Become More Productive by Slowing Down

Confessions of a connected worker:

• I’ve responded to text messages while driving.
• I’ve checked emails through my mobile phone while lying in bed at the crack of dawn.
• I’ve logged into Twitter to follow the lives of new-media colleagues -- during a family vacation.

Depending on your own habits, you either think my behavior is completely normal, or that I’m a little too obsessed with staying in the loop. Steve Prentice would argue the latter.

Prentice is the author of the new book Cool Down: Getting Further by Going Slower and says knowledge workers’ addiction to speed is damaging our interpersonal skills, skewing our work/life balance and limiting our creative thinking. We’re distracted by nonstop requests for our attention and easily lose focus. We “feel [we] have to work more, just to keep up,” Prentice says.

Prentice contends we need to slow down to get ahead. Among his recommendations:

• Don’t Keep Your Email Open All Day: Your workplace isn’t likely to fall apart if you don’t see or respond to an incoming message for an hour or two. When you’re working on an important project, close your inbox or turn off new-message alerts to limit potential interruptions.
• Don’t Skip Lunch: Getting away from your desk and enjoying a healthy meal energizes you for the afternoon.
• Allow Creative Thoughts Time to Percolate: Make sure to capture new ideas as they come to you -- and then let them go for a while. Creative solutions will often come to you when you’re doing something other than consciously working on the problem that needs solving.
• Don’t Take Your Work Home: Leave your work at the office, and spend your time outside the workplace taking up hobbies and enjoying the company of your friends and family.

What do you think of this list? What is your workplace advice for staying focused, being productive and thinking creatively?

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