How Slacking Can Be Good for Your Productivity

Posted on February 21, 2013 by Henrieta Riesco, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

So, here you are, working through your daily tasks, balancing e-mail, files, meetings, phone calls, deadlines. Over the months or years, you’ve been trying to perfect the routines to achieve the highest efficiency possible. You are a multitasking master, you know plenty of time saving tricks, and you can seamlessly follow the processes. In spite of all this, you feel like you’ve been working really hard, making each and every minute count; you are exhausted at the end of the day and you may still be just as frustrated.

Well, what you need, my friend, is “essential slacking”. I can imagine people having really bad images of slackers – they imagine someone in a messy office drinking soda while playing solitaire on the computer, or girls in the café downstairs, chatting about personal issues. That’s not really what I mean, although perhaps a bit of that wouldn’t hurt. We get caught so much in our daily routines and in perfecting our moves that we often forget about the big picture; we may forget the real goal, and we may become isolated work bees without creativity. Innovation may seem like something only scientists and researchers can do.

What I mean by this “essential slacking” is simply a deliberate pause in your routine. Notice yourself spinning the wheel, working hard, multitasking… and just stop. Sit for a while, walk around, talk to someone, and do whatever it takes to take you out of your routine. And then imagine your work from a higher perspective. Remind yourself of what you’re doing, why you are doing it, and what the whole purpose is.

Imagine what you would do if you had only 2 hours to finish what you are working on instead of a week. Forget about the process and think about the goal. Maybe you will suddenly remember a person who has some expertise that you may use instead of doing everything all by yourself. Can you team up? Maybe you’ll stop worrying about the colors or fonts. Is there a simpler way to do this? And maybe you will just focus on the most important parts and streamline your original plan into something short and crisp. What is really necessary and why?

Getting into essential slacking is difficult at first. Whenever you‘re focused on something, you feel the rush and working on a task may give you a great feeling of self worth. It’ll feel uncomfortable to stop. You may fear that if you stop now, you’ll lose the momentum, you’ll get distracted, and you’ll lose the thought. Come on! Have a little trust in your ability to go back to whatever you are doing after some time. And risk a little too. Maybe you’ll forget an idea that you have right now. But with essential slacking, you may come up with even better ideas, that will actually save you time and create a bigger impact.

Essential slacking allows you to stop and rethink your approach. There will always be more work than we can do. But the point isn’t to work the hardest. Let‘s face it. What’s behind being successful in anything that people do? It’s getting the right things done. And essential slacking will prevent you from losing yourself in your own world, from getting blind to the reality, and from wasting time trying to spin your wheel faster and faster.