How to Be More Productive—and Actually Get What You Want
In an excerpt from her new book, "Becoming Superwoman", Nicole Lapin reveals her top time-management tricks, and how procrastination can actually be a powerful productivity tool.
Work smarter, not harder. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard that a million times. The idea sounds terrific, in theory—but WTF does “smarter” actually mean? I can tell you that none of my degrees or certifications made me, well, smart enough to figure it out. That is, until I got schooled by my breakdown and had to find a way to make my work work for me.
I’ve since learned that “working harder” means having a calendar full of back-to-back meetings but not actually getting much done. That’s being busy. On the other hand, “working smarter” means being thoughtful and efficient about scheduling. That’s being productive.
If you look up the word “busy” in a thesaurus, you’ll find that its origins are “anxious” and “occupied.” However, “productive” has synonyms like “energetic” and “rewarding.” Being “busy” isn’t the way to reach the goals you set back in Step 3. Being “productive,” however, is what will allow you to sustain yourself and your schedule so that you can actually achieve those goals. In this step we are going to put your goals and your schedule together, helping you work smarter once and for all.
WORK IT
The traditional workweek is five days; we know that. But do you know how many of those days are actually productive workdays? Just two.
Researchers surveyed people who work a traditional 40-hour workweek on how many of those hours they consider productive, and the average was sixteen hours. Now, for a society that bemoans working so much and having poor so-called “work/life” balance because of it, how are we wasting twenty-nine whole hours of productivity every single week?
THE DOS AND DON’TS OF PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE
I’ve interviewed hundreds if not thousands of very productive people, and I can tell you that they are not magically productive; they have systems they have perfected over the years to work like magic for them. Super Woman Cathy Engelbert, who is the CEO of Deloitte, with 80,000 employees reporting to her, grew up a college athlete with five brothers and two sisters. She says she is competitive about almost everything. “I’ve learned that productivity should not be a competitive sport; you’re never going to win.” Over time, you’ll develop your own productivity hacks and ways to shore up lagging motivation, but here are a few of my field-tested dos and don’ts to get you started:
Don’t forget about the boundaries you set in the last step and cancel personal plans because you feel like you are “too busy” to work out or see a friend.
Do determine whether holding the meeting in person is something you need to do, or whether it would be more time effective on Skype (sans travel time). If it does need to be in person, try a “standing meeting” (yes, like one where you actually stand your ass up); they tend to be more productive.
Don’t schedule something for thirty minutes or an hour just because that looks organized on your calendar. If a meeting should only take seven minutes, then great, the meeting can be over and you just got twenty-three minutes of your valuable time back. There’s no need to chitchat until the end of the allotted time; it probably should have been scheduled for only fifteen minutes to begin with.
Do streamline your choices for basic stuff like food and clothes throughout the day. It’s no coincidence that Steve Jobs had a “uniform” of jeans and a black turtleneck. Simon Cowell and Mark Cuban have been known for this, too. Think that’s only a guy thing? Nope. The uber-Super Woman Jenna Lyons (who transformed J.Crew into the megabrand it is today) minimizes her wardrobe staples so that she can just reach into her closet and know she’ll pull out a winner. Having to make fewer mundane choices throughout the day leaves more time for making the important ones.
Don’t ignore your body clock and how you feel at different times of the day. Take your natural rhythms into consideration when planning your schedule. Within the first two to four hours of waking up, your brain is the sharpest it’s going to be all day, and research shows that the afternoon, specifically 3 pm, is the most optimal time for social activities, like meetings. Your body is on your side; trust that bitch.
Do utilize communication apps like Slack or OneNote, but only if you actually like using them. The founder and CEO of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Herd, has her employees use Facebook Messenger, under the theory that “everyone is super comfortable with it because they’ve been using it personally” so they are more likely to be productive with it.
Of course, there are days when your big-girl productivity pants aren’t gonna fit no matter how hard you try to squeeze your ass into them. Shit happens. There are emergencies. Disasters. Breakups. Days when you can barely function at all, much less be “productive.” I get that. I’ve had days that don’t start with a gratitude journal entry, that find all my “non-negotiables” becoming “not do-ables.” It’s okay. Remember: Superwoman is the one who tries to be perfect. Super Women know that over time, even small things can make a big difference. A mosquito can give you malaria. A butterfly can change the weather. And, you can take baby steps all the way to the finish line.
