Michael Hyatt's Blog, page 18

How Limiting Work Hours Can Improve Your Business

In a comparison of national productivity statistics, research revealed Germans tend to work 600 fewer annual hours than Greeks, yet Germans are 70% more productive. At first glance, this may seem outrageous. But these numbers align with what I’ve seen in my coaching practice. The individuals who constrain their time produce a greater output. This is good news on many levels. For one, when you decrease working hours, you are less susceptible to health and relational issues.

Our culture seems to value overworking. It’s a badge of honor. In some companies, a healthy work-life balance is cause for suspicion instead of celebration. Overworking not only hurts individuals, though. It also negatively impacts the company. Leaders are often unaware that they accomplish less by working more. When this lesson finally sinks in, high achievers will experience greater success and more enjoyable personal lives.

Still skeptical about decreasing your working hours? Consider these three costs of overworking.

1. Missing Out on Life

When you work all the time, you miss opportunities for leisure, rest, non-work-related learning, and family time. It’s easy to convince yourself the overworking is temporary. You believe your efforts now will free up leisure time later. The truth is there’s always more to do. There is no natural end to overdoing it. You have to intentionally break the habit. Working long hours may feel productive, but the longer you work, the stupider you get.

It’s like overtraining at the gym. Elite athletes give their muscles time to recover. This builds up strength instead of breaking down the body. You may feel more accomplished if you work without resting, but you will not see positive impacts on job performance or personal goals.

2. Poor Health Due to Stress

Workplace stress is detrimental to well-being. Refusing to rest can produce consequences that impact every area of your life. In fact, seventy percent of American workers experience stress-related illnesses. Physical symptoms include tension headaches, rapid breathing, increased blood pressure, digestive problems, high cholesterol, and decreased libido.

When these illnesses show up, most leaders reach for antacids and prescription medications instead of addressing the cause of stress. No one is immune to this. My daughter attributes her autoimmune disease to overworking. She recently recounted a story about keeping Pepto-Bismol in the cupholder of her car. She drank straight from the bottle on her way in to work.

I have several stories of my own. On many occasions, I ended up in the ER thinking I was having a heart attack. My MD diagnosed me with acid reflux. It turns out that my recurring pain was panic attacks. When I sought help from a psychologist, I finally managed to address the stress and quit making trips to the ER.

You may feel trapped in a cycle of overworking, but there’s hope for you. Start by acknowledging the issue. Then take control of your circumstances.

3. Decreased Job Satisfaction

It may seem obvious that overworking contributes to turnover. However, I’ve noticed a commonly accepted myth that the most engaged workers are the happiest. This is simply not true. No matter how much you love what you do, overworking will affect your career happiness.

Excessive work hours do not provide greater job satisfaction. They cause burnout. A recent study by the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence showed that 20% of employees experience both high engagement and high burnout. They are simultaneously passionate and frustrated over their work. A consistently high stress level pushes them to search for other jobs.

High stress and high engagement do not have to go together. You can be deeply invested in your mission and manage healthy stress levels. It just takes intention.

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You can be deeply invested in your mission and manage healthy stress levels. It just takes intention.

—MICHAEL HYATT

On the road to increased productivity, you need to unload overwork. The long hours you’ve grown accustomed to may seem impossible to break, but consider the major drain on your life experience, physical and mental health, and job satisfaction. Staying stuck is a choice. Will you settle or soar?

How to Create More Just and Equitable Workplaces (Part 1)

As a business leader, you want to create a strong team that is highly engaged and functions well. Yet in our increasingly diverse society, that’s not always easy to do. Recent events have revealed once again the difference of opportunity and tensions that exist between races. And those problems exist in the workplace too. Many of us are realizing just how much we don’t know about creating a just and equitable workplace for our employees. 

Bad Decisions Don’t Just Happen

A few years back, my team and I prepared for the launch of our new leadership product. We were excited. We even skipped a few key steps in our rush to market. We just knew we had something special. We messaged hundreds of thousands of people about the product, and when the launch was over, we’d only made one sale. That’s right—ONE.

Looking back, our mistakes are clear. We let our intuition and excitement get too far ahead of our logic and reasoning. We skipped over the critical thinking that’s required for this type of business decision. It’s easy to do.

Bad decisions like this don’t just happen. They come from bad thinking.

To protect yourself from bad thinking that leads to business blunders, avoid the three decision-making traps below.

Trap #1: The Rosy Scenario

The name of this trap comes from an old government joke. In Washington D.C. any projection that sounded too optimistic was said to be written by “Rosy Scenario.” As you gather intel for your own decisions, you should be on the lookout for old Rosy.

Most leaders have a strong vision. We know what we want to see in the future, and we have a tendency to fit every new piece of information into that vision. We get so wedded to the outcome that everything, even if it’s contrary, somehow supports the decision we’ve made. This is classic confirmation bias.

