How to Slow Down

Slowing down requires specific, dedicated efforts on our part that include setting real boundaries and questioning the value of the items on our daily to-do lists. We can take steps toward this by implementing the following:

1. Prioritizing

The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow, we would now be able to have multiple “first” things. People and companies routinely try to do just that. One leader told me of this experience in a company that talked of ‘Pri-1, Pri-2, Pri-3, Pri-4, and Pri-5.’ This gave the impression of many things being the priority but actually meant nothing was. –Greg McKeown, Essentialism

How many priorities can you think of in your life? In your work? If you listed out all of your priorities and pitted them up against each other like an NCAA March Madness bracket, what would you see on the sheet in front of you? Which would make it into the Final Four? Which one would win overall?

How can you cut down your list? At G2i we have a saying, “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.” If we look at a task and ask, does this get me closer to x goal, and the answer is “Yeah…” or “in a way,” or “kind of,” then it doesn’t. It’s the same as saying “No.” Hell yeahs are obvious. If it’s not obvious, it is not a hell yeah.

But let’s break this down further with a concept learned from Amanda Goetz, founder of House of Wise The more clear our framework for prioritization is, the easier it gets and the better we prioritize our time. We suggest starting to look at each day as offense vs. defense and to try and play more offense.

Defense

This is the time we spend on responding and pre-scheduling meetings. This is where we reply to emails, slack messages, DMs on various platforms, etc. The reality is that everyone has to do this part of work, but rarely does this make a huge impact 9-12 months from now. Therefore, our goal is to become aware of how much time is spent on defensive work, take inventory of which defensive tasks are truly a productive use of time, and begin to reduce our time spent on defense and increase our time on offense.

Offense

This is the time when we are focused only on our hell yeahs. We guard this time as much as we possibly can and devote our best hours to these activities because these hell yeahs are the items that will have a massive impact on the product or company in the next 9-12 months and are most aligned with our goals. There are no hard and fast rules as to when these hours can happen. As mentioned previously, these hell yeahs are the obvious choices, the ones screaming at us that we should invest ourselves in.

If we want to learn how to focus more on offense, check out our guide in the OS Workbook on building a two-week Essentialism Plan.

2. Substituting

Returning to the time budget, we cannot add a new activity without eliminating one that demands equivalent (or greater) time and energy from our schedule. We go over our time budget if we don’t eliminate what we add. This is how we can easily go from a 40-hour work week to 50 hours or more. If we don’t substitute, we’ll just keep overspending our time.

Suppose we’re being asked to do something extra, such as fixing a bug, joining a recurring meeting, or making an introduction. In that case, we need to pause and think if this new to-do is a higher priority than what’s currently on our plate, and if so, what are we going to remove from our schedule to accomplish this?

Remember, free time is not free for the taking by the first request that comes your way. Time with our families, friends, communities, or hobbies is not nothing. Sleep and rest are not nothing. This time is a legitimate part of our schedule, and just as valid as any other responsibility. When new tasks come before us that encroach on available time, we should protect it like anything else we have scheduled. It’s time that we need to recover. We shouldn’t feel shame for defending it.

How to substitute:

If you agree to a new request from your boss, ask if you can deliver another item later.
Consider if you really need to be at that recurring meeting, and if you can replace it with heads down time.
Before agreeing to a new request, ask if you can delegate another item on your to-do list to a colleague.

3. Under-scheduling

How often do we find ourselves in a bind because we underestimated the time it would take to finish a task? How often do we end the day thinking, “I didn’t get nearly as much done today as I would’ve liked.” These are familiar feelings when we routinely cram our schedules with work that must be flawlessly executed in order to get everything done. Maybe we have too much on our plates, maybe we hold ourselves to the standard of our most exceptional days, or maybe we feel quietly in competition with our colleagues. Whatever the reason, we set ourselves up for disappointment when we over-schedule.

Underscheduling positions us to be satisfied with our work and allows us the potential to exceed our expectations. We allow ourselves more time than we think we need to complete a task and a comfortable margin to accommodate the unexpected.

How to under-schedule

Write a Daily Action Plan
Give yourself wide margins (i.e., time buffers) when scheduling meetings, travel, and deep work. Be honest with yourself when it comes to time commitments; don’t expect traffic to be light or a colleague to end a meeting early when scheduling your time. In fact, plan for the opposite.
Schedule breaks throughout the day and your lunch away from the desk
Schedule transition time
Have a 72-hour moratorium on activities that add two or more hours weekly to your schedule

4. Playing

”Get a hobby!” But seriously, get a hobby! Playtime is not limited to our childhood, and practicing a routine of playing has a number of benefits. Play offers us a way to disconnect from the structure of our professional lives and allows us the opportunity to explore our creativity and experience joy. Even if we love our jobs and we love what we do, our play should not look like work or a work project. Play frees us from the parameters we are accustomed to, dissolving barriers and allowing our minds to wander.

There is no such thing as professionalism in play. When we’re sitting on a surfboard in the ocean, hiking a trail through the valley, or rock climbing in a national park, the entire concept of professionalism, metrics, OKRs, KPIs, and business goals should be entirely non-existent. Playing forces us to be in the present moment. Playing is active, engaging, unpredictable, challenging, and fun, yet it also demands our full attention and focus. Our brains explore, build, and strengthen new neural pathways through play. It has been shown that after we engage in a playful experience, we return to work more energized and experience improvements in brain function, creativity, social skills, and cooperation.

