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Top Stories | New Equipment Digest: If you're working harder and putting in longer hours, and you're still struggling to get everything done, Tony Schwartz has a message for you.
You can get more work done by devoting more time to doing less.
This is an interesting article, and some of what it says could be used in our industry. Taking regular breaks is something that can be used to increase productivity. When you're so focused on a project or a paper, you can wear yourself out faster by trying to force yourself to keep at it for hours on end. Sometimes, taking a 5 minute break at the end of a section of that research paper can help clear you head and refocus your thoughts before starting the next section. However, I doubt that only working for 4.5 hours a day, as the article says at the end, would help any of us. I know I, for one, wouldn't be able to get close to finishing all of the work I have to do if I only worked for 4.5 hours a day. The key is to finding the balance. Do something that requires a lot of focus for a few hours with regular breaks, and then work on something for a while that doesn't require as intense a focus. Getting a good night's sleep is also a way to increase productivity, as the article says. You can't stay as focused or do even close to your best work if you're so exhausted that you can't think straight. Take the extra hour or wo of sleep in exchange for an hour or two of more productive work time. You'll probably be surprised with how much more work you can get done.
"Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break" Schwartz says. This is SO true. I agree that we all need breaks every 90 minutes at least. I think that taking breaks can be one of the most productive things to do while working. However, I have a hard time believing that 4.5 hours a day is an amount of time that I could do enough work in. If 4.5 hours included the breaks, I definitely would not be able to get what I need to get done, done. I really agree with the "more sleep = more productivity" moto. I would love to be able to get more sleep. 6-8 hours is the average right now, but if I try to adapt and follow this moto, I may be able to get more and be more productive!
I think this is a very smart article. I agree with Nate, our bodies are constantly telling us to take a break, and maybe if we actually listened we would get more done. I have this problem where a break from working on a project is to work on another. As I'm writing this, I'm taking a break from writing a paper. I agree with Jess and Nate the 4.5 hours is not enough for anyone in our industry to get anything done, however I think there is something to be said about less hours. However, I do believe that all of us are semi workaholics, and we might get frustrated with less hours, even if we were also grateful for it. I'm going to test this 90 minute theory today. Hopefully my productivity will spike and my paper and other homework will be finished that much faster!
I am literally suffering through this right now. I was here from 10 am yesterday until 5 am today, with only a break for lunch and dinner. I felt like I was making good progress...until I realized that I had not even started on my theatre homework. Now I've been trying to fix my problem of trying to finish everything in a two-day weekend (it's just not possible), but yesterday was particularly bad. And after 2 am, all the progress I did make was of questionable quality, and I will probably end up redoing most of it. I really should have packed it up earlier and saved myself the late night, and, from both the article and my experience, should have done other things a couple of times yesterday beyond lunch and dinner. I will be taking this into account from now on.
I COMPLETELY agree with this article. It mostly speaks to me in the sense of the way I worked during my freshman year. The downfall of having a studio where all of your friends were was wanting to be in there all of the time. Having workspace muddled with playspace decreased productivity dramatically while simultaneously giving us the feeling that we were working 24 hours a day, which we weren't. We were simply in our workspace 24 hours a day. I think it's important to find a location to work, and to work there. Take your breaks somewhere else, have your friends somewhere else, have your life somewhere else. The combination of staying in PGH last summer and moving off campus definitely helped me with this, because I am able to separate Purnell from a different life that I have an like outside of Purnell. I have seen major improvements in both my mood and my work quality. And guess what, I feel like I'm working half as much! Some people struggle with this the whole time they are here, I wish that everyone would give working less a try, and maybe find some friends outside of the School of Drama (even outside of CMU) that make their personal lives fulfilling, fun, and unrelated to what happens in Purnell.
Let's not act like this is actually a ground breaking article folks...The idea that we spend work/spend too much time at school/trying to have a life--and not enough time sleeping and recovering is not a new thing. And I'll be the first to admit that 8 times out of 10 half of the time that I spend "working" at school is really spent surfing blogs/twitter/facebook/nfl.com or watching something on netflix/hulu and not actually working (or working at about 50% capacity anyway...now I've also been on the other side of the coin where I've spent a number of weeks working in shops for 12+ hrs at a time to finish a show (and not just for summer-stock). So I know what wasting my time is like and I know what being over worked is like, and there's certainly a happy a medium, but it's gonna cost you one way or another...thanks to the demands and expectations that we work under most of the time. A quality product, produced quickly, for as cheap as possible....now as far as working in a scene shop is considered the most productive work schedule I've encountered was Monday-Thursday (10hr days). It was the perfect combination of working hours in the day, with time off to relax on the weekend, and the hour long lunch and 2 coffee breaks kept the day moving at a decent pace since there was always time for a nap.
