When you’re feeling overwhelmed, productivity is usually the first thing to go.
It’s not (usually) because you don’t care, but because it feels like too much. Trying to optimize your time or follow a system when you’re barely keeping your head above water sounds ridiculous. So when you hit that wall, you check out and focus on what’s right in front of you.
The problem is that opting out of productivity makes everything worse, not better. All of your responsibilities continue to pile up, whether you’ve got a plan or not. But without a plan for your time, they’re much harder to manage.
At one time or another, we’ve all been at that point. Maybe your company just had a round of layoffs, so you’re dealing with an increased workload plus job insecurity. Maybe finances are tight, so you’ve had to work for side income during nights and weekends. Or maybe you’re just busy balancing full-time work with parenting and all the responsibilities that come with being an adult. Although everyone’s experience is unique, feeling overwhelmed isn’t, and there are steps we can take to try to limit it.
It’s time we take back the narrative surrounding productivity. Let’s talk about a new way to look at productivity and how we can manage our time to prevent reaching total burnout.
The reality: Your time is still being spent, with or without intentionality
Time is, by far, our most finite resource. Even if you’re not actively managing your time, your day is still passing. But without a solid plan for your time, the hours get filled with time-wasters that do nothing to move you forward.
If we look at this concept through the lens of the Eisenhower Matrix, it often means we’re spending a lot of time in the not urgent/not important quadrant or the urgent/not important quadrant.
While it might feel like you’re opting out of productivity when you start to get overwhelmed, what’s really happening is that you’re opting out of deciding how your time is used. When you reach this point, your time defaults to the path of least resistance. That can look like:
- cleaning out your inbox
- responding to the most recent request instead of the most critical
- filling small gaps in your day with low-effort, low-impact work
- saying yes to every meeting without considering whether your attendance is necessary
None of these things looks particularly harmful in the moment. They might even seem productive. But over the course of a week, they can insidiously take over until your best hours are consumed by reactive work. Soon, you feel like you’re busy all day, but you don’t have much to show for all the hours you spent in front of your screen. You’re tired, but you never reach a point of being done for the day.
Learn how to view productivity as control, not output
Unfortunately, productivity has become synonymous with output. Our culture tells us that being productive equals getting more done in less time.
On the surface, that sounds ideal. Who wouldn’t want to be more efficient? But experience is quick to teach us that this view of productivity ends up making productivity feel like pressure. It turns your to-do list into a measuring stick, and no matter how much you accomplish, there’s always more you could be doing.
That’s when productivity starts to feel like pressure. When you look at productivity this way, being productive means pushing harder, working longer, and trying to optimize every minute of your day. And when you’re already overwhelmed, that expectation just adds another layer of stress.
But that’s the wrong lens.
A more useful way to think about productivity is this: it’s a tool for control.
Control over your time and control over your attention.
Most of us aren’t dealing with a lack of effort as much as a lack of clarity. We haven’t taken the time to name what matters and map that out to the time we have available. As a result, our day gets shaped by other people’s priorities more than our own.
When you shift your view of productivity from output to control, the way you view your to-do list and your schedule starts to change. Instead of asking how you can get more done, you begin to ask what actually deserves your time and attention.
This change in mindset helps you make better decisions and make the best use of the time you have.
What happens when you don’t track your time
I can’t possibly be the only person who has sat down for a 10-minute social media break, only to be shocked when I realize almost an hour has passed. For most humans, our perception of time is easily skewed. It’s easy to make assumptions about how you spend your workday, so without concrete data and plans, you can end up wasting time on work that isn’t very meaningful or underestimating how much time you need to complete a certain project.
Soon, everything starts to blur together. You feel busy, but it’s hard to pinpoint what you actually accomplished. You can end up spending too much time on reactive tasks, while more important tasks get pushed farther and farther down the road. And when you feel like you’re always behind, the natural response is to push harder. You work longer days and stay ‘on’ all the time.
Talk about a recipe for burnout.
On the flip side, tracking your time and using that data to map out your day is essential if you want to stop feeling like you’re perpetually behind. The initial time and effort it takes pales in comparison to the time and effort it saves you in the long run.
Four ways to use time tracking to reduce burnout
We tend to have a narrow view of burnout, seeing it simply as the product of working too many hours. The reality is that burnout happens when you spend your time in ways that drain you without moving anything forward.
