How to create a healthy & effective way of working

80% of the global workforce lack the time or energy to do their job, according to a survey by Microsoft. These people were also 3.5 times more likely to have trouble with innovation and strategic thinking.

Gloria Mark and her colleagues discovered that the average screen time for any activity was only 47 seconds. The time spent on any one project (called the working sphere in the research) was only 10 minutes and 29 seconds at a time.

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report, worldwide, 77% of employees were not engaged in their work. 51% of employees said they had some intention to leave their job and 44% of employees reported that they felt a lot of stress the previous day.

This article addresses the important question of how we can design a way of working that helps us use our time and energy for what matters most while enhancing our wellbeing.

Outcome: Accomplish more by working less and feeling better.

Exploring the problem

Factors that unconsciously sabotage our ability to do our work.

We will examine the situation of a fictional team that faces similar issues and opportunities as we do in the current world of knowledge work. They work in a global organisation. Like many of their peers, they feel that they need to be "always on" to be effective. They spend most of their day reacting, responding to emails and chat messages and joining consecutive meetings. The team rarely feel attentive in meetings as they are too busy answering emails at the same time. Their day is spent organising and communicating about work rather than implementing the strategy and achieving its goals.

As knowledge workers, our team's value-adding work activities rely on their brain's advanced executive functions.

Brains require a lot of energy for these advanced cognitive functions to enable them to make choices, solve problems, plan and communicate effectively.  

Some of our team members find it easier to concentrate and think clearly in the morning. However, due to their full meeting schedule, most of their vital and value-adding work is done in the evening, when their mental energy is often low. The result is low quality and many errors. This way of working also disrupts their sleep, leading to a downward spiral in productivity, missed targets and poor mental health.  

When the team members get the chance to work on their critical tasks during the morning, they often get interrupted or distracted by the stream of notifications they receive. They find it hard to focus and think clearly.  

What is worse is that the team struggles to prioritise their work. They lack clarity on their top priorities, and there is no alignment on priorities within the team.  

The team accept every meeting request and try to empty their email inbox every day. Most of the team members keep their email and chat tools open all day just in case someone needs them. They feel overwhelmed with work.

Sadly, our team is not unique in their way of working. Their organisation is affected by a lack of progress on the right things, which causes their strategy not to be executed, while efficiency and quality drop. Business performance declines along with the ability to transform and innovate. High levels of stress and burnout make it hard to retain and attract the right people.

The solution

Continuously design a better way of working

Performance comes from investing time and energy in the right things and with the right people. The key is to establish an optimal way of working for yourself and your team that helps you navigate complex and uncertain times while enabling the organisation to become more agile and responsive. The discovery of an optimal way of working, in our experience, is best identified through weekly reflection and designing experiments.

Weekly Prioritise, Learn and Plan Appointment

Schedule a recurring 15 to 60-min Monday or Friday morning calendar appointment. Use this time to prioritise and plan how best to use your time and energy. Implement the following.

Prioritise

What are your top 3 priorities at work and outside of work this week? Consider your strategic and operational objectives, your projects, innovation and improvement initiatives and what needs to be done to make progress on them.

Make the priorities actionable and ensure clear metrics, lead measures, or key results that help you measure progress.

You could use the following horizons to help you consider your priorities.

• HORIZON 3: Goals and Objectives
  Work and personal
• HORIZON 2: Areas of Focus and Accountability
  Work roles & responsibilities
  Improvement & Development
  Family/Friends
  Self-care
  Self-development
• HORIZON 1: Projects you are a part of
• GROUND: Calendar/Outlook email/MS Teams
• CAPTURE: Make sure to add the next actions / tasks to your To Do / Next Actions List.

Reflect and Learn

Spend a short while reviewing what went well in how you worked last week. What did you achieve and what helped lead to the achievement? Reflect on what could be better for the coming week. For example do you need more focus time or recharge time to recover during the day?

Form an experiment testing the proposed improvement, such as scheduling more Focus time to concentrate during the morning instead of the evening, reducing meeting duration to 25-mins or changing status updates to occur asynchronously instead of during a meeting. Consider where the work requests are coming from. Do urgent and important appointments keep getting requested due to value demand or failure demand?

Plan

Consider the nature of the work that needs to be done. How much is to be done alone while being undisturbed to concentrate, contemplate or be creative (Focus Time). How much needs to be done with others (Collaboration / Meetings), and how much time should you set aside to respond to requests, e.g., email or catch urgent and important requests or curveballs (Responsive Time)?

Schedule the following appointments accordingly.

• Focus Time: Intentionally book calendar appointments for this week and the coming weeks when your brain works best to concentrate, contemplate and be creative on your most important work. Different roles need varying amounts of Focus Time. E.g., your R+D team might need the most, whereas Customer Support might require the least.
• Collaboration Time: Determine which meetings are required. Do you have enough time with the right people, and is it best to meet in-person, virtually or hybrid? Which meetings do not relate to your priorities and can be delegated, delayed, or eliminated?
• Responsive Time: Schedule time to respond to others. This can also serve as “buffer” time to catch the unexpected urgent and important requests. Different roles need varying amounts of Responsive Time. E.g., your R+D team might need the least, whereas Customer Support might require the most.
• Recharge Time: Schedule short 5 to 20 minute Recharge and Mental Preparation sessions throughout the day. Ideally, at least once every 60 to 90-mins. Especially before important meetings, mentally challenging work or before you transition from work to home life. Have you got solid work boundaries in place?

Team reflections

It is also recommended to implement the Prioritise, Learn and Plan reflection as a team on a weekly or biweekly basis. By reflecting individually and then as a team on your priorities, how you are working together and whether your calendars’ reflect your priorities, helps you to incrementally establish a way of working that fosters wellbeing and sustainable accomplishment.

For example is the team aligned on the top priorities and is everyone aware of the work that needs to be politely declined, delayed or delegated? Is the team getting the right balance between focus time, time to respond and meetings? What are the performance and wellbeing inhibitors and how can they be resolved as a team? 

Your continuous improvement process will support the evolution of the way you work, no matter the external changes.

Conclusion

The current and future world of knowledge work demands skills that are cognitive heavy and energy hungry. This world of work can also easily leave us in a hyperactivated state in which we experience high stress and low energy. This is a state in which the brain’s executive functions are inhibited. Our feelings, thoughts and behaviour can easily become more reactive, primitive and based on survival. In this state it is not only harder to learn but it becomes impossible to perform our most important and complex work.

By increasing our self-awareness and self-leadership skills we are able to manage stress and energy. We can reclaim time, energy and attention. We can then align these resources via deliberate planning to the moments that matter most to us and our business. Doing so we can also eliminate non-value adding tasks and activities.

We can be present and actively listen to others in our meetings. We can concentrate on creating an important document or presentation. We can co-ordinate with others to find a solution to a complex problem.

By regularly reflecting on how you work as an individual and as a team you can forming effective habits, automating the key behaviours that help you manage stress and promote the effective use of your executive functions. This provides you with the optimal brain functioning to sustain strong performance, while thriving in the current and future world of work.

Outside of work we are more present and we can enjoy more quality time with loved ones and the other activities we cherish.