At a glance
By Emma Foster
The pace of work has intensified in recent years, experts say, as professionals are inundated with a growing volume of tasks, emails, messages and meeting requests that they must read, process, respond to and action.
Known as “digital debt” (a term coined by Microsoft), this phenomenon of having too much communication work to do and not enough time to do it is becoming a common experience.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index has found that almost two in three people say they do not have enough time to do their work due to digital debt – and it is having an impact on innovation.
“The workplace technologies that were touted as being the silver bullet to our productivity have actually had the opposite effect,” says Dr Kristy Goodwin, productivity and digital wellbeing expert and author of Dear Digital, We Need to Talk.
“With such a barrage of tasks, our brains are tricked into thinking every single one is urgent and important,” she says. “It means we lose our ability to logically triage the flow, and we become chronically overwhelmed, stressed and distracted.”
Organisational psychologist Dr Amantha Imber, founder of behavioural science firm Inventium, says the natural response is to think myopically and tackle the less onerous tasks first, which leaves no time for the important projects or creativity needed to shift the needle on big goals.
“It then becomes a vicious cycle, because it feeds your stress,” says Imber, host of the How I Work podcast.
Time management expert Kate Christie says there is no magic remedy for the problem, but different frameworks can help, depending on a person’s workstyle.
“Everyone can benefit from their own personal productivity system,” Christie says. “It is important to understand what helps you most and then communicate that to your team, so you can make it stick.”
1. Triage your to-do list
Goodwin’s tip is to triage your “to-do” list at the end of each workday, to optimise priorities for the next. Her favoured approach is a blend of two well-established methods – the Eisenhower Matrix (see Figure 1), which classifies tasks by their urgency and importance, and Cal Newport’s “deep” and “shallow” work.
“Start by separating your tasks into what is important and urgent, and what is not,” Goodwin says.
“Then sort out the tasks that require deep work from the less taxing shallow tasks,” she says. “For example, a report that is due tomorrow needs deep work and is urgent and important.
“Processing an invoice or returning a call, on the other hand, is shallow work and, although important, is likely to be less urgent.”
2. Cater to your chronotype
The idea, Goodwin explains, is to ring-fence time to focus on the urgent and important deep work at the time of day when you are at your peak, while tackling shallow work when you know your energy levels dip or in the dead time between meetings.
“By acknowledging your chronotype – your unique biological rhythm – and aligning work around it, you can be far more productive,” she says.
3. Let data lead the dialogue
When faced with multiple competing deadlines, Christie’s tip is to invest time to arm yourself with the right data to inform workload discussions.
“Write down everything that is on your plate,” says Christie, the author of Smart Time Investment for Business.
“Every deliverable needs a deadline attached and an estimate of how long it will take, mapped out like a project plan. Having this holistic view shows the conflicts and enables you to have informed, data-led discussions about which tasks can be deprioritised to enable you to hit all deadlines.”
4. Obey your time-blocks
Imber recommends a weekly ritual of picking the three most important tasks for the week ahead and blocking time for them by literally booking meetings with yourself.
“As simple as it sounds, it is just not how most people work, because we are often very reactive to whatever emails or meetings are thrown at us,” she says.
“Time blocking can be a real game changer, but you need to respect those meetings. You would not miss a meeting with a colleague, so do not miss one with yourself.”
5. Build a “focus fortress”
During those deep focus blocks, Goodwin advises building a “fortress around your focus”, by eliminating as many potential distractions as possible. “That might mean putting on ‘do not disturb’ mode on your notifications, logging out of email and putting your phone where you cannot see it,” she says. “Importantly, work out a system with colleagues to flag when you are in your focus fortress.”
6. Run “zombie campaigns”
As well as being clear on what you need to do, Imber’s advice is to reflect with your team on what you do not.
“At Inventium, we run ‘zombie campaigns’, where everyone across the team calls out where they see things happening that are adding little value, and we look to see if we can kill them off. It may be the recurring meetings that have lost the value they once had in the past or the reports someone is producing, but no one is reading,” she says.
“By killing them off, we are freeing up time for the more important priorities.”
