How to Multitask and be Super Productive in Procurement
The key to productivity is different for everyone. Here are some unconventional methods that might just work for you.
Every business guru out there has their own secret to productivity.
Tony Robbins takes freezing cold showers and breathes in pure oxygen from a machine. Oprah meditates. Media mogul Ariana Huffington avoids her phone for the first hour after she wakes up.
Then there are the loyal followers of Robin Sharma’s 5am Club. Robin swears an early start is the key to becoming ultra successful.
Why? “Because in the quietude of dawn you can reclaim your true power and carry that asset with you [in] the hours that follow.” Err, ok then.
Though not all billionaires are part of Robin’s club. Warren Buffett wakes up at 6:30 and often starts his day at McDonald’s for breakfast. Then he reportedly chugs three cans of Coke before hitting the office.
What’s the ultimate secret to productivity then?
How to be productive
You’ll find no shortage of conflicting advice on productivity and time management out there (I’m looking at you, LinkedIn feed).
That’s because there isn’t one right answer. If there was, you wouldn’t be here distracting yourself from whatever you should be working on.
So stop searching for the ultimate key to productivity. Instead, search for the ultimate key to YOUR productivity.
What will help you channel that focus, especially when you’re juggling lots of projects at once?
Change the way you think about productivity
If the conventional advice about staying focused hasn’t worked for you, it’s time to think about things differently. Try some of these unconventional approaches (and none of them involves waking up before the sun, I promise!)
Embrace the suck
If you are dreading an item on your to-do list, be honest with yourself. That means openly embracing the fact that the task will be hard, boring, frustrating – whatever it is that makes you avoid it.
Research shows this actually works. “The key to getting tasks off your to-do list is to harness the psychological discomfort of dread, which is negative and unpleasant—and therefore a feeling that most people seek to relieve,” writes journalist Nicole Dieker.
Stop making so many decisions
Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and even President Obama are known for wearing the same thing every day. Zuckerberg has his grey shirts. Jobs had his black turtlenecks. And Obama only wore black or grey suits. Well, there was the tan suit fiasco, but we won’t get into that now.
Why would these leaders repeat the same clothes all the time? It’s about brain capacity. The less time you spend thinking about what to wear, the more time you have to focus on things that matter more.
So if you want to be more productive, it’s time to free space to make more important decisions. What can you automate in your job?
Tim Ferris, author of the Four Hour Work week, encourages routine. But not the bland, restrictive kind.
“Instead of seeing routines as an undesirable daily grind..reframe routines as scaffolding around which you can craft your best life,” Ferris explains in his popular podcast. “Without that, every day is a free for all, and it’s effectively an unwritten script that you have to write every single day before you can even think about how to perform the script best. You have to write it. And that draws upon your very limited resources in an incredibly draining way.“
Get unbusy
Tim also recommends to stop being busy.
“Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action,” Tim says.
“Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.”
Ooof. Instead of applauding yourself for how many hours you put in, focus on what you actually get done. And keep fine-tuning your work process until you value hours less and results more.
Forget about time management!
Psychologist Adam Grant agrees.
Instead of time management, Grant suggests focusing on attention management. “Prioritise the people and projects that matter, and it won’t matter how long anything takes,” Grant writes in an article for the New York Times.
“For most of my career, the most frequent question I’ve gotten is: “How do I get more done?”’
“Sometimes people ask because they know I’m an organisational psychologist, and productivity is one of my areas of expertise,” Grant adds. “But the truth is that I don’t feel very productive. I’m constantly falling short of my daily goals for progress. Being prolific is not about time management. There are a limited number of hours in the day, and focusing on time management just makes us more aware of how many of those hours we waste.
“Attention management is the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places and at the right moments.”
Stop reading time management books
This idea seems counterintuitive, but you don’t need to read every time-management gurus’ books or articles to become productive.
As Grant puts it: “I’m pretty sure there’s an eighth habit of highly effective people. They don’t spend all their time reading about the seven habits of highly effective people.”
Bottom line
In short, your key to productivity is like physical exercise. There are all kinds of different plans, routines, styles, and experts you could follow. Which is the best exercise program? The one you actually stick with.
So, don’t be afraid to try out different strategies for keeping your focus until you find one (or a combination) that works for you – even if you try something a bit unconventional. For example, I know a CEO who holds annual board meetings in a conference room in prison. The reason? Everyone has to check all electronic devices at the door. No distractions, more focus.
Or maybe you want to join the thousands of people who hire productivity nannies to watch them over Zoom while they work. No seriously, this is a real thing.
It’s not easy to be productive in procurement when you’re wrestling with competing priorities. But keep experimenting and you’ll find the perfect match for you. See you at 5am (just kidding.)
Want more procurement productivity hacks? Read this!