It's obvious that working a 4hr day isn't going to allow you to get much done, however we do it every day here (and so do a lot of other universities) BUT, that doesn't count all of other prep time, homework, and class...which is why in the end we feel so overworked. Sadly, it's the cost of going to school these days and it's a widely considered the norm in our culture...
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean we're doing it right. It just means we've gotten really good at making ourselves tired, stressed overexerted...
As someone who's been quite stressed out the past few weeks, I think this is an interesting article in the ways I can see it applying to my own life. Sleep is something I need but don't always have the chance to get enough of. I do find that if I work with more energy in a shorter chunk I am able to get much more work done. Hopefully I can do this more often. The thing that I'm not quite clear on is how long the breaks should actually last, and what else productive can be done during them. Being focused during the ninety minutes of working is also something that must be achieved.
Having spent my entire life in athletics, I can absolutely agree that this is true. Having a daily active workout is invaluable to productivity levels. If I go for more than a day without working out, I become Nostalgic and mush less alert, and therefore get much less work done in a given amount of time. Rest, too, is extremely important. Busting out a paper for class is much easier at 4pm when the brain is ready and running than at 1am when all it wants to do is shut down for a while, so it takes more energy to fight it shutting down and keep it actively working. As for the 90 minute intervals of productivity, it seems that this is a new, modern way of addressing the topic of attention span. Human beings can only focus for so long, yet we are constantly demanding more from our bodies than is healthy and natural, and therefore our productivity drops.
I have to say from experience this makes a lot of sense to me. Originally at CMU I felt destroyed by work, but at the beginning of last semester I began enforcing rules about my sleep schedule and I ended up spending half as much time working but somehow getting a lot more done. Every day in the School of Drama I hear people discussing how many hours they worked and how little sleep they have gotten. I have found it impossible to convince people that sleep really is the answer but its certainly cool to have this article backing me up.
This is a really interesting point. I guess it makes sense the more I think about it. My desire to do work and be productive tends to cycle, the fact that the cycle of the and for sleep likely match up is extremely intriguing. I think my issue is that even though our bodies are telling us to take a break, I have trouble listening to it because if I stop working I feel like it will be harder to go back to it. then again, I tend to feel more productive on projects that have a prolonged dry time. Also, I feel like I have to much home work to only work for 4.5 hours. If half of that time goes to reading and half to drafting, when would I find the time to do my other 5 to 6 classes?
This article is pretty much exactly how i choose to delegate my time. Especially this semester. So far i havent gotten sick and ive definitely felt more rested and less stressed. I have found time tuesdays and Thursdays to get a good nap in with out sacrificing too much work time, that coupled with an average bed time of 1 make mes get more than the required amout of sleep per week. It does how ever lead me to do more work towards the due date, but im much more rested and attentive while doing it so i still do a good job and get it done with out the stress. Too many people unconsciously stress there minds and bodys out by worrying about things that hurts them.
I'm going to agree with Joe on this one. This article is neither groundbreaking nor particularly useful. We all know that sleeping more and taking breaks helps productivity, and the longer we work without a break, the less productive we will be. In management, we spend 4.5 hours in rehearsal every day, which according to this article, is already the most optimal working time. But then we still have classes, and homework, and work on the other productions we've been assigned to. I think that the idea of frequent breaks is helpful, but only to a certain extent. Yes, energy management is important, and replenishing energy throughout the day will help you get through your work, but I also think that time plays a huge factor, especially in what we do. We have to find a balance between time and energy.
I agree with Joe. While this isn't exactly groundbreaking, it's a nice reminder that breaks are encouraged and we don't have to work a straight 6 hours to get a project done. I'll completely admit to often forgetting that breaks are a thing and when I do take a break, I feel like I'm procrastinating, which just perpetuates negative energy and is less productive than what my mood was in the first place. I think time, energy, and attitude play key roles in how productive you are, and breaks definitely help with each of those things.
I also agree with Joe here. However I think that what this article doesn't address which is a huge factor in the amount of time that is dedicated to or used in completing a task is the actual difficulty level of it or the amount of knowledge required for one to complete a task. This is a major factor which would have been a good addition to this rather vague article.
The problems that this article describe have been my downfall for the past two and a half years: trying to be more productive by using time that should be spent on sleep and relaxation. This spring semester I kicked these habits out of me and my work, mood and health have clearly improved. I'm more productive so I sleep more, which leads to me being more productive; I take time for myself at the end of everyday, and allow myself to take the breaks I need. I think the solutions that this article highlights are well known, but putting words into actions is always difficult and especially on something like this. The same way that bad habits and a lack of sleep turn into a vicious cycle, my improvement of work habits and lifestyle this semester is a nice, consistent, positive cycle.
