Episode 64 | Breaking the Cycle of Productivity Paralysis

Hello, hello, you're listening to the Better Workday Podcast with me, Niamh Moynihan.

Have you ever felt overwhelmed at work with too much to do and not enough time to do it? I call this feeling productivity paralysis. And today we're going to talk about how to regain control and organization over your working day when you're feeling overwhelmed. Now there's a difference between having the occasional busy day and feeling like you can never get on top of things, regardless of what role you work in or what your personal circumstances.

I'm sure there are times when things are hectic. But if that continues, if it feels like it's something that's never going to end, it can really have a huge impact on us. And so that's when overwhelm turns into a cycle. And once it starts, it can really spiral. It can impact our well-being. It can impact how we shop at work, how we shop up at home. And we really want to challenge that today. And I find

you know, from my own experience and from the work I do with other people that it's a cycle and it kind of shows up in four stages. I usually see it starting with that mounting to do list and then we've got deadlines adding pressure to those tasks, which causes stress and then a drop in productivity, which, by the way, doesn't help that mounting to do list. And so again, the cycle repeats. So in this episode, I want to take them one by one and I want to think

of maybe practical ways or I want to suggest rather practical ways that you can maybe address it and interrupt this cycle of overwhelm before it takes over your working day.

Stage one, the to-do list, that mounting to-do list that can pile up as if it comes from nowhere really at sometimes, you know, and it could be because there are a lot of new projects happening. could be because there are changes in your team, maybe system issues or process changes means that there's more steps than they used to be. Like whatever it is, like there could be a situation where your to-do list was manageable for a time, but now

It just seems to be getting longer every single day. I'm sure you can appreciate the situation where you start the day with say five things on your list. You're going all day long. You're doing your best. You're just trying to get things done and you end the day with 10 things on your list. And so that's the kind of situation I'm talking about. And it's the type of thing that we want to take back control over as soon as we recognize it.

And while this episode isn't going to drill into workload management in detail, because that's not for today, I do want to offer you one practical thing you can do if you realize that that list is getting out of control. that's splitting your list into three buckets. So the first is what's urgent in the next two days, today and tomorrow? What do you absolutely have to get done? The second list or the second bucket

is what's in progress. So what have you already started working on? Because quite often, you know, that to do list is either it's done or it's not. And we forget the nuance of maybe progress that has been made or, you know, things that are already in motion. And then the third bucket is what's not started at all. And so straight away, we've gone from something which is, you know, holding everything, that big pile of work you have to do into three distinct categories. Either it's for you to focus on right now.

because it's due right now, it's already in progress or again, it's not even started. And then what you can do is, you know, depending on your work and how you engage with other people, you might have a conversation with your manager or a member of the team to kind of go through the list and get some feedback in terms of are you working on the right things? You know, does something need to be taken off that list? Is somebody else maybe taking care of stuff? So that's really good to talk to somebody else. Or, you know, if you're like me,

and you do an awful lot of work on your own, then it's about, you know, stepping away and taking 20 minutes to go for a walk and thinking through that list and coming back with the first set of eyes to say, how can I best manage this? And even that will put you in a better situation. Now, what often comes with this Mountain to Do list are lots of deadlines. OK, so you might have really short deadlines.

people expecting very fast turnaround on things, maybe conflicting deadlines, like all the work is kind of coming up to be due on the same day. You know, maybe there's some stuff that's running overdue because of issues either in your control or maybe outside of control. So the clock is ticking and you can very much feel that because, you know, you have all these due dates on your work. And there's a real difference between arbitrary deadlines and real deadlines. And I feel we need to talk about this. So quite often I see people

pick a date and give a date to somebody just because they feel they have to give a date. You know, they feel like it's setting expectations, but the date isn't really rooted in anything, only kind of a general idea of, you know, when you expect to move things forward. So for example, if I send somebody a proposal and I might say, just give me feedback by the end of next week. Like really in real life, nothing terrible is going to happen.

if they come back two days beyond that, you know, but, know, I just give them a deadline so they've got some expectation and so they can arrange their work. And quite often these arbitrary deadlines are actually very helpful because, you know, I know when the person is going to come back to me, they can, you know, put my proposal in with their other bits and pieces and self-organize. But if you're feeling overwhelmed and if you're dealing with a mounting to do list,

