Saving 30 seconds or saving half an hour?

I was sat behind someone at the traffic lights the other day and when the lights changed they stalled their car. The person in the car behind me started honking their horn, shaking their fist at the windscreen and from the looks of it inventing new swear words.

In the end no one got stuck for long. I estimated the delay to be about 5 or 6 seconds. They started their car quickly and off we all went.

This got me thinking. Do you worry about saving seconds?

I remember talking to someone a few years ago about how they micro-managed their time. They used to work out ways to save key strokes on their computer, their kitchen was laid out in the most efficient way.

Their goal was to save as many seconds as they could, which they said "made them more productive".

For me, this would just add pressure and stress!

We have software like Evernote that can help us become more productive but we can also use these tools to micro-manage and make our lives more complicated.

I'm the kind of person who likes to save half an hour or an hour. I don't worry about the seconds.

I used to produce a monthly report for a client and the software didn't have an export function so it took me about half an hour of copy pasta every month.

I changed the software. Bought something new that had an export button. This saved me half an hour a month and I really did feel more productive.

I used to worry about the seconds but I found it added pressure and made me grumpy. My day was so congested and micro-managed that if something came along to disturb the routine (like a client phone call) then I was stressed out trying to get back into the routine.

This type of workflow is not sustainable.

Once I relaxed my thinking and stopped worrying about a task taking one minute longer than it should I became much more relaxed.

I also don't have much on my daily to do list but that's for another day.

Being productive vs feeling productive

When I micro-managed my time I was giving myself the 'feeling' of being productive and now in hindsight I was probably less productive because my workflows were too structured and I was worrying about seconds and minutes.

I now take the view that being productive is completing goals and projects and not completing tasks.

Completing the goal is being productive. Completing a task is feeling productive.

Workflow reviews are important

I tend to have a couple of quiet months a year, July and December. I use these months to review all my workflows, tasks, automations and processes for both work and personal projects.

I used to go through my recurring tasks and ask myself "Should I do this?" but I always ended up saying yes because doing that task was a habit.

I now ask myself "What would happen if I didn't do this task?".

This gives me a better perspective on how important the task is and if I can ditch it or revise it.

I also look for big wins with my reviews. Where can I save myself a lot of time rather than just a few seconds or minutes.

We have all these fancy tools like Evernote at our disposal but do we use them to make our lives easier and more productive?

Do you worry about saving seconds or do you go for the big wins?

Have a great weekend,

All the best,

Jon