In fact, as a person who specifically helps people overcome procrastinationI find that the main causes of delays are too harsh self-evaluation and self-criticism, and the resulting negative emotions.
On the other hand, when people learn to recognize and mitigate this too harsh self-examination, things tend to develop on the positive side, benefiting their emotions and work efficiency. In fact, what is surprising is that when people are no longer so harsh on themselves, they will disappear without delay and inefficiency.
In other words, I believe that for most of us, to maintain a long-term, sustainable and efficient state requires a milder mindset – although not less serious, only in this case. Next, we can really improve efficiency and work hard.
So, starting from this idea, I have put forward some relatively mild principles of efficiency improvement in the text, and they may help you at work or wherever you need it.
Target setting should not be too high
What kind of goals you should set for yourself, I have nothing to say about this. But for how to set goals for myself, I have a few words to emphasize:
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The goal shouldn’t be too high. When you set goals for yourself, you certainly need to be high-minded – but also with reality. Magnificent goals are exciting, but they can also be a trigger for long-term disappointment and dissatisfaction. Often, the best strategy is to set a grand goal while setting a range of more viable intermediate goals.
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Set goals to be realistic. Who are you setting goals for? Many of us have difficulty achieving our goals, because the goals we pursue are neither important nor realistic to us. We spend too much time pursuing goals that suit others, so we often feel anxious or depressed. However, pursuing a goal that truly reflects our own values will bring a calm confidence, and it is this self-confidence that gives us the momentum to move forward.
Cultivate your own habits
General advice on improving productivity tells us to focus on everyday habits rather than long-term goals and outcomes. I think that as long as your so-called daily habits are effective for you, then this proposal is really fine.
But if it doesn’t work for you?
Let us take early rise as an example:
If your physical condition is fully up, get up at 5 in the morning, take a cold shower, and then have a busy hour before work to keep yourself energized, this is a good strategy. But what if you are actually a night owl?
It’s better to stick to the principles of the article that is inspiring but not in line with your own actual work about getting up early.Always get used to making creative arrangements. For example, you can ask your boss if he can work for half an hour late and eat 90 minutes instead of 60 minutes for lunch. In this way, you can more easily arrange the time that suits your habits, and then easily improve your work efficiency when your physiology is in a more favorable state.
Of course, I am just giving an example, but as long as we add a little creativity to the cultivation of daily habits, in the long run, it may have a significant positive impact on our efficiency.
Carefully examine the expectations that the outside world gives us
The problem with expectation is that we rarely look at their legitimacy.
Most of us actively or passively accept expectations from outside – whether reasonable or not. Unfortunately, we rarely really look at whether these expectations are consistent with our current unique personality, values, and environment. This is actually a problem that cannot be ignored, because the external cultural expectations we accept about improving efficiency are often extremely demanding.
So you need to ask yourself: What is my implicit expectation of work? What did these expectations bring to me?
If you are unsure of the answer to your question, take a moment to reflect on it and you will find it worthwhile. There are many ways to reflect, either to write a diary, to meditate, or to talk to a good friend or colleague, or any other way that encourages you to pause your work and consciously reflect on your expectations for work. Then, you can review these expectations on a regular basis at regular intervals.
When you are self-evaluating, you will be merciful
Everyone of us talks to ourselves and then sorts out and evaluates our own behaviors and things we have experienced while talking to ourselves. There is a voice in our mind that says, “How can the idiot overtake, do not be afraid of a car accident?!” or “Scorpio, I am really a patient with severe procrastination.”
In fact, this kind of self-evaluation is not a weird personality, but one of our influential mental states. In fact, our emotions and self-perceptions are almost entirely regulated by the self-speaking habit of describing the things that happen to us.
Self-speaking affects every aspect of our lives, and it is especially influential in our work. Specifically, when we encounter setbacks or struggles at work, if we respond with too negative self-evaluation, we may get the effect of salting the wounds – because we add to the already difficult experience. A layer of negative emotions. It is this layer of negative emotions that often undermines our work efficiency.
In contrast, if we can develop a more compassionate, gentler, and less stringent self-evaluation habit at work, it will be more conducive to the daily work, and out of the negative mud.
writeAt the end
In a letter to a friend, Ernest Hemingway tells how he is engaged in writing, and he is a good interpretation of the gentle and efficient meaning:
I am currently in a good working condition, I only remember that I always worked well in the spring.
Take a few seconds to think about the meaning of this sentence. Although the work is not as good as he had hoped in the past, there is a slight regret, but Hemingway is still looking forward to the future efficiency.
I think Hemingway has confidence in his work because he accepts the deficiencies of the past and knows that it is too likely to make his writing faster and better.
We can be sure that efficiency is both low and high: we are more likely to do more work only if we no longer insist on keeping every minute and every second.
Translator: Xitang