Tag: Knowledge Work

  • Managing your Energy

    Photo by Vlad Cheu021ban on Pexels.com

    The above image represents what I think when people say you need to be energetic at work. Since I could not do this, I just gave up.

    That was when I saw a video that YouTuber and productivity savior1, Matt D’Avella. The video is titled, “Why you’re so bad at managing time?” Do not be carried away by the title. It is an energy management video in the guise of a time management video.

    YouTube video version of this article

    Time Management was introduced by factories to make sure that workers worked like clockwork in the factory. Although many people work in factories today, many of us today are knowledge workers.

    As I have said before in this blog, I do knowledge work. So, this is something that I want to try.

    Matt says energy management works better than time management. He gives a few suggestions on how to work better as per your energy.

    Find your peak performance period:

    Matt says that everyone has a peak performance period. A time when they have the most energy. He suggests using a notebook or an app to track your energy daily. One can then identify their peak performance period. This time can change or stay the same.

    Find how much energy your task requires:

    This is also an estimation. Your estimation. How much energy do you need to do something. Split your tasks into high energy and low energy tasks.

    Refill your cup:

    Matt says, “rest is productive”. We should take rest before we get tired and not after we get tired.

    Make flexible to-do lists:

    The to-do list is where this energy management comes into action. Do tasks that take most energy during your high energy period. Do the low energy tasks when you feel low.

    Don’t be hard on yourself when things don’t work out. Remember that you are not perfect.

    Matt reminds us, “We may all have 24 hours in a day but they are not the same 24 hours.” We are asked rhetorically how we compare to achievers like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk who have the same 24 hours we do. But, the difference is that they probably do not have to do their own laundry. They probably outsource these tasks unlike us.

    1 Matt does a lovey ad for Squarespace where he creates a website for a cult of his own called Productivity Savior. He creates a website for the same using Squarespace called productivitysavior.com.  I appreciate the amount of work he puts into his videos. Whois shows that someone has registered the URL.

    Tumblr version of this post.

  • Knowledge Work

    Ryan Holiday had the above podcast episode with Cal Newport for the Daily Stoic podcast. While both practitioners shared their ideas of how they practiced their crafts, I especially liked the part where they spoke about knowledge work.

    I consider what I do as knowledge work.

    Cal shares that Peter Drucker defined knowledge work in the 1950s. Since then, he says not much has changed. Workers are given a task and are then left alone to do their task. The organisation does not interfere in the performance of this task.

    He suggests that probably knowledge work may improve with the involvement of the organisation. He suggests that NBA and NFL teams in the US do this much better. They know what they want to get out of a player in terms of his personal performance, his team’s performance in the game and in the league.

    On improving our own knowledge work, Cal suggests that we do lifestyle-centric career planning. This involves first understanding the type of lifestyle we would like to lead and then select a career accordingly for best results. For the first two years of one’s career, he suggests not letting anything fall through the cracks. This makes sure that managers stay out of the way and gives the knowledge worker more autonomy.

    Another snippet that I liked in their conversation is how Cal approaches a new idea. He says that knowledge work involves a lot of thinking and the present day has no slack for this very important part of a knowledge worker’s work. He builds the idea by thinking about it, talking to others and writing about it. This progression places more and more burden to be structured and relevant levels of research.

    Tumblr version