THREE TOP TIME-MANAGEMENT TRICKS FROM FELLOW SUPER WOMEN
Melinda Gates, cofounder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which tackles some of the world’s most pressing issues like polio and reproductive health, often talks about curbing burnout by taking fifteen minutes throughout the day to fill what she calls her own “joy bucket.” She says that, in order to be good at her work, she needs quiet time to close out one meeting before she heads into the next. “I’m a big believer in taking time to pause and reflect,” she says, “particularly when you’re working on some of the big challenges in the world.”
Rashida Jones, the actress known for playing Ann Perkins on Parks and Recreation, practices a no-phones-for-an-hour rule with her writing partner, Will McCormack, when they’re trying to get work done. “It seems utterly ridiculous that two grown-ups wouldn’t be able to stay away from their phones for just an hour, but there are many days when my phone owns me. And the rule helps,” she says.
Emily Weiss, founder of Glossier, has mastered her own internal clock to know when she is the most productive, and she targets those times of day accordingly. “Definitely not mornings, I’m NOT a morning person,” she says. “I would say [I’m best] in the afternoons. I do work on the sofa or out on the deck.” She is also known to hold meetings outside. “I like not sitting at a desk, and I move around a lot.”
SCHEDULE DOWN
After fifteen years of nonstop hustling, I crashed. I’d heard of people with hardcore, stressful careers—like mine—having breakdowns. But I never thought one of those people would be me. I thought I was tougher than that. Stronger than that. Until I was one of those people, and I had no choice but to rethink… everything.
A major (and majorly overdue) overhaul was my daily schedule. Right up until I ended up on someone else’s watch in the hospital, my schedule had been ridiculously unsustainable. But that’s the way I’d wanted it to be.
When I set out to start my own company in 2011, I had two major goals in mind: 1) to produce smart, engaging content on financial topics that a younger generation of (mostly) women could relate to, and 2) to hire a killer team of (mostly) women who not only always had my best interests in mind, but were also just as ambitious and smart as I was, if not more so. I (mostly) succeeded on both accounts.
I had just turned 27 when I started my company, and my future burnout and subsequent breakdown wasn’t remotely on my radar. I couldn’t even comprehend them as possibilities. It was full speed ahead, baby. Business bossdom or bust.
I have never been a Devil Wears Prada–type boss, but from the beginning, I was strict about wanting to be scheduled up to the minute. My team worked their booties off to make sure I was, indeed, overbooked the way I wanted, even though I know they often questioned the value in it, and, after all, were the ones who had to deal with the sometimes-ugly ramifications of that schedule—like me getting sick because I was running myself down and then having to reschedule everything as a result. (Not to mention, the days when I was just plain exhausted and a cranky lady to be around.)
I just went where my calendar told me to go, and I wanted that calendar to be full, from a breakfast meeting to start the day to another one for drinks at its close. The more jam-packed my day, the more I felt like I was accomplishing, and the happier I thought I was. When I traveled and found myself with even a thirty-minute break, I was not happy. When I wasn’t on the optimal flights for defying the space-time continuum (like red-eyes and super early departures between NYC and LA), I was not happy. When I had basically any free time at all, I was not happy.
Working harder, being “busier” than everyone else seemed like the only way to succeed. I imagined myself as the most conditioned athlete on the field, with more of a chance to win than those less used to a frantic pace. Living in a state of breathlessness was how I felt most comfortable and secure. I was running fast and hard to get “there,” to “success,” where I thought I would be happy. And if the way to get “there” was to grind, I would grind myself into the ground.
And, I did. I barely left time to shower and was running on at least two venti Americanos a day and little else. I was no longer just running but running out—of breath and fuel. And the pace wore on me not only physically, but mentally; I couldn’t think straight anymore. I didn’t stop to gain perspective on what I was doing, whom I was meeting with, and why, because I was always trying to get to the next thing on my schedule. I wasn’t busy with purpose, I was just… busy and on the doorstep of burnout. My shrink would tell you that I was running from my PTSD diagnosis and distracting myself with work. Well, guess what? My shrink is a shrink because she knows a lot about this stuff. And she was right, as she often is, even though I’m always telling her, “Don’t go all Freudian on me and psychoanalyze everything.” She laughs and does it anyway, which I appreciate—well, eventually.