Here are four ways you can use time tracking to conserve your energy and reclaim your time:
Cut low-value work
Time tracking quickly shows you how much of your day is spent on tasks that don’t meaningfully contribute to your goals, like unnecessary meetings, busywork, and instant communication. Once you start to identify all of the interrupters that are keeping you from meeting your actual goals at work, you can start looking at ways to eliminate them.
The kind of low-value work you can cut often comes in the form of:
- over-formatting content
- low-impact admin work
- unnecessary communication
- multitasking during deep work
Say goodbye to these tasks and the stress they add to your day.
Protect focus time
One of the main reasons for burnout is that you’re constantly changing contexts. With the never-ending stream of notifications coming from our tech tools, we’re lucky to get 20 minutes of uninterrupted focus time these days. It’s hard to make meaningful progress when you get off track every 10 minutes.
Time tracking helps you pinpoint when your focus is strongest so you can take intentional steps to protect that time. If you hadn’t noticed by now, we’re really into Focus Sessions at RescueTime. It’s why they’re such an important feature of the app, making it easier to cancel out all the other noise and hone in on important work.
Block it off on your calendar. Protect it from meetings. Keep your phone in the other room. Do whatever you need to do to give yourself the gift of an uninterrupted work session where you actually reach your goal.
Make smarter tradeoffs
Another big contributor to burnout? Trying to do everything at once.
Do you remember seeing this meme in college?
As a 20-year-old, I laughed at the accuracy. Now, as a working adult with several kids, I think I’d need a decagon to include all of the factors I need to balance.
Within my work as a freelance writer, I’m trying to balance work for several different clients, my own perfectionism, the admin side of my business, online marketing to keep myself relevant, pitching to new clients to maintain a pipeline, et cetera, et cetera. And as a working mom, that work balance is always impacted by my parenting responsibilities—running kids to and from school, staying home for sick days, and anticipating school breaks. It’s a lot of spinning plates to keep in the air at once, and I know I’m not alone in this regard.
There’s just no way to do it all perfectly all the time. Anyone who tells you they are is fooling themselves or working themselves to the point of physical and mental collapse.
When you’re determining what to trade off, use the rubber ball/glass ball theory. Some tasks can be dropped for the time being, and they’ll bounce back for later. Other tasks will shatter if you let them go, so they’re what you need to prioritize and keep a close eye on.
Give yourself some breathing room
Sometimes, a lack of productivity is caused by distractions. But there’s another cause that we tend to ignore: our brains are simply too tired. When you’re trying to work 50-60 hours, week after week, your body and mind begin to feel the strain. Pushing yourself to the breaking point, without allowing yourself adequate rest, puts you on the fast track to burnout.
Time tracking gives you an accurate snapshot of how your time is being spent, which can be useful for:
- showing you exactly how many hours you’ve spent working (especially when you tend to underestimate)
- revealing patterns of when you’re more and less productive
Those two datasets can help you understand when you need to take a break because you’ve exceeded a healthy number of working hours or your brain needs a quick reset before it’s ready to function at optimal levels.
A healthier way to think about productivity
In today’s always-on culture, productivity has gotten a bad rap, and it’s not hard to see why. Work can feel endless, and the world outside of work feels just as heavy, making the idea of ‘being more productive’ sound exhausting.
When people resist the idea of productivity, it’s not that they don’t care. It’s that they’re already stretched thin. They don’t want ways to do more; they want ways to cope with what’s currently going on.
That’s where sustainable, human-centered productivity comes in. We have to start viewing productivity as something that protects us. As much as I hate to admit it sometimes, I thrive when I monitor my time and follow a planned schedule. I hit all my deadlines early. I get adequate sleep so I can enjoy a clear head. My house stays orderly (at least, as much as it can when twin toddlers are living here).
We think that increasing productivity = squeezing as much work out of yourself as possible. But that’s not what sustainable productivity looks like.
When you learn how to improve your productivity to better control your day, you are able to complete the work that actually matters and reclaim the time you were wasting on all those unnecessary tasks.
You also gain the ability to recognize your limits and set firm boundaries. It becomes more obvious when work is creeping into your personal time, allowing you to make adjustments before it turns into long-term burnout. You don’t have to rely on your gut to manage your time, because you have actual data to guide your decisions.
We all have a lot on our plates right now. Being mindful about how we manage our time is key.
