Fed up with productivity hacks? How to be a calmer mom (who still get stuff done)
Sprinting across campus, assignment in hand, I ran as though I might turn into a pumpkin if I arrived a minute past the noon deadline.
For years, I thought this was how it felt to be productive. Hurried. A little stressed. Hopped up on adrenaline. It was exhilarating. It was also exhausting!
Wait. Isn’t this how being productive is supposed to feel?
When I went to university, our assignments weren’t emailed in. They were hand delivered. On paper. Into a locked wooden box with a page-width slot just below the lid.
Those hand-written engineering labs were due at 12 pm sharp on Friday. The box might still be there at 12:05, but it might not. My dread of missing a deadline - and the humiliation and docked marks that came with it - propelled me, breathless and sweating, up multiple flights of stairs.
Often several assignments plus a lab were all due the same day. Those Fridays (and the night before) felt like very productive days. I finished a lot of work. I handed things in. I got things done.
Sprinting to meet a deadline. Photo credit: Andy Beales on Unsplash.
To me, being productive looked like late nights and early mornings. It felt like having every moment scheduled. Racing to eat so I could finish one more assignment. Running from the lab to the gym. Sprinting to meet deadlines.
I thought productivity was about producing as much as possible, as fast as possible.
Turns out, productivity doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
There must be a less frantic way to be productive
You don't sprint a marathon and none of us can sustain a sprint for days and months at a time.
I started to feel something was off when I read an excerpt of The Tyranny of the Urgent, back in grad school. This little book is written from a faith perspective and warns how the urgent things can squeeze out things of greater value—of more importance in the long term.
It resonated deeply with me. I didn’t want to spend my life on urgent, short-lived pursuits, and miss the important stuff! I still don’t.
I began to realize that quick-moving, get-'er-done version of productivity has its place, but it's no way to live.
Checking items off my to-do list feels like progress, but what if the important things never make it on to the list? What if I miss the important stuff because I’m busy checking off all the little urgent items?
You can only “do more” for so long. And what if you’re doing more of the wrong stuff? What then? Photo credit: Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash
Sometimes, things do need to get done quickly and we move quickly to do them. But that pace is better suited to spurts.
You don't sprint a marathon and none of us can sustain a sprint for days and months at a time. You have to stop for a rest every now and then. You also have to slow down enough to check your route, or you might end up spending a whole lot of energy to arrive someplace you never wanted to be.
Doing the most important thing means NOT doing other things
pro·duc·tiv·i·ty
the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.
- Oxford Dictionary
Producing as much as possible as quickly as possible is a legitimate definition of productivity. It’s appropriate if you’re working on an assembly line, producing widgets or bottle caps. Millions of these are produced. The whole point is to make them with consistent quality, each one identical to the others, as quickly as possible.
But we’re raising children not running an assembly line.
Children aren’t much like widgets—they’re unique, they push back, they wander. Often what children need most cannot be given quickly.
And so the kind of productivity we’ve learned from industry doesn’t work in the home. It doesn’t fit anytime we are relating to people, helping them grow and develop in character and in good habits.
(Yes, habits can help productivity, but it is a LONG slow road between beginning to teach your child good habits and having them carry them out quickly and efficiently.)
A calmer kind of productivity for moms
Productivity—the ability to get things done quickly and efficiently—… is a useful tool, but it’s not our only tool. We are building a house, a home. Productivity is the hammer, not the house. It’s not the thing we’re working toward. It’s just one tool that helps us do our work.
As moms, we walk a line. We want to get things done, yet we know the most important things rarely show up on our to-do lists. Listen to my child. Model patience. Teach coping techniques. Don’t freak out. Pray. Breathe. Get outside.
This is why Megan Sumrell’s definition is so powerful. She says "Productivity is getting the most important things done in a way that doesn't stress you out."
The most important things. Not ALL the things. We’ll never get all the things done. Let’s accept that and figure out which is (are) the MOST important tasks for today.
For example, after a rough day at school, it might matter less than you spend a lot of time prepping the ideal, organic, made-from-scratch snack. It might matter more that you sit with your son and play a card game while he eats his sub-par after school snack.
In this case, you might need to let go of your food related goal in order to tend to your distressed child. If eating fresh from scratch is your priority, do it. Just don't default to prioritizing food choices when something else is actually more important.