16 comments:
This is an interesting article, and some of what it says could be used in our industry. Taking regular breaks is something that can be used to increase productivity. When you're so focused on a project or a paper, you can wear yourself out faster by trying to force yourself to keep at it for hours on end. Sometimes, taking a 5 minute break at the end of a section of that research paper can help clear you head and refocus your thoughts before starting the next section. However, I doubt that only working for 4.5 hours a day, as the article says at the end, would help any of us. I know I, for one, wouldn't be able to get close to finishing all of the work I have to do if I only worked for 4.5 hours a day. The key is to finding the balance. Do something that requires a lot of focus for a few hours with regular breaks, and then work on something for a while that doesn't require as intense a focus. Getting a good night's sleep is also a way to increase productivity, as the article says. You can't stay as focused or do even close to your best work if you're so exhausted that you can't think straight. Take the extra hour or wo of sleep in exchange for an hour or two of more productive work time. You'll probably be surprised with how much more work you can get done.
"Our bodies regularly tell us to take a break" Schwartz says. This is SO true. I agree that we all need breaks every 90 minutes at least. I think that taking breaks can be one of the most productive things to do while working. However, I have a hard time believing that 4.5 hours a day is an amount of time that I could do enough work in. If 4.5 hours included the breaks, I definitely would not be able to get what I need to get done, done. I really agree with the "more sleep = more productivity" moto. I would love to be able to get more sleep. 6-8 hours is the average right now, but if I try to adapt and follow this moto, I may be able to get more and be more productive!
I think this is a very smart article. I agree with Nate, our bodies are constantly telling us to take a break, and maybe if we actually listened we would get more done. I have this problem where a break from working on a project is to work on another. As I'm writing this, I'm taking a break from writing a paper. I agree with Jess and Nate the 4.5 hours is not enough for anyone in our industry to get anything done, however I think there is something to be said about less hours. However, I do believe that all of us are semi workaholics, and we might get frustrated with less hours, even if we were also grateful for it. I'm going to test this 90 minute theory today. Hopefully my productivity will spike and my paper and other homework will be finished that much faster!
I am literally suffering through this right now. I was here from 10 am yesterday until 5 am today, with only a break for lunch and dinner. I felt like I was making good progress...until I realized that I had not even started on my theatre homework. Now I've been trying to fix my problem of trying to finish everything in a two-day weekend (it's just not possible), but yesterday was particularly bad. And after 2 am, all the progress I did make was of questionable quality, and I will probably end up redoing most of it. I really should have packed it up earlier and saved myself the late night, and, from both the article and my experience, should have done other things a couple of times yesterday beyond lunch and dinner. I will be taking this into account from now on.
I COMPLETELY agree with this article. It mostly speaks to me in the sense of the way I worked during my freshman year. The downfall of having a studio where all of your friends were was wanting to be in there all of the time. Having workspace muddled with playspace decreased productivity dramatically while simultaneously giving us the feeling that we were working 24 hours a day, which we weren't. We were simply in our workspace 24 hours a day. I think it's important to find a location to work, and to work there. Take your breaks somewhere else, have your friends somewhere else, have your life somewhere else. The combination of staying in PGH last summer and moving off campus definitely helped me with this, because I am able to separate Purnell from a different life that I have an like outside of Purnell. I have seen major improvements in both my mood and my work quality. And guess what, I feel like I'm working half as much! Some people struggle with this the whole time they are here, I wish that everyone would give working less a try, and maybe find some friends outside of the School of Drama (even outside of CMU) that make their personal lives fulfilling, fun, and unrelated to what happens in Purnell.
Let's not act like this is actually a ground breaking article folks...The idea that we spend work/spend too much time at school/trying to have a life--and not enough time sleeping and recovering is not a new thing. And I'll be the first to admit that 8 times out of 10 half of the time that I spend "working" at school is really spent surfing blogs/twitter/facebook/nfl.com or watching something on netflix/hulu and not actually working (or working at about 50% capacity anyway...now I've also been on the other side of the coin where I've spent a number of weeks working in shops for 12+ hrs at a time to finish a show (and not just for summer-stock). So I know what wasting my time is like and I know what being over worked is like, and there's certainly a happy a medium, but it's gonna cost you one way or another...thanks to the demands and expectations that we work under most of the time. A quality product, produced quickly, for as cheap as possible....now as far as working in a scene shop is considered the most productive work schedule I've encountered was Monday-Thursday (10hr days). It was the perfect combination of working hours in the day, with time off to relax on the weekend, and the hour long lunch and 2 coffee breaks kept the day moving at a decent pace since there was always time for a nap.