We need to check those arbitrary deadlines and make sure that they're not creating unnecessary pressure and causing us to, I suppose, prioritize in the wrong way. All right. Because among all those things, there might be some very real deadlines. So I always think of financial due dates, legal due dates, contract due dates, these type of things, actual expiration dates, know, kind of kind of going back to the food analogy. So there's the best before date on some food and then there's the use by date.

and other food and they are very different. It's the exact same in work. So if you're feeling overwhelmed at work, if there's a lot of things that are coming at you and the clock seems to be ticking down for all of them, just double check who set the deadline. What's behind the deadline? Like, is it a preference? Was it a guide? Is it, you know, a use by deadline? And if it's not a concrete and movable date, look to see if you can have a conversation on pushing back on that and seeing what flexibility is already there, you know.

Now it's interesting because, you know, if you know me at all, you might know that I run surveys a lot. So I run a survey before many of the workshops that I do to check to see who's going to be in the room and, you know, what challenges they're facing. And it's interesting that there's recurring themes that come up. They change every year, by the way, but like you'd see it across different sectors, which is fascinating for me. And I think it gives people some comfort that they're not the only ones. But then I also run a more public survey every two years.

So they were on in 2020, 22 and 24. And this kind of helps me understand what the challenge is to getting a better work day is. Anyway, so one of the questions I ask is how well are you at meeting your deadlines? And usually people are saying I meet my deadlines all or most of the time. That's kind of it. It's over 85%. And the next question I ask would be how many hours do you work a week? And the majority tell me that they work slightly more than the regular working week. So they'd work 40 to 50 hours.

So just a few extra hours every week. And what's interesting is, so you're telling me that you're meeting your deadlines, but you're also telling me that you're working extra hours. So is the extra hours so that you don't miss the deadlines? And, you know, we're worried about the knock on effect of that. And I always challenge people to ask, what if the deadline passed or what if you didn't work through lunch and you didn't work an extra hour in the evening, you didn't log on on Sunday morning and instead you showed

that there is this workload problem, how would that be received in your workplace? And I will be talking about psychological safety maybe in the next episode, but it does link in with that, that ability to feel like you can push back on the deadline or feel like you can say it's going to be missed. But I think at the very minimum, you should be able to have a conversation around it, around, know, this is my workload, these are the deadlines and talk to your manager about what will happen.

if deadlines aren't met, or what would happen if you didn't overwork to achieve them? Is there a plan C there? Is there some option that you're not seeing? So always very, very good to have a conversation. And I look, that's not to say that you should never work additional hours. I mean, there was a period in my life in my 20s, I would have regularly worked 60 hour weeks. I would say I really enjoyed a lot of it, to be honest with you. Like I was enrolled that were very challenging. I was getting a huge amount of experience.

and their global positions, I was kind of living my best life, to be fair, because my personal circumstances allowed me to work those hours. And it was really, really good from a learning perspective. But like it wasn't at all sustainable. You know, there's no way that I could have worked 60 hour weeks, you all through my 20s and 30s. And as I continue to get older, because, you know, it did take its toll eventually. And so I do know that, you know, especially in some.

industries in some sectors, people do work longer hours for either periods of their career or look honestly for all their career. And that's fine if that's what you've signed up for and what was working for you. I'm not here to say that you have to, you know, only work 39 or 40 hour a week. What I am saying is if you are regularly working, hidden over time in order to make sure that you're staying on top of your to-do list and those deadlines, we need to talk.

because there's a huge difference between working long billable hours that is visible versus skipping lunch and sneaking on in the evenings to try and catch up. Okay. All right. So we move on. So that's the deadlines. So if we have the Mountain to do list and those deadlines, really that can lead us to feeling stressed and feeling overwhelmed. And look, when stress hits, we get fragmented focus.

trying to jump from one thing to the next, kind of feel like you're juggling all the balls in the air at the same time. And regardless of the work side of things, like that's not a healthy state to be in over the long term. Like this is October that this is going to be this episode is going to be released. October is mental health awareness month. I speak a lot about the fact that I would have burned out multiple times and I experience anxiety at multiple times in my career. And it really does affect every element of your life, not just the work.

