Over the last 15 years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with many leaders and their teams. The word I hear the most is ‘swamped’: swamped with emails, swamped with meetings, swamped with things to do.
In the past we only had letters, (snail mail as we call it now. )You would send a letter, t it would take a few days to arrive, and then another few days to get a response back.
We gradually moved from fax, to emails and now to constant instant messaging.
Crazy…
The big shift we all need to do is to realise that performance is not about quantity.
Let me repeat that. Performance is not about quantity. Performance is not linked to the number of emails you respond to, meetings you attend or even things you do.
Performance is first about quality.
It is about focusing on the right things.
You might have heard of a great book called ‘Deep Work’ written by Cal Newport.
Cal Newport is a professor from Georgetown University. He observed that the most performing students were not the ones working the longest hours but the ones who had the ability to create deep work. This lead to some interesting research and resulted in him writing a book about his findings.
I think we all know this intuitively. We can all relate to blocking 1h30 to work on something and then to finish this block of time feeling frustrated. Rather than spending time on what we were supposed to be focusing on, the time was spent dealing with interruptions and distractions. On the other hand, we have no doubt all experienced being 100% focused on something for half an hour and achieving real progress.
Performance is about quality before quantity.
A bientôt
Cyril