To reset after things fell apart, I ran away (briefly) not to distract myself from, but to confront, what went wrong. I peaced out to the most peaceful place I could find outside the city. I told the team to put a pause on scheduling (they looked at me like I had three heads and probably thought, “Who are you and what have you done with Nicole?”) until I came back to them with more direction. As much as I loved and trusted my work squad, relinquishing total control of my time and not paying attention to where I was going until I was in a car or on a plane on the way there wasn’t going to work anymore.
NICOLE’S WEEKDAY PLAN
(with variations depending on travel, events, speaking or press obligations, health, etc.)
My weekend schedule was sure to look a little different, but I planned to keep some of these elements consistent throughout, like my morning and nighttime routine (outlined in detail in the next step). But on both weekdays and weekends, there is one crucial element of my new marching orders that doesn’t show up on my rundown above: flexibility. Because, while I get that this looks like the schedule of a marine, I vowed not to be super militant. After all, keeping myself to an overly rigid schedule is what had gotten me in trouble in the first place. But as the weeks went on, I found that the closer I kept to this new schedule, the better I felt. I was way more productive, and being more productive—not just mindlessly busy, mind you, but mindfully getting shit done—made me feel laser focused and more in control.
FIND YOUR CADENCE
Remember: you are not something broken that needs to be “fixed,” but hey, even a baby grand needs a little fine-tuning. So make an outline of your own schedule. Feel free to take inspiration from mine, keeping in mind that everyone’s ideal day will look different depending on your priorities, commitments, work schedule, and commute. Then take a peek under the lid of the piano. What’s in there? What’s working? What’s not? Working “smarter” doesn’t require the smarts you learned in school. It’s something you can teach yourself anytime. Hint: it’s now o’clock.
For Super Women who freelance or work for themselves, a general outline of your daily plan is useful because it adds structure to an otherwise free-flowing day. But it can also be super helpful in making sure you have enough in your “joy bucket.” Are you scheduling lunch and coffee meetings for every single break of the week? Well, take those breaks back! Limit yourself to two lunches and two coffee dates in any given week, so that you can use the rest of your break time to regroup on your own—whether that’s eating your lunch outside, going to the gym, making a personal phone call, or anything else that brings you “joy.”
I get that some of your workday is dictated by others (i.e., your boss and clients) and those commitments likely can’t be tinkered with. But you can and should make more conscientious choices about how you spend the time you can tinker with. For example, be very aware of the calendar invitations that you accept. If it’s from your boss? Yep, you probably have to go. But if it’s a group meeting that you could easily digest in note form later on from one of your colleagues, decline. Others will come to value your time only if you value it first.
SUPER WOMAN TIP
Play Hard to Get
People often say to me now, “You’re so hard to get ahold of!” like somehow that’s a bad thing. Well, if I’d been too frazzled to remember to get back to that person, then maybe it would be. On the other hand, if I made a conscious decision to respond at my own time, then I’d take that remark as a compliment. And I do. I respond at 10 am or 4 pm, as you can see from my schedule.
Come up with two or three blocks of time that work best for you. Otherwise, responding to emails and texts as soon as they come in pulls you away from whatever you are doing and lets other people determine the course of your day. You don’t wake up thinking, “Today, I’m just gonna wing it!” So, why would you relinquish control of your time, one of your most important superpowers, by feeling compelled to respond to messages the second they come in? That’s letting someone hijack your time little by little until your whole day is in their hands—and not in yours where it belongs.
As former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said, “burnout is about resentment, [and preventing it] is about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is you’re giving up that makes you resentful.” So, identify the thing that, if you missed it, would make you resentful at your work, whether it’s distraction-free date night on Fridays or Sunday brunch with the besties. Then, it’s up to you to schedule and take your own “PTO.” In this case, it doesn’t stand for “Paid Time Off ” but rather “Predictable Time Off.” Workplace studies have shown that the predictability of “me time” is more beneficial to overall productivity than the duration of it. Because of that, companies are implementing predictable policies and rules like “no email before 6 a.m. and after 8 p.m.” or “call on the weekend, but only if it’s urgent.” Create your own parameters—that you can count on and look forward to—for your “PTO” because, after all, no matter where you work or whom you might work for, you are always the boss of you.