So that's why we're talking about this today. But really on this point, it's important for you to recognize that that stress and that overwhelm can have a really big impact on you. And if you're feeling stressed or feeling overwhelmed, just slow down. know, like even while listening to this episode, now, obviously, if you're driving, don't take this advice right now. But like even now, just close your eyes and just give yourself a minute to breathe. You know, just give yourself a moment to just stop.

rest and just listen to the rest of this and just rest while you're here. And one thing that really works for me when I'm feeling stressed or feeling overwhelmed while I'm waiting for that to do list, you know, to get a little bit more in control and while I'm having those deadline discussions, you know, while that's happening, the one tactical thing that I do is I'm on a task like one screen, one tab at a time.

one task at a time, I write very slowly on my notepad. try to be very considerate and intentional and singular. And I find that really helps to get your feet back on the ground and to quieten the mind. So maybe that's something that you might like to try yourself. Now, the thing is, when we have that heavy workload or feeling overwhelmed, what will happen is you might see a drop in productivity, which of course isn't going to help things.

But it's what happens because if you're feeling stressed and overwhelmed and your attention is fragmented and you could be procrastinating or getting distracted because of different things you're worried about, then that probably means you're being less efficient. So then it takes longer for you to get things done. And of course, that to-do list then keeps on growing. So if you are now listening to this and you're like, actually, Niamh, I'm in that valley. Like my productivity has dropped because things have been so manic lately.

that, you know, it's just all gone top of me. And now I just don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. I am in that phrase of productivity paralysis that you mentioned earlier. Now it is time for you to get a second perspective. OK, you can't get out of that on your own. You shouldn't try to get out of it on your own because you're too close to it. I'm saying this is somebody who has taken too long to ask for help on multiple occasions. All right. If you feel you are in a funk or you're in a dip,

then ask a colleague, a manager or a friend to sit down and have a conversation about what's going on. The workload, whatever else might be going on. They might be able to give you a fresh perspective, maybe a second opinion, maybe the names of other people or other suggestions that can help. Or at the very least, you know, I often find that speaking out loud to somebody else about something can help bring me more clarity. You know, that kind of way so you feel like it's shared.

that phrase of a problem shared, a problem halved is true because once we get it out there, you even get clarity in your own thoughts. And once that is done, then I would suggest, first of all, being kind to yourself. And then secondly, don't expect to just kind of like snap back into it. Just focus on finishing more tasks than you have been doing. So if yesterday you only struck one thing off your list today, aim to strike two.

and rebuild your confidence in yourself that you can get back on top of things and things get busy and that you can regain momentum. But absolutely, if you don't feel like you're performing your best at the moment, don't beat yourself up about it. Grab a coffee with somebody, you know, talk to somebody, anybody that you trust, either in work, outside of work. It will do the world a difference or be big benefit. So look, this cycle, it can start anywhere, right? So, for example, it can start with you feeling like you're stressed and overwhelmed.

maybe with other things going on in your life, which leads you to not be motivated to do your work, which results in the due list piling up and the deadlines getting closer. know, so like it doesn't start always in the same place and you know that yourself from your own experience anyway, but I do want to remind you of that. like the first thing that I'd ask yourself is, are you in the cycle? And if you are, what stage are you in?

OK, and what's causing it not to beat yourself up about it, but just to recognize it really and understand where you are and then say, knowing that right now, what's the smallest, simplest step I can take to regain control of my workload? If you found this helpful, I would really appreciate you sharing with a friend or colleague who might be feeling overwhelmed. And if you want to help me help more people hear this podcast.

Some of the things you can do is you can subscribe. You can leave a rating or a review because that again helps surface this podcast to more people. But you know, as I said at the start, we could always find ourselves in moments of overwhelm. But that doesn't mean you have to carry on feeling overwhelmed. OK, you know, you can take action. There are things in your control and you absolutely can regain control over that and have a better work day.

So that's it from me for this week, I hope you found it helpful and of course until next time, stay well and have a better workday.