Tag: working

Something to consider on a Sunday night…

Posted on by philipdodson

Don’t work hard, work deep.

Hard work, as in working silly long hours, not allowing ourselves any break, driving ourselves relentlessly to get stuff done and to be seen by others as hard-working is not hard work it is ego-driven behaviour to match a story we are telling ourselves and self-image we want the world to see.

Anything of real value in life requires commitment, dedication and sacrifice of easy and shallow things, however, it is deep work that matters not hard work.

We can achieve work of the highest value that matters to us and others by committing to a few hours of deep work each day rather than this false notion of hard work. If we work deeply, and in a focused state for a few hours, we then have the rest of our time to focus on the other things in life. The stuff that really matters…like doing the things we truly love to do and spending time with the people who deeply matter to us.

Hard work that is all-consuming damages our mental and physical health, It prohibits us from doing the things that really matter, and as we all have a finite amount of concentration to be able to do high-value quality work what happens is if we work too long the quality of our work deteriorates and then creates even more work to fix the mistakes.

Doing less is more when we work deeply. The deeper we work, the less we need to work because the value of what we produce is significantly higher than hard work. It is deep work, not hard work that matters.

The guilt loop and how to avoid it

Posted on by philipdodson

Often, we get stuck in a guilt loop in life.

When we are supposed to be relaxing, we are feeling guilty about the stuff we didn’t do, when we were working. Therefore, we do not relax, we are not in the moment and we are stressed and feel guilty about all the things we could have done.

When we get back to work, instead of being productive, we feel resentful toward work because we did not get to relax. Thus we start putting things off again and feel unmotivated to do our work.

Then, we get to relaxation time again, and no surprise, we do not relax as the guilt comes back about not working and all things we should have done while we were meant to be working.

There are some simple ways to get out of this.

Firstly, when we are working, organise our time effectively to prioritise things that really matter, thus avoiding low-hanging easy and repetitive tasks, focusing using our very best deep work on the high-value task that makes a difference. As a consequence of our more focused deep work on high stuff, we do less, but get a greater return for that focused effort as we are doing the most important stuff.

We actually end up with more time to relax and we get quality relaxation time as we do not feel guilty, we have done the important stuff, the stuff that enables us to have relaxation time to enjoy.

Secondly, our worth as a person is never determined by anything, it is unconditional. Therefore, if we do not get something done, there is no reason to feel guilt.

Thirdly, if we do the most important stuff and stop feeling guilty and worthy instead no matter what, we not only get better at our work, but we get even better at enjoying relaxation time. This leads us to do even better work and then we are able to have even more relaxation time.

We swap a guilt loop with a joy loop.