Do you know what prevents you from starting work when you are threatened by procrastination? (Image: 123RF)
RHéveil-matin is a daily column in which we provide managers and their employees with inspiring solutions to start their day right. While sipping your favorite beverage, discover new tips to make your 9@5 productive and motivated.
Waking up in the morning. Have you made a resolution to be more productive in 2024? Not so fast.
Before you adopt the new trendy formula that the apostles are extolling, courtesy of survivor bias, you should take the time to ask yourself why you are struggling to cope with this task.
This is one of the key pieces of advice offered by Marie-Philippe Rodrigue, a trained speech therapist and work organization enthusiast, in the book The Headless Chicken Paradox.
Drawing on her readings in recent years and her love-hate relationship with productivity, in this 190-page work published in 2023, the author invites us to go beyond the simple desire to always do more, in order to identify the needs we truly want to fill.
In this book, she certainly offers several tips for becoming more efficient, such as voluntarily allowing more time for each task you want to accomplish, reducing distractions by blocking periods of deep focus in your schedule or turning off notifications, or relying on the schedule being the minutes that It was actually spent on both things done on the same day.
However, rather than foolishly applying the suggested solutions, she repeatedly urges the reader to take the time to think about what is holding them back on their journey to productivity.
When procrastination looms, for example, she suggests identifying what's “preventing you from staying on task.” Therefore, by identifying what is holding you back, you will be able to truly adopt appropriate solutions.
For example, as part of her speech therapy practice, writing her reports has become a much less daunting task since she created outlines that allow her to avoid omitting important details, a fear that was previously paralyzing, she says candidly.
Marie-Philippe Rodrigue wrote: “Being effective is not just about using 'tricks'; it's about knowing when to use them and why.”
Debunking productivity myths
The book is also a balm for all those breathless people trying to do more and more, explaining along the way why focusing is so difficult, or even why getting lost in a task seems so attractive. The other instead of devoting himself to just one at a time.
Above all, the speech therapist and counselor restores the nobility of breaks, to these “changes of pace” that are so beneficial for productivity, despite the label of laziness that we often attach to them.
She recommends taking a moment to analyze the oppressive thoughts that we often repeat to ourselves when we procrastinate, in order to put our finger here, too, on the cause of this stagnation. Is it fear of judgment, failure, unexpected events, or the size of the task, for example, that keeps you from moving forward? Realizing this fact is the first step toward dismantling often-entrenched preconceptions and myths about productivity.
Besides the many benefits that breaks provide, Marie-Philippe Rodrigue calls “active procrastination,” or starting a task or project and letting it simmer, a valuable tool that allows her to see if it really fits with her goals and priorities. These moments of pause and contemplation therefore save him time and allow him to become more efficient.
To work remotely or not to work remotely, this is the question that is causing turmoil in many companies with the beginning of the 2023 academic year.
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