Category: Being Productive

Synergy is the idea that 1 + 1 = 3.

Your results alone. Plus another person’s results alone. Equals less than the results of us working together in creative collaboration.

I’m sure you can confirm this based on previous first hand experiences in your life.

What’s also true, however, is 1 + 1 = 1.

Your results alone. Plus another person’s results alone. Equals more than the results of us working together in creative inhibition.

And I know you’ve worked with people who can confirm this idea.

So the question then becomes: who’s who in your life?

…And how can you spend more time with the people who create that synergistic effect on work results?

…But maybe most importantly (since this focuses on what’s within your control vs what’s outside of it): how can you better facilitate creative collaboration vs creative inhibition? I.e. How can you be a better synergy facilitator?

…Can you be a better listener? Can you be more kind? Can you create a more safe space? Can you ask better questions? Can you offer a more playful, fun energy? …And so on.

Because you can either invest in the above inner work to potentially create a results multiplier in your life or you can keep throwing your hands into the air, complaining, and choosing to just, “do it all yourself, because working with others is a waste of time…”

The choice is yours.

One of the most annoying tasks I used to do before publishing a video was typing out the captions. One letter at a time. One line at a time. One time-marker-in and time-marker-out at a time.

A one minute video could easily take 30 minutes to caption edit.

This is an excellent AI use case.

If I could push a button and have all of my words captioned into a video? I would do that without hesitation—it would save me so much time.

And it’s not even like it’s taking a job away from somebody who would love to do that kind of work—typing out captions manually is a pain in the butt for just about anyone I’d say.

What I refuse to do, however, is push a button and have AI write the pre-captioned words for me.

There’s a magic that happens in the labor of writing.

One that literally updates my brain’s software in real time… one that sparks creativity as I push and pull and plug various different thoughts into and out of each other… one that uncovers gold nuggets as I dig into various life experiences and memories with upgraded software and enhanced creativity…

There’s no magic in having the words written for you.

But having your words—your hard-earned, carefully-curated, imperfectly-selected words—transcribed, turned into captions, or otherwise used after the fact… is a mundane bore of a task that could easily be outsourced to AI and could easily buy you back mountains of time that you could spend… you know… laboring for magic instead.

Worry can be productive so long as it’s turned into strategy.

If you’re packing for a trip, for example, and you’re worried about forgetting something… that energy can be converted into building a list that you can check and double check before you leave.

But understand this: once the strategy is done, worry is no longer productive.

…It becomes an energy leak.

One that drains you of one of your most precious life resources—especially before and during a trip. And it’s here that you should shift strategies away from building lists and focus that energy on plugging leaks.

What I tell myself, for example, is that I’m resourceful, I’m flexible, and I trust I’ll find a way to figure things out—even if I forget something. Heck, I’ll try to even turn forgetting into an adventure and lean into serendipity.

This past weekend, for example, I left my $600 music show wristband at home. Which was probably one of the most important items to NOT FORGET. And, yup, I didn’t even realize it until I was already 1,000+ miles away, driving to meet up with my friends for the event.

But… guess what? …After a quick freak out and some calls… I figured it out.

Things won’t always have a neat and tidy and exciting ending. But, excessive and unnecessary worry won’t help that either.

…When you can learn how to plug energy leaks, though? And how to let go of worry? And how to trust in yourself? …I suspect things actually WILL turn out in the aforementioned ways WAY more often than you might think.

One of my employees mentioned struggling to get her work done after being asked to take on new work.

What I told her was simple: you’re being asked to take on new work because we see you as the person who can help us solve this problem in our business.

And what I suggested she do is prioritize her work tasks and continue to take on the highest level, most important tasks on that list (it’s what adds value to her position and what leads to better titles, positions, and pay) and to delegate the rest of the lower level, easier to do tasks.

What doesn’t lead to better titles, positions, and pay is overcommitting and underperforming. Burning out isn’t good for anybody—not her and not the business. And neither is spreading herself too thin day-in and day-out and pretending like everything is fine.

And if delegating isn’t an option for you in the context of your life… then consider deploying the same strategy, but automating or deleting those lowest level tasks instead.

Something has got to give.

And if it’s not some of your tasks… then it’s probably gonna be you.

One of my college aged staff members told me she felt guilty for “bumming it” during her school’s winter break.

She said she was sleeping in, lazily spending her waking hours on the couch burrito-wrapped in a warm blanket watching Disney movies and doing… well… not much else.

What I told her is guilt will ruin the purpose of break.

I explained that her pendulum has swung proportionally to the side of recovery as it was pushed to the side of exertion (during her semester)—and that it should be honored, not defiled.

During her semester she’s a high performing, “A-Type” personality who has perfectionist tendencies and demands excellence of herself from the second she wakes up until the second she goes to sleep at night.

…And this pushes the pendulum pretty hard in one direction!

By the time winter break hits, of course she shuts down and goes into recovery mode—the pendulum needs to swing proportionally in the opposite direction. For some, they burnout and it swings in that direction at the most inconvenient times. But for her, it swung in alignment with her time off anyway—and she shouldn’t ruin the recovery time by mixing in guilt.

The reminder is simple: recovery needs to be prioritized and honored as much as exertion is.

The pendulum can only be pushed in one direction so far…

Years ago I read Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be by Steven Pressfield.

Today, I was reminded that when I sit in my work chair, my mind modes to work; when I sit on my couch, my mind modes to relax and unwind; and when I sit on my home office chair, my mind modes to reading, writing, and meditating.

The premise of the above mentioned book is exactly this: create a sacred space where only one type of task or theme of tasks happens. Then, like Pavlov’s dogs, all you need to do is sit your ass in that space and your mind will mode accordingly.

…An excellent strategy if you are hours deep into a mindless couch slump and you need to get some work done. Just tell your mind you’re just going to sit in a different space and see what happens. And if you’ve done your conditioning correct, the rest will take care of itself.

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P.s. Here are 10 of my favorite quotes from Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be.