Do you know your Performance Cycle?

Humane Productivity

So the other day I came across a colleague's post sharing that they had just completed the LinkedIn Learning course - Humane Productivity by Rahaf Harfoush. As an avid LinkedIn Learning Learner (and soon to be Instructor - watch this space!) and as one who had been struggling recently with my own productivity, this title caught my attention. I decided to do the course. I've watched many courses on productivity but this one was different.

The Performance Cycle

One thing in particular that stood out for me was the idea that we have different ways of working efficiently - something Rahaf calls the performance cycle. The reason we are sometimes (or maybe often) unproductive is because we assume we should all be working for a certain number of hours at a time and we feel guilty when we don't do so. That certainly has been the case for me. However, there are apparently other key parts of your performance cycle like warming up or preparation for your task and recovery. To quote Rahaf :

...in this relentless pursuit of nonstop busy-ness, when we start to get tired is when the hustle gurus tell us to just dig a little deeper and keep going for a little bit longer. We've been taught that we can muscle our way to better ideas and ignore our fatigue. So we stick it out and we tell ourselves that if we hustle a little harder, we'll be more successful in the long run. The final stage of the performance cycle is recovery. And it's the step that is most often skipped and ignored. You must take an intentional period of time to replenish and recharge your energy. Once you're well rested, you'll have enough energy to start the cycle all over again.

Getting to know your own Performance Cycle

Rahaf puts out a challenge to track the way you work so as to understand your own performance cycle and not just follow what works for others. She gave the example of herself, she takes about 20 minutes to prepare for a task and 90 minutes in the flow of a task compared to her friend who takes just 10-15 minutes in task flow. This got me wondering where I fall in the spectrum of things. If you know me well you know that I have a spreadsheet for almost everything I deem important. So it was a no brainer - I had to track my way of working and figure out what this looks like for me.

What I learnt from tracking my Performance Cycle for a week

I took to Excel and accounted for my time from Monday to Friday last week. The results were life changing. My top discoveries were:

1. My productivity increased by simply tracking what I was doing and accounting for every bit of my work day
2. I also confirmed that I have a short attention span! - something I had always suspected
3. I learnt that my task flow duration differs depending on the type of task. For example working on Python code had me in flow for just 15 minutes at a time whereas for more creative tasks like content creation I was able to remain in flow for 60 minutes or more

In essence I figured out that I need little to no preparation time before diving into a task and that I could remain in a state of flow for a maximum of 15 minutes, especially on technical tasks like the ones I spend majority of my work time on. I needed frequent breaks and needed to switch to something else often to keep engaged. I also tried the tip of doing nothing i.e staring at a wall or ceiling for 15 minutes as a way of replenishing and bouncing back once my brain was tired - it helped!

Now over to you!

I really enjoyed this experiment and it was indeed life changing working around my own productivity patterns. I challenge you to do the same! I'd be interested to hear of any interesting emerging patterns in your own productivity cycle. If you're interested in completing the LinkedIn Learning course "Humane Productivity" yourself, here it is