Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash
Many corporate workspaces encourage their workers to do more. You are praised for going above and beyond, being selfless, for getting out of your lane and taking on additional projects or responsibilities outside of your core day to day role. Sometimes this can be very serving for your personal and career growth, and sometimes there are times when less is more. It's basic economics that at some stage there is a point of diminishing returns when doing more will not get you more. Instead you might need to do less at work to attract more.
So what are 3 easy ways you can do less and attract more at work?
1. Use your full holiday (vacation) allowance
Afterall you're entitled to it, and it's a key component of your compensation package. In simple math, for every holiday day you don't take, you are taking a voluntary pay cut. So less work in this instance, will mean more money. Shawn Achor (Big Potential: Five Secrets of Reaching Higher by Powering Those Around You, p.174), also reminds us that scientifically it has been proven that taking time off improves our productivity and performance, again creating a natural boost in terms of how you can attract more at work by doing less.
2. Be focused
Focus creates prioritisation, allowing you to work smarter, not harder. When you know exactly what your metrics are, future career goals, personal aspirations etc, you can focus mostly on tasks that move these goals forwards, and say no to everything else (boundaries). Not sure where to start to create focus? To cultivate focus, I'd advise using one or a combination of goal setting techniques like SMART goal setting, OKRs (objective key results) or WIGs (Wildly important goals), paired with business or life coaching.
3. Communicate effectively
Nearly everyone I meet in the workplace could benefit from spending more time thinking about how they could communicate more effectively (myself included). Clear communicators reduce their workload and become more efficient, as people are clear what is being said or asked of them. The opposite, unclear communication, creates a lack of clarity which often produces back and forth, time wasting, and often leads to tasks needing to be redone due to a misunderstanding. With every ask you make, or every message you send, ask yourself "How can I make this clearer?". This check in will likely make you realise perhaps you're using the wrong message for your medium (e.g. if it's super long, it might well be a conversation or a video), maybe you need to add a "by when" date, have you split out who is responsible for what, is it clear if a reply is needed etc. And even when you do all this, your message can still be misread or misconstrued, so checking in for understanding is a critical habit to get into.
Let me illustrate this:
Unclear
Can you send me over your OKRs when you get a chance?
Clear
By EOD Friday 24th, please send me your OKRs via email. Do you understand what is expected of you?
Do you see the positive difference?
Focus and communicating effectively work very powerfully together, as if you have clear goals that are well documented, it is easier to communicate effectively about them e.g. what help or support you might need to achieve them, your timelines etc.
To conclude, I hope these 3 easy tactics show you how you can do less at work and attract more at work.
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