How to Play:

Identify hobbies or activities you’ve always wanted to try. Start by blocking out just a few hours a week on your schedule to explore these options and protect that time.
Find something you can do for 10-15 minutes per day between working. For example, Gabe brings a basketball to the office and practices dribbling outside. This resets the brain and introduces movement into the workday.
Find something you are purposely not “good at” but enjoy doing.
Read for pleasure, not for purpose.
Look into alternative sports/hobbies like indoor rock climbing, aerial silks, surfing, paintball, mountain biking, or dirt biking.

5. Concentrating

The cost of distraction is expensive and adds up quickly. When we are interrupted, it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back on track where we left off. Mapping out how we’re spending our time during the day doesn’t only involve checking off items on our to-do lists; it also involves fiercely guarding ourselves against the opportunity for distractions to enter our workflow. For example, when we scheduled dedicated writing sessions for the Developer Health OS from 9:00 am - 11:00 am, we protected our writing time and kept distractions away by closing our emails, turning off Slack notifications, and putting our phones on Do Not Disturb. (In fact, this is what we’re doing right now!) Blocking this time on the calendar also indicates to others, “Hey, I’m heads down right now working on this thing we all really need done. I’ll see your messages at 11:00 am.”

When we focus our attention on one thing at a time, we might be doing less at once but more overall. We’re creating the opportunity to enter into what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls a “flow state”. a period of time when we become “deeply focused” on our current task, working with “effortless momentum.” When we are in flow, we experience a strong sense of clarity, breezing through obstacles, making movement on tasks, and feeling a sense of general happiness while we work.

How to Concentrate:

Turn your phone on Do Not Disturb and turn off computer notifications during deep work. (note: make sure to give your teammates a heads-up so they don’t think they’re being ignored!) You can actually live a life free of most notifications and still be very successful at work.
Do a notification cleanse on your phone and aggressively turn off most notifications except for text messages/calls.
Don’t get sucked into being on Slack all day long. Turn off notifications permanently and schedule time to check Slack or regularly use their Do Not Disturb features.
Take social media off your phone and schedule time to use it on a computer.
Get a nice pair of headphones that has noise-canceling features.
Listen to Brain.FM while doing deep work. They use a science-first approach to create music that helps you concentrate.
Build yourself a comfortable work-from-home environment. Maybe that means investing in a special chair or a desk that effortlessly raises and lowers to accommodate times when you’d like to stand. Or maybe that means creating a work-friendly outdoor space or putting up artwork that inspires you. Remember, these are not frivolous expenses; they are investments in your overall productivity and well-being.

6. Pacing

Athletes push themselves to exceptional performance levels but stop just before they reach the point of overexertion and injury. Through strict training and rest regimens and by pacing themselves as they achieve new heights in their overall performance, athletes are able to secure incredible longevity and success in their careers.

We want to work at a comfortable pace and rest before we get burned out. As we go through our days moving from task to task, we should practice taking a pause and checking our energy levels. Are we feeling stressed out? Are we worked up? Are we blowing over something that irritated us earlier and letting the frustration build?

When we pace ourselves, we are regularly taking a moment to stop and assess the present moment. In practice, pacing looks like breathwork, meditating, stretching, walking, or perhaps playing with our pets. These moments give us a chance to process how we spent the last hour or so, let go of anything bothersome, release any tension or distractions we begin to carry with us and prepare our minds for the next section of work. We don’t get “wound up” in our work, therefore, we don’t need to unwind.

Pacing also allows us to move away from adrenalizing and to a more sustainable and productive form of restful work.

How to pace yourself

Starting the day slower helps keep a similar pace throughout the day instead of starting fast and crashing midway. Create a wider margin in the morning where you can regularly have 15-30 minutes to write, read, meditate, pray, or do something that calms your mind and body.
Don’t look at technology, social media, or the news when you first wake up. Purchase an alarm clock that isn’t your phone and leave your phone in another room.
Take regular breaks at work where you can move your body. Go for a walk, dribble a basketball, stretch, or do some yoga.
Purposely notice how fast you’re walking, speaking, eating, or thinking. If it’s fast, try something that is soothing for you like meditation, laughter yoga, or even just breathing.
Practicing wide margins can help you pace better. Give yourself ample time to complete work or prepare for/transition between meetings.

7. Pausing to Relax

Just relax. Calm down. Take a deep breath. The moment we hear these phrases is usually the exact moment we don’t want to hear them. We’re already worked up and have possibly even snapped. Perhaps we missed a deadline, a criticism of our work was emailed with leadership cc’d, or a new coworker blew our performance numbers out of the water.

It’s certainly easy to say that we should recognize when pressure is building and handle it as it comes, but that’s not always how our lives play out. Pressure often builds slowly, but before we know it, our emotions are getting the best of us. We need to practice identifying our pressure sources and regulating our responses to them.

Here are a few ways to practice relaxing:

Be aware of the “critical voices” in your head. Maybe even write them down. These voices are not the loving part of you and are often pushing you harder than is healthy. Identifying critical parent voices can help you replace them with healthier thoughts, which reduces some of the pressure you may feel.
Try laughter yoga. Laughter yoga is simply laughing with others or watching a YouTube video on purpose. It may feel strange at first, but your brain doesn’t know the difference between “fake” laughter and real laughter so you get the same neurochemical boost from laughing with a friend or at a funny TV show. Plus you can do it for much longer and at any time you want.
Call a friend who will let you vent about something that frustrates you. Let them know in advance that you don’t want them to help you solve the problem; you just want them to listen.
Try building a consistent meditation practice with any app or style of meditation. Being able to meditate for 5-10 minutes five times per week is so much more important than meditating for 1 hour per day and falling off after two weeks. Consistency is key.