How to Be More Productive Without Burning Out

by Matt Plummer

Like many of my classmates, shortly after college, I joined the ranks of a top strategy and management consulting firm. I knew I was signing up for long hours, but the reality of that didn’t really sink until a few months in, when I asked for a vacation day to go to a friend’s wedding. My request was granted, sort of. My wife handled the long drive to the wedding, while I spent my “day off” in the passenger’s seat working furiously on my laptop, with occasional stops at cafes to recharge my computer and send emails via the free wifi. This pace continued for months – even on national holidays, I holed up in my apartment to work — and I began to wonder how long I could continue.

Unfortunately, this story of impending burnout is not unusual. In fact, as recently as 2012, a Gallup poll revealed that 40% of U.S. workers “were so stressed out they felt burnt out.” Stress and anxiety are cited in 70% of the calls placed to phone-counseling lines at Workplace Options, a provider of employee-assistance programs. This may not be too surprising since working hours continue to climb for the highest paid workers. In the last 30 years, the multi-century trend of the best-paid workers working less than the lowest-paid workers has been turned on its head. Today, the best paid are about twice as likely to work long hours as the most poorly paid. According to a 2008 survey, the vast majority of professionals (94%) worked 50 hours or more a week, and almost half worked more than 65 hours a week.

Employers have not missed or ignored this troubling reality. Instead, they’ve tried three different strategies over the last few decades.

Make up for it: The first tactic was to compensate employees for the long work by rewarding them handsomely with financial and other benefits.

Make it more fun: As it became increasingly hard to buy out high performers’ personal lives, employers decided to bring more of their personal lives into the workplace. They added ping pong tables, cafes, and gyms, and in the cases of some, free meals and on-site daycare, or laundromats and hair salons.

Make it better: In the last five years or so, more and more companies have adopted innovative mental health and mindfulness programs to treat the symptoms of burnout. As one example, Headspace, a digital provider of meditation and mindfulness services, has grown to a value of $250 million in just seven short years.

While each of these approaches have some merit, they all fail to address the root cause: overwork. My guess is that most employers know this, but don’t know what they can do about it without sacrificing their bottom lines. Fortunately, there are strategies we each can use to cope on our own.

That’s what I decided to do as the path to burnout became more certain. Intrigued by the possibility of a way out of the burnout cycle, a coworker (Colin) and I started meeting every other week to discuss productivity. We didn’t have much of an objective and it showed. We had little to show for six months of meeting. To give more rigor to our meetings, we decided to define a metric for our productivity: average weekly hours worked. We began measuring it and setting goals for reducing it. In one month, we decreased our average weekly hours worked by 10% compared to our baseline average. Over the ensuing six months, we improved that figure further, such that our average hours worked over the course of those six months were 15-20% lower than our baseline average. But we were still getting just as much done as before.

We didn’t quite know what we had done to make such a difference, other than tracking our time and meeting bi-weekly. But we saw, for the first time, that our previous work habits – developed unintentionally or copied from others — had cost us a lot of time.

This was the first time I realized that most people have no idea whether they’re really being productive or not. But it wouldn’t be the last. What started as a bi-weekly meeting with my coworker, Colin, evolved into a 3-office initiative involving over 40 colleagues that spanned two years. (Disclosure: this experience ultimately led me to leave that job and found Zarvana, a company that offers productivity technology and services.) I’ve realized specifically what enables people to scale back on the hours they put in, while actually improving their performance:

Be strategic: This sounds obvious, but lots of us spend our days developing strategic plans for our own companies, or helping clients do so, and yet fail to take a strategic approach to improving our own productivity. As most of us know, any good strategy involves setting goals, developing a plan for achieving those goals, and tracking progress towards those goals. The same is true for productivity. Yet most of us don’t have sustainable productivity goals, much less a plan for achieving them.

Define a metric. Choose a metric for sustainable productivity. For me, it was average weekly hours worked. For you, it might be something else. Then track data on that metric, set goals for improving the metric, and run experiments to see what influences the metric.

Focus on one change at a time. There’s a lot that goes into becoming more productive. I’m sure you’ve read many articles that talk about the “five steps” or “8 things” or “10 ways” to getting more done in less time. But it’s too much to work on so many skills at any one time. Instead, figure out which one thing is the biggest obstacle to your productivity. What would save you the most time if it were removed? Time spent deciding what to do next? Facebook? Being interrupted at your desk? Start there.

