What's the worst piece of productivity advice that I often hear? Find out next.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And recently here in the YouTube comments, I was asked what is one piece of productivity advice, Scott, that we often hear but you don't agree with.
I thought that was a fantastic question so I thought I'd share my answer with you today.
One of the most famous productivity quotes comes from Benjamin Franklin and he famously said, don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today.
Now we often hear this piece of advice as it relates to procrastination that we shouldn't be putting off important things.
If we are able to do them today, then we should do them and not put them off until tomorrow.
But one of the things that I hate about this particular quote is that it's often used in the sense of hustling or just working harder, just bearing down and grinding it out.
Think about it for a second. There's an unlimited list of things that you or I would like to do today.
There's probably about 100 things that I would like to accomplish today and I could probably get through most of them if I ignored my family, if I ignored my health, if I ignored my diet, if I ignored my friends and neighbors.
I could accomplish a whole lot more if I just shut everything else around me.
The problem is is that leads to burn out, that leads to stress and it certainly doesn't win me any favors in my circle of friends.
So I think we need to put a pause on this particular quote and think about when it's appropriate to defer things to another day.
And whether that's work-related or perhaps that's something in your personal life, it's important for you to be able to push something to the future when it's appropriate.
Now in order to debunk this quote from Benjamin Franklin, I'm gonna use Benjamin Franklin.
That's right, I'm actually gonna use something that he is also famously known for.
In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin included his regular daily schedule.
He outlined the things that he typically did in a day, everything that he did from when he got up in the morning at 5 a.m. all the way until he retired at 10 in the evening.
And what I love about reviewing his schedule is that if you look at his post-work activities, when you look at what he did after 6 p.m., it was very much un-work related.
In fact he reserved this time for things like music or diversions or good conversation.
He wasn't just working all hours of the day tucked up in an office somewhere.
No, he made sure that he spent some time with the people he loved, the people he cared about and other pursuits, including the arts.
So how does this apply to us in our day?
Well of course Benjamin Franklin didn't have email. He didn't have his smartphone going off every other minute.
But I think we can apply some of the things that Benjamin Franklin taught us.
Whether you work in an office, whether you work at home, whether you work for yourself or for a large corporation, I think it's important that you set a particular deadline, a particular time of day where you will relinquish your work activities.
I know most of us don't have a finite end of workday.
It's not like the old Fintstones cartoon where a bell is rung and everybody goes home.
You're probably even encouraged to work most of your waking hours.
But regardless of your working situation, I encourage you to select a particular end of workday and do your best to stick to it so you can reserve time for the people and also the pursuits and hobbies that are most important to you.
Don't just get caught up in the grind of accomplishing as much as you possibly can today because you're only going to lead yourself into a spiral of burn out, increased stress and poor performance in the long run.
So let's learn something important from Mr. Benjamin Franklin.
Not that we need to jam as much as we possibly can in a given day, but it's important to finish the day.
Finish our work at a particular time so that we can have time for family, friends and other personal pursuits.
Now I'd love to hear from you. What type of productivity myths or common productivity phrases do you dislike and do you think we should debunk?
And also I'd love to hear what you think about Benjamin Franklin's schedule.
Do you think some of the things that he talks about, some of the things that he did so many years ago are still applicable today?
I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
