Many of us hold principles that keep us from pursuing a more productive lifestyle.
The Lie That Perfectionists Tell Themselves
We tend to believe that spending more time on our work makes it better — and that increasing our productivity to get more done will somehow decrease the quality of our work. Yet more time doesn’t necessarily translate into better quality work. In fact, spending more time at work and on specific tasks can actually hurt our performance and work quality. Research has shown that when weekly hours worked exceed 50 or 55 hours, cognitive performance and work engagement begin to decline, dragging down the quality of the work produced with it. And according to research on top strategy consulting firms, managers struggle to distinguish between those who work 80-hour weeks and those who work 50-60-hour weeks, suggesting that the extra work generally isn’t noticed. When this belief — that more time leads to better quality — is the unwritten rule, there is always more to do. There’s no hope that greater productivity will lead to better work-life balance. And this misconception also leads us to believe that quality is the supreme goal, when the real goal of our work should be the impact that it has. Becoming more productive will not hurt the quality of our work; it will increase it. But even more, it will increase the impact of our work every time.