Want to be more productive? Try doing nothing for a change

Business Journal of the Triad, 5/12/05

I'm sure that many of you can identify with how I spent my last week: I was in three cities, where I attended a series of meetings and events, huddled with clients, tried to keep up with voice- and e-mail, and put out the daily fires that come with any job.

In between, I was either in the car, at an airport or on a plane. "Spare time" was any moment when I could drag out the laptop and attempt to catch up on the growing list of projects in my queue. My briefcase of electronic timesavers constantly reminded me that there was more to do, and less time to spend doing any of it.

Plenty of my fellow travelers seemed to share this condition, living in a perpetual mode of movement and multitasking where people, cellphones, text messages and full calendars compete for attention.

In most places I was surrounded by people talking on cellphones. Meeting agendas made way for text messaging and answering urgent e-mails and phone calls. Everyone, myself included, seemed to always be running about five minutes late.

When my workweek suddenly came to a stop late Friday night, I found myself wondering: Is this what productivity looks like?

It all seems part and parcel of our cultural dynamic, the one that demands we keep moving from place to place and activity to activity. It's the inertia that carries us from one thing to another, and blurs the lines between work and vacation, office time and family time. That always justifies action over inaction. That causes us to fill any moment with another task, and any quiet with some form of noise.

It's what leaves too many people feeling like they never have enough time to accomplish what they should, and no time at all to think about what they're doing. It's the slippery slope from doing one's work well to just getting it done.

So no, it's hard to think of what I experienced the last week, and many others before, as a model of productivity.

Let me step back a moment and clarify something: I have no argument with being busy, nor am I a Luddite who wants to ban cellphones, instant messaging and e-mail.

But somewhere along the road to working more efficiently, there's a detour that encourages us to step away from being mindful of what is in front of us and to replace the quiet reflection we all need with -- well, whatever we can find to fill time.

So while I'm a strong advocate of technology, I'm an equally ardent believer in the benefits of quiet contemplation.

One of the most common phrases I hear from friends and business associates is, "I don't even have time to think." Not having time to think is a consequence -- I'll go further and say a harmful consequence -- of our cultural dynamic. Something is lost when we consistently rely on reflex in place of reflection.

Reflection is more than mere navel gazing. When we take time out to reflect, we engage in shutting out all the outside influences that tell us how to act and what to do. We allow the thoughts we've buried as we move through our day bubble to the surface, where we can consider each without the need to immediately act. We step away from the need to get things done, and consider the value of each thing we're doing.

Perhaps the most important benefit of active reflection is that it allows us to step off the treadmill for a moment and regain control of our time and our thoughts. Consider what it's like to move reflexively through each day as we're drawn into meetings and conference calls, or spending our time head down as we chase project deadlines.

Reflection moves us out of that mode, gives us a modicum of control over our time, and allows us to organize our thoughts, consider priorities (instead of allowing everything to become a priority), and rest for a moment.

For many, it's a moment of reordering; for the most harried, it's a way of pulling out of a tailspin that threatens to upset the day.

While writing this, I have in mind a particular man who I observed last week while waiting for a flight. Later, I saw him on the airplane. Over the course of a couple of hours he made several phone calls, all to the same person, each time providing an update on his whereabouts and reminding the person that the caller would call again once he had arrived.

Is this what productivity looks like? Or is it a reflexive waste of time? And, instead of repeatedly whipping out his cellphone to intrude on someone else's day with reminders that the caller wasn't there yet but would be soon enough, would he have been better off to switch off that phone and do nothing?