It's obvious that working a 4hr day isn't going to allow you to get much done, however we do it every day here (and so do a lot of other universities) BUT, that doesn't count all of other prep time, homework, and class...which is why in the end we feel so overworked. Sadly, it's the cost of going to school these days and it's a widely considered the norm in our culture...
HOWEVER, that doesn't mean we're doing it right. It just means we've gotten really good at making ourselves tired, stressed overexerted...
As someone who's been quite stressed out the past few weeks, I think this is an interesting article in the ways I can see it applying to my own life. Sleep is something I need but don't always have the chance to get enough of. I do find that if I work with more energy in a shorter chunk I am able to get much more work done. Hopefully I can do this more often. The thing that I'm not quite clear on is how long the breaks should actually last, and what else productive can be done during them. Being focused during the ninety minutes of working is also something that must be achieved.
Having spent my entire life in athletics, I can absolutely agree that this is true. Having a daily active workout is invaluable to productivity levels. If I go for more than a day without working out, I become Nostalgic and mush less alert, and therefore get much less work done in a given amount of time. Rest, too, is extremely important. Busting out a paper for class is much easier at 4pm when the brain is ready and running than at 1am when all it wants to do is shut down for a while, so it takes more energy to fight it shutting down and keep it actively working. As for the 90 minute intervals of productivity, it seems that this is a new, modern way of addressing the topic of attention span. Human beings can only focus for so long, yet we are constantly demanding more from our bodies than is healthy and natural, and therefore our productivity drops.
I have to say from experience this makes a lot of sense to me. Originally at CMU I felt destroyed by work, but at the beginning of last semester I began enforcing rules about my sleep schedule and I ended up spending half as much time working but somehow getting a lot more done. Every day in the School of Drama I hear people discussing how many hours they worked and how little sleep they have gotten. I have found it impossible to convince people that sleep really is the answer but its certainly cool to have this article backing me up.
This is a really interesting point. I guess it makes sense the more I think about it. My desire to do work and be productive tends to cycle, the fact that the cycle of the and for sleep likely match up is extremely intriguing. I think my issue is that even though our bodies are telling us to take a break, I have trouble listening to it because if I stop working I feel like it will be harder to go back to it. then again, I tend to feel more productive on projects that have a prolonged dry time. Also, I feel like I have to much home work to only work for 4.5 hours. If half of that time goes to reading and half to drafting, when would I find the time to do my other 5 to 6 classes?
This article is pretty much exactly how i choose to delegate my time. Especially this semester. So far i havent gotten sick and ive definitely felt more rested and less stressed. I have found time tuesdays and Thursdays to get a good nap in with out sacrificing too much work time, that coupled with an average bed time of 1 make mes get more than the required amout of sleep per week. It does how ever lead me to do more work towards the due date, but im much more rested and attentive while doing it so i still do a good job and get it done with out the stress. Too many people unconsciously stress there minds and bodys out by worrying about things that hurts them.
I'm going to agree with Joe on this one. This article is neither groundbreaking nor particularly useful. We all know that sleeping more and taking breaks helps productivity, and the longer we work without a break, the less productive we will be. In management, we spend 4.5 hours in rehearsal every day, which according to this article, is already the most optimal working time. But then we still have classes, and homework, and work on the other productions we've been assigned to. I think that the idea of frequent breaks is helpful, but only to a certain extent. Yes, energy management is important, and replenishing energy throughout the day will help you get through your work, but I also think that time plays a huge factor, especially in what we do. We have to find a balance between time and energy.
I agree with Joe. While this isn't exactly groundbreaking, it's a nice reminder that breaks are encouraged and we don't have to work a straight 6 hours to get a project done. I'll completely admit to often forgetting that breaks are a thing and when I do take a break, I feel like I'm procrastinating, which just perpetuates negative energy and is less productive than what my mood was in the first place. I think time, energy, and attitude play key roles in how productive you are, and breaks definitely help with each of those things.
I also agree with Joe here. However I think that what this article doesn't address which is a huge factor in the amount of time that is dedicated to or used in completing a task is the actual difficulty level of it or the amount of knowledge required for one to complete a task. This is a major factor which would have been a good addition to this rather vague article.
The problems that this article describe have been my downfall for the past two and a half years: trying to be more productive by using time that should be spent on sleep and relaxation. This spring semester I kicked these habits out of me and my work, mood and health have clearly improved. I'm more productive so I sleep more, which leads to me being more productive; I take time for myself at the end of everyday, and allow myself to take the breaks I need.
I think the solutions that this article highlights are well known, but putting words into actions is always difficult and especially on something like this. The same way that bad habits and a lack of sleep turn into a vicious cycle, my improvement of work habits and lifestyle this semester is a nice, consistent, positive cycle.
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