Stop Working for the sake of Working

Today’s work environment stresses heavily on words like ‘Hustle’ and ‘Grind’. Everyone wants to be successful. There’s more drive and hunger to dominate your work than there’s ever been.

However, one of the traps that most of us fall into is Working for the sake of Working — to essentially portray an image of the 24/7 hustler that doesn’t need to sleep or have a social life. In theory, this might sound like a recipe for success. In reality, we’re not wired to work at the level that we aspire to and achieve results that justify our work ethic.

We’re inclined more towards ‘Work Hard’ on Work Hard-Work Smart spectrum and I’m here to tell you that you’re doing yourself a disservice by stressing on overworking without a game plan.

Based on my experience, I’ve outlined 4 core principles on how to approach your workload that has helped me avoid burnout, achieve the results I aspire to, and maintain a work-life balance without the feeling of guilt.

Sort your Priorities based on your Strengths

When I was building my first startup, I was writing code for close to 15 hours a day. I don’t have a degree in computer science or engineering so I was literally learning how to code while I was building a platform. It was a lot of fun, but there was excessive pressure to sort out issues like bugs, server shutdowns, building features, and making the site responsive.

In retrospect, it would’ve been much better to find a technical co-founder who could’ve built the platform in 1/4 of the time I took. I could’ve used my time more efficiently like finding business partners, investors, getting users, and focusing on marketing efforts. Having a technical co-founder would’ve also given me the freedom to push out more ambitious features that I was not skilled enough to build.

Understanding your strengths while prioritizing your workload is critical especially during the early stages of a project where deadlines are demanding. You should spend less time learning and more time executing during this stage because it’s extremely results-oriented. The more time you spend trying to understand aspects of your project that you’re not particularly qualified for, the less valuable your product becomes because time is a massive commodity during the growth stage of a startup or project.

Build Systems of Sustainability

Starting a new project or startup from the ground-up can be a daunting task. What’s even more challenging is being being consistent in hitting your daily goals at a productive pace. It’s simple to have one day of productivity, but infinitely harder to consistently maintain that productivity for weeks on end.

One of the most effective techniques to make sure you’re sustainable in your daily tasks is to use the Pomodoro Technique where you fiercely focus on a single task for a set amount of time followed by a brief but deserved interval where you relax or do something unrelated to your work. The Pomodoro Technique helps avoid rapid burnout while helping you reset your mind to get back to the task at hand.

Create a spreadsheet that outlines all your tasks for the day and set multiple statuses for each task. I normally use ‘Not Started’, ‘In Progress’, ‘On Hold’, ‘Completed’ and ‘Cancelled’. This will trigger your brain to focus on completing all your tasks in the list. You could also create sub-tasks under each task depending on the scope and complexity.

At the end of the workday, make a list of every single challenge that hindered progress and kept you from hitting your daily goals. Isolate the reason for these challenges (lack of resources, time..) and set more realistic timelines or outputs moving forward if the challenges are beyond your control.

Focus less on Time and more on Results

We live in an age where people feel the need to exemplify the number of hours they work. I’m here to tell you that it’s completely pointless to factor time as an efficiency metric unless your results have a direct correlation to the amount of time you spend.

Elon Musk’s 120 hour work week may seem like an archetype of limitless productivity, but when you’re running 5 companies in domains ranging from electric cars to neural implants, you’re expected to put in that many hours to hit ambitious goals. Musk also spends most of his time on product design and engineering (as per point #1) and the results of these time-consuming efforts can be seen in the market dominance of companies like Tesla and SpaceX.

Whether a task takes an hour or 5 minutes, what really matters are the results. You’re going to be judged based on the outcome and not the amount of time you spent working on the solution. When you’re building or designing a product, the end result is the product itself and not the number of lines of code or the number of prototypes that went into it.

Reach out to Mentors

People can be the greatest resources when it comes to helping you boost your productivity and hit those short-term and long-term goals. I personally look at every single person around me as a mentor (regardless of seniority). Everyone in your workplace is facing similar issues, so there’s high probability that they’ve built their own solutions or done research on working smarter.

I’m an introvert and have faced social anxiety for most of my life. However, when I reached out to my mentors, they were extremely responsive and gave me strategies and perspectives that opened my eyes and rethink the way I approach work.

In Conclusion

These tactics will definitely help you prioritize your workload, reallocate resources and time towards realistic and achievable targets, avoid burnout and feeling of guilt that you didn’t achieve as much as you set out to do at the start of the day, and most importantly, build that daily consistency that adds to a life where you feel accomplished without the need to overwork yourself to death.