Change your behavior: Many have pursued greater productivity via books or apps, expecting information or technology alone to make them more productive. These initially feel helpful, but then, usually, they fail. The problem is that becoming more productive is more like losing weight than memorizing the presidents’ names – it is the product of behavior or lifestyle change, not (only) knowledge. As a result, the key to becoming more productive is changing small behaviors (i.e., developing new habits) and sticking with those changes over time.

Find someone to hold you accountable. I probably would have bailed on my productivity enhancing efforts without Colin’s support – and he probably wouldn’t have succeeded without mine. It’s really hard to change your behavior alone. So find someone who wants to go on this journey with you, and be honest about your progress (or lack thereof).

While the path to great productivity described above is not rocket science, my guess would be that most of you won’t stay on it long enough to see the benefits unless you reckon with the following truth. Becoming more productive ultimately requires an investment now for the promise of future benefits. This means that in the midst of your busyness and impending burnout, you actually need to add another task to your to-do list. Until you can make becoming more productive a priority, it will remain elusive.

Even so, the good news remains that there is an answer. I am hopeful that even as individuals embark on this journey, employers, too, will go beyond making up for the burnout problem, making it more fun, or even making it better, and commit to solving the problem of overwork. And to do that, they no longer have to demand less. By helping their employees make behavior changes and develop productive habits, they can get more work at higher quality out of their employees, while finding them healthier and happier.

如何更高效地工作而不过度劳累 译者：sherryling

和许多同班同学一样，离开大学不久我就加入了一家顶级战略和管理咨询公司。我知道加入这家公司就意味着每天长时间的投入，但是真正有这样的切身体会是在参加工作几个月之后，当时我请了一天假去参加朋友婚礼。我的申请被批准了。我妻子长途驾驶到达婚礼现场，而我正坐在乘客座上面对着笔记本疯狂工作，就这样度过了“休息日”，只是偶尔在小餐馆给笔记本充电，并借助那里的免费wifi发送下邮件。这样的工作节奏往往持续数月——甚至在国家假日，我都在自己的公寓窝着工作——我开始怀疑自己还能坚持多久。

很不幸，这样精力将要耗尽的故事并不是特例。事实上，2012年一项电话调查表明40%的美国劳动者“都觉得工作压力太大快要崩溃。”Workplacce Options是个员工援助项目，为劳动者提供电话咨询，这里打进的电话中70%提到压力和焦虑。对于那些工作时间不断攀升的最高收入劳动者，这些都不是什么新鲜事。过去几个世纪收入最高的那些人工作时间比最低收入劳动者更短，最近30年这样的情形已经翻了个。今天收入最高的那群人工作时长几乎是大多数低收入人群2倍不止。据2008年的调查报告，绝大多数的专业人士（94%）每周工作50小时以上，而几乎一半的人每周工作超过65小时。

老板们没有忽视或遗忘这个令人烦恼的现实。相反，在过去几十年，他们已经尝试了3种不同的策略。

弥补：第一个策略是补偿员工的长时工作，通过可观的经济奖励或其他福利。

让工作更有趣：在花钱购买高质量员工个人生活变得日益困难的今天，老板们决定将员工的个人生活融入工作场所。他们添置了乒乓球桌，咖啡，健身房，有些时候还会提供免费餐点和日托（工作现场提供的幼儿看护服务）或者会有自助洗衣房和美发沙龙。

让工作更舒适：在过去差不多5年里，越来越多公司采用新颖的心理健康和正念减压项目治疗这种精神疲惫的症状。比如，Headspace，这是一个提供冥想和正念治疗服务的数字供应商，在短短7年内价值已经增长到2亿5千万美元。

这些方法每个都有一些优点，但是都只能治标不能治本：劳累过度。我猜大部分老板都知道这个事实，但是不知道怎么做能不触及自己的底线。幸运地是，我们能自己采取一些办法解决这个问题。