FILL IN THE BLANKS
The rough outline of your day probably has a lot of blanks like mine does. For example, my schedule outline has things like “shoot video or write” and “deal with logistical stuff.” You might have things like “outline notes before performance review” and “organize household paperwork.” Every day, you need to determine what, specifically, goes into those categories. There’s a lot that could fit—practice asking for the raise you deserve or track down and print out all positive feedback you’ve received from others, in the former example, or decide whether you’re going to tackle monthly bills or file your taxes for the latter—but the best fits are the tasks that, you guessed it, move you toward accomplishing your goals.
“But there’s wayyyyy too much I need to do today—I’ll never be able to fit it all in, much less think about goals, Lapin!” Oh yeah? What exactly do you need to do today?
I have a daily exercise to help figure that out. At the outset, I know it looks like I’m adding yet another to-do to your already-packed day, but I promise the time investment is worth it. You can do this just in an ordinary notebook, several little notebooks like fitness entrepreneur Tracy Anderson does, or you can use The Super Woman Journal. Here’s what you need to establish:
What’s already scheduled today. Identify everything nonnegotiable already on your calendar. This includes your commute, important meetings, and family commitments, like picking up your kid from day care.
What I could do. Brain dump all the things you can possibly think of that could work for the “fill in the blanks.” This includes the specific tasks within each area. So the “outline notes” slot would have things like determining your plan of attack for asking for a raise and tracking down and printing out all the positive feedback you’ve received, as mentioned previously.
What fits with my goals. Look at what you wrote for your four Fs. Eliminate or “procrastinate” (I’ll tell you how to strategically do that next) whatever is not super time sensitive in your brain dump. Then, which of the things remaining align with your goals? Rank those in descending order of priority. Start with number one—aka, it must get done today—and save the items you don’t get to for another day.
SUPER WOMAN TIP
Eat the Frog
Mark Twain said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” Now, I’m not suggesting that you eat an actual frog. But I am suggesting that you get the most difficult task of the day done first. If you have to fire someone, take accountability for something, tackle an intimidating project, then do it—first. Get it over with. Putting off and stressing about the thing you’re dreading only gives it more of your brain’s real estate. That’s valuable headspace you can fill with the rest of the items on your to-do list once it’s done.
“Busy” people fill in their schedule indiscriminately: organizing your desktop, picking up dry-cleaning, and grabbing drinks with an acquaintance whom you have no real interest in seeing are all examples of this. “Productive” Super Women prioritize their tasks in accordance with their goals and Emotional Wellness needs: nailing a major deadline at work, attending your favorite workout class, and checking in with a close friend who is going through a tough time are examples of this. We pay close attention to what we do with our day and put thoughtful intention into how we fill in our schedule.
PROCRASTINATION TRANSFORMATION
I have two favorite quotes about procrastination. The first is from Thomas Jefferson: “Never put off till tomorrow what can be done today.” And the other is another from our frog-eating friend Mark Twain: “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”
I love the first quote, but I live the second. Contrary to what we’ve been taught to believe, procrastination isn’t always a bad thing. Yep, you heard it here first: procrastination can be good if, and only if, you’re thoughtful about it. The word derives from the Latin “pro” which means “forward,” and “crastinus” which means “belonging to tomorrow.” So, if something belongs to tomorrow and you are planning for it as you would anything else, there’s no need to beat yourself up for letting it actually belong to tomorrow and not today.
Creating a productive plan for the day is all about prioritizing today, which necessarily means putting some things off until tomorrow or later. Procrastinating in this mindful, intentional manner will help you in two ways: 1) it will keep you from slicing your time too thinly, and 2) it will protect more urgent tasks from suffering because your attention gets diverted by something less urgent that pops up in your in-box, which can be done tomorrow. Some say procrastination is the thief of productivity. I say that if it’s done strategically, it can actually be productivity’s heroine.
Think about how your daily tasks support or detract from moving your goals forward. It’s only when you keep those in mind that you can prioritize accordingly. I’ll walk you through an example of how to connect the dots between the two.