Being good with a hammer is helpful when you’re building a house, but if a hammer is your only tool and hammering, your only skill… Yikes! That project won’t get off the ground.
Productivity is like that hammer. We definitely need it, but we get into trouble when we rely on it too heavily.
Productivity—the ability to get things done quickly and efficiently—has its place. It’s a useful tool, but it’s not our only tool. We are building a house, a home. Productivity is like a hammer, not the house. It’s not the thing we’re working toward. It’s just one tool that helps us do our work.
Don’t be a Toad - Get smart about your to-do lists
“Help!” cried Toad. “My list is blowing away. What will I do without my list?”
“Hurry!” said Frog. “We will run and catch it.”
“No!” shouted Toad. “I cannot do that.”… “running after my list is not one of the things that I wrote on my list of things to do!”
- Frog and Toad Together by Arthur Lobel
While you and I would never follow our to-do list as mindlessly as Toad, our to-do lists can still trick us into feeling productive while missing the important stuff. So, before you start listing all the little tasks and jobs you might do today, make the hard decision—What are your MOST important things today?
Experts say we can only remember and focus on up to 3 main tasks for the day. NOT 5-10! Try to get it down to 3.
Let’s apply this to work related tasks. Some days, I carry this I-should-be-working-on-my-blog feeling. I resent how little uninterrupted time I have to sit and write. When I do finally work on the blog, I don’t feel I’ve accomplished or finished anything because there is always more I could do. That leaves me feeling grumpy and discouraged.
In contrast, when I nail down one (or a few) blog related task for the day, I can make progress whenever I have a moment. I can print out a draft of this post and edit it in the car while I wait to pick up kids from school. When that’s done, I feel good about the progress I’ve made.
But what about at home where the to-do list is unending?! Let’s take grocery day as an example. I drafted this post the week before Canadian Thanksgiving. That Wednesday, before the long weekend, my only home related job was groceries. I used to think I could be more efficient by cooking immediately after buying groceries. It left me completely defeated, with a disaster of a kitchen late into the night, unpacked bags of groceries still on the floor. It was a mess! Now, grocery day means no cooking, no multiple loads of laundry, no deep cleans. Just groceries. I mean, yes, people still needed to eat on grocery day, but it’s pizza or a pre-made Costco meal. Buying groceries—checking the list, checking what’s in the pantry, buying, unloading and putting them all away—that one job actually includes 3-4 tasks. And that’s enough for one day.
Try this now
You already know you can’t do it all. You’re tired of relentlessly trying to do as much as possible as fast as possible. But it’s hard—really hard—to let things drop. To say, I’m not going to do this.
Saying no is always hard.
Steve Jobs said “I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying 'no' to 1,000 things. You have to pick carefully.” Now, he was speaking about building a company, but building a family also means saying “no” to many, many things.
Without well chosen no’s, we will drift and be so busy, we’ll miss what matters.
If what matters most is not clear to you, try this.
“1. Write your to-do list. I mean ALL the things vying for your attention, even they aren’t today’s problems. Get it ALL our of your head.
2. Look at your list. Which items don’t really need to be done? Cross them out.
3. What can be done by someone else? Put a name next to it and hand it off.
4. What doesn’t need to be done now? Put a date next to it and put a reminder in/on your calendar to revisit it later.
5. What’s left? Now can you narrow it down to a few items that matter most for today? ”
And the more we intentionally figure out our most important tasks on the daily, the more we introduce breathing room so we can begin to answer (or remember!) what matters MOST long term!
How to be A calmer mom (who still gets stuff done)
Scheduling every moment feels productive. You’re getting A LOT of things done. But that version of productivity comes with at least three problems.
Pacing - No one sprints a marathon. Raising children is a marathon.
Prioritizing - In our hurry to get lots done, we may miss the things that matter most.
Little people - They are drawn to exploring—ooh! a squirrel!—not efficiency. As mothers, we’re raising a family, not running an assembly line. It’s an entirely different job description.
We don’t want to miss the important stuff and we don’t want to burn out.
We must accept that we will never be able to do all the things. And so, we stop sprinting, catch our breath, calm our pounding hearts—and trust we won’t turn into a pumpkin even if we miss a deadline!
Instead we ask the bigger—harder—question. What matters MOST today?