当精疲力竭的原因变得更清楚之时，我决定了要这么做。好奇跳出疲劳圈的可能方法，我和我的合作者（克林）开始每隔一周碰面讨论效率问题。我们对目标了解并不多，也不清楚该怎么展现这个目标。六个月这么长的时间，我们的会议并没有那么多内容可以讨论。为了让会议更加严谨，我们决定自己定义效率指标：平均每周工作小时数。我们开始测量工作时间，并且设置目标时间——以此为基准减少。在一个月内，我们将平均工作时间减少了基础平均时长的10%。而在接下来的6个月里，我们改善了很多，6个月内平均工作时长缩减了基准平均时间的15~20%。而我们工作的内容和之前一样。

我们确实不知道什么事情能改变现状，除了跟踪自己的时间，每两周会面。但是我们第一次看到了，我们之前工作的习惯——不设置目标或者直接复制其他人的目标——浪费了很多时间。

这是第一次，我意识到，大多人不知道他们工作是否真的有效率。但是这还没有结束。我和合作者克林开始只是计划两周一次的会议，接下来演变成一个3个办公室的新倡议，涉及40位同事持续2年时间。（这个经历最终让我辞职，并创立了Zarvana——一家提供效率技术和服务的公司。）我特别意识到如果能够使人们减少自己投入工作的时间长度，最终也能提高人们的工作表现：

要有策略。听起来显而易见，但是我们很多人为自己的公司或者自己的客户开发策略方案，不过却不能采取战略性方法提高自己的效率。如大多数人所知，任何好的策略包括：设置目标，制定方案实现这些目标，跟踪目标进展。对于效率这个目标也是一样的。但是我们大多数人都没有持续的效率目标，更别提实现这个目标的方案（计划）了。

定义一个指标。为可持续的效率选择一个指标。我将每周工作时数定为衡量指标。对你，这个指标可能是其他内容。定好指标，就开始跟踪这个指标数据，设置改善这个指标的目标值，然后进行实验，观察哪些行为会影响这个指标。

每次聚焦一个变化。有很多措施能帮助提高效率。我想你一定读了很多文章，告诉你五步或者八件事或者十种方法能帮助你事倍功半。但是一次实践多个技能还是太过了。我们可以先弄清提高效率路上的最大绊脚石是什么？什么会最大限度节省时间？花时间决定下一步计划是什么？是脸书吗？还是办公时被打扰？从这些地方开始着手。

改变你的行为。许多人通过读书或者使用Apps提高效率，希望能依靠信息或者科技帮助他们变得更有效率。这些方法最初看起来很有帮助，但是通常，最后都失败了。问题在于提高效率更多像减肥一样，而不是记住总统的名字.提高效率是行为或者生活方式改变的结果，而不只是知识的改变。所以，提高效率的关键在于改变小的行为习惯（比如建立新的习惯）并长时间坚持这些小改变。

找到能督促你的同伴。如果没有克林的支持，我可能已经放弃了自己的提高效率的行动——而如果没有我的帮助他也不可能成功。一个人改变自己的行为习惯是很难的。所以找到同伴，他愿意陪你一起行动，诚实地对待你的进步（或不足）

尽管帮助提高效率的方法并不是火箭科学（高深的事），我猜大多数人不会坚持到看到回报的那一天。不如我们来看看下面的事实吧：变得更有效率最终离不开现在对未来收益的投资。这意味着，在忙碌而持久的精力耗尽过程中，确实需要在行动清单上额外添加一些内容。你需要将更有效率设为优先项，事情才会发生改变。

尽管如此，还是有好消息，那就是这个问题已经有了一个答案了。我很期待，个人努力提高效率的同时，老板们也会做更多，除了前面提到的3种措施（金钱补助，工作与休闲娱乐结合，提高心理健康），再解决一些劳累过度的问题。这样做，老板们也不需要面对不得不降低工作要求的窘境。通过帮助他们的员工改变行为，建立更高效的习惯，员工工作质量会变得更高，同时他们也会变得更健康也更幸福了。

Matt Plummer（@mtplummer）是Zarvana的创始人，这家公司提供在线员工培训计划，帮助工作人员改变行为，实现事半功倍。贝恩公司的衍生公司The Bridgespan 集团，是一家为非营利性组织，基金会和慈善家提供战略与管理咨询的公司，Matt曾为其工作6年，之后创立了Zarvana。