Let’s say your goals for this year are:
Leave your job
Start a chocolate shop
Find true love
Get buns of steel
And your potential tasks for today are:
Pick up dry-cleaning
Meet with a cocoa supplier in your area
Go to a bar with your friends
Go to a luncheon at work for a new committee
First of all, I like most of the goals you are throwing down. I like that you want to “find true love” instead of “get married and have kids”—keeping it realistic given the year time frame. Similarly, you’re working to “get buns of steel,” not “become a size four”—getting in shape to be healthy, not to conform to some misguided size goal. As for leaving your job to start a chocolate shop, I’m intrigued by the idea (who doesn’t love chocolate and a Boss Bitch?), but you might need to scale back a bit for the year-long time frame we’re working with.
Especially at the beginning of each year, we tend to go balls to the wall with lofty pronouncements about what we will get done in the next 365 days. Resolutions can be helpful in jump-starting your ambitions, but it’s smart to procrastinate on some of those goals as well. It’s better to have something as part of your three- or five-year plan than to put it on the list for year one and then feel disappointed when you don’t achieve it because you were overshooting by putting it there in the first place.
As I wrote in Boss Bitch, when starting your own business, it’s important to have your next move lined up, as well as a solid cushion of savings before you burn that corporate bra. Hey, if you can make all that happen in a few months, go you! But, if you want to make those chocolate shop dreams a reality, I would suggest setting more realistic goals for this year, like “Make sure my business plan is airtight,” “scale back expenses so that I have nine months of living expenses in the bank,” and “find an independent health-care option for when I leave my corporate job and lose my benefits.” These smaller, actionable goals will keep you on track toward achieving the big one of leaving your job altogether. Plus, it will feel motivating to cross them off your list in, say, years one and three, so that by the time you get to year five, you’re ready to start making it rain (chocolate).
Now, on to your tasks. Let’s say they are:
Pick up dry-cleaning. Unless you have no clothes left in your closet, which I find hard to believe, then dry-cleaning can wait.
Meet with a cocoa supplier in your area. Meeting with resources and gathering recon toward starting your business is very important, especially if you want to get it off the ground quickly. Do this.
Go to a bar with your friends. Yes. If your goal is to find true love, dating apps are all well and good, but meeting someone the old-fashioned way is better, especially with a squad of wing-women.
Go to a luncheon at work for a new committee. If you’re planning to leave your job, there’s no need to waste time taking on additional responsibilities at the office. Veto.
If we connect the dots: Task 2 goes with Goal 2. Task 3 goes with Goal 3. And Tasks 1 and 4 aren’t related to your goals.
So, if you skip Task 1, did you “procrastinate” on picking up your dry-cleaning? Yes. Does that mean you have more time to get ready for the bar and drive to and from the cocoa supplier? Yes—and that’s more important to advancing your long-term goals of finding a partner and starting your own business. If you skip Task 4, did you decline joining another committee, which a) you don’t have time for, and b) won’t advance you toward your goal of starting your own thing? Yes. And that means you have more time to get ready to go out shopping for love at the bar, which is a goal of yours.
Crossing everything off your list might feel satisfying and might make Mr. Thomas Jefferson proud, but you’d be letting yourself down in the future—and for what, a few more cathartic checks on a to-do list? Truly working smarter means putting off what can be done tomorrow or even the next day and focusing instead on the quality, not quantity, of tasks you prioritize today. It’s the only way to work less and win more in the long run.
BOTTOM LINE
Conventional Wisdom: My day is dictated by what’s in my inbox each morning; I have to respond to those emails before I do anything else.
Your day, your week, your life is dictated by you. You are the author. So start each day with in-tention, not in-box. You’re in charge of each day’s narrative, because you’re the one writing it. And if you don’t like where you are, it’s a safe bet that what got you here won’t get you where you want to go.
Conventional Wisdom: My life is too chaotic to have a set schedule.
If you want to make the most of each day, you first need to know (at least roughly) what the cadence of your day is going to look like. Of course, stuff comes up, and your weekday schedule, like mine, changes a lot. But giving yourself a foundation, any foundation, on which to construct your priorities for the day will only keep you building a more productive life. You can’t control the chaos (we all have our own version of it), but you can control your response to it.
Conventional Wisdom: Winners are the best at everything.
No way, no how. In life, and in the Miss America pageant as I discovered, the winner is the best at managing her time and skill set, finding the most efficient way to get to the goal. And there she is, Miss Productive.
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