That’s the thing we want to stay away from. Get nosy, not rosy. For instance, don’t neglect the low-revenue projections simply because you believe in a product. You have to understand the difference between what you think and what you can prove.

Trap #2: The Wrong Ingredient

When something goes right, we look for underlying principles or ingredients that make up the recipe for success. This practice can bring healthy predictability to business decisions. It can also wreak havoc when we misidentify which ingredient is responsible for the success.

When I was in the publishing world, there was a huge publishing success around a book called The Prayer of Jabez. The book was pretty short. It fell into the gift book category. Universally, publishers agreed the key to success was in the small format of the book. Many invested in the mass production of more small-format books. In the end, almost all of them tanked.

It turns out that The Prayer of Jabez’s popularity was an anomaly. Publishers misidentified the ingredient that caused its success.

It’s easy to mislabel ingredients. You have to do your research. You lose more from a bad decision than you gain from a good one.

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You lose more from a bad decision than you gain from a good one.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Trap #3: Binary Thinking

Binary thinking is also called either/or thinking and the false dilemma. It’s the idea that every choice has only two extreme alternatives. It oversimplifies choices and shows through in statements like, “Either we invest in this new product or we go out of business.”

Leaders fall prey to this all the time. The key is to realize binary situations are rare. There’s usually a third option that reconciles the difference. Leaders tend to skip this critical thinking for the sake of efficiency. In other words, they want to get to a decision, even if it’s the wrong one. Effectiveness should not be sacrificed for efficiency.

When you pull back from a seemingly binary situation, you will likely see more alternatives. Consider asking yourself and your team, “If we couldn’t do either of these, then what would we do?” The third option is often the answer.

To become a better decision-maker, you must become more aware of the traps around you. When you remove rosy scenarios, wrong ingredients, and binary thinking from your playbook, you’ll make smarter decisions and lead to win.

How to Create a Collaborative Team Culture

You try to get the best out of your players, but sometimes it’s hard to tell if they’re on the same team. Morale is low. Team members seem gossipy and disengaged. Nobody’s willing to collaborate. Why is it so hard to get people to work together?

Turning Violent Disagreements into Civil Discourse

When it comes to politics, my brother-in-law Loren and I are on totally different planets. On his annual visits to our home, I count on our high-spirited debates. The surprising thing about our discourse is that it’s actually … civil. Could your family say the same?

Loren has taught me a lot about discussing sensitive topics. He listens intently to my perspective. When my message isn’t sinking in, he says, “Okay, help me understand what you see that I don’t see.”

He takes the role of learner instead of teacher. This involves probing for answers and holding space for my thoughts. The effects are powerful. I find myself more willing to consider what he has to say, too.

This kind of healthy disagreement is rare. For the sake of humanity, we need to learn to get along with people who hold different beliefs from us. Agree or disagree, here are four major steps to staying civil on sensitive subjects.

Guideline 1: Begin where you agree.

About 15 years ago, I attended a conference of 50 attendees from 30 different countries and 4 major religions. It would have been easy to focus on our differences, but the conference organizer built the first exercise to help us find our commonalities. When we knew how we were the same, we could more easily tolerate our differences.

As leaders, we must look for overlapping interests. Even with people with whom we might violently disagree. This is the foundation of a civil conversation.

Guideline 2: Keep an open mind.

The older I get, the more loosely I hold my beliefs and opinions. Instead of thinking about how right I am, I try to ask, “Where am I blind? What am I missing?”

In Kim Scott’s book Radical Candor, she talks about the concept of quiet listening. It’s about seeking to understand, not defend or interrupt. And not forming counterarguments in your head while your opponent speaks. This is really difficult to do, but the results are worth the effort.

Guideline 3: Get your facts straight.

Before sharing your opinion, make sure you have solid evidence and a sound argument. Check what you read on the internet against snopes.com. And watch out for confirmation bias.

Getting your facts straight can be summed up in three tips:

Always be sure of your data.
Never mischaracterize the opposing view.
Never resort to personal attacks.

As a leader, if you don’t verify your argument, you could easily end up embarrassed.

Guideline 4: Be willing to state your view but with humility.

You’re not always right. None of us are. To civilly discuss differences, you’ll need to admit you may be wrong. This is humility.

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To civilly discuss differences, you’ll need to admit you may be wrong. This is humility.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Luci Swindoll taught me a great lesson about humble responses. In answer to her critics, she would say, “You know what? You might be right.” This statement diffused a lot of tension.

There’s value in opposing opinions, but they may not come out unless you create an environment that’s safe for dissent. Some of your best counsel will be from people you disagree with. Don’t miss out on that because of your need to be right.

Next time you feel tension rising, remember these four guidelines: begin where you agree, keep an open mind, get your facts straight, and state your view with humility. I might be wrong, but I think you’ll like the results.

Encore: 3 Habits of Wise Leaders

Good leaders want to do the right thing. But sometimes we can be our own worst enemy. Have you ever made a really unwise choice that cost you a relationship or an opportunity? 

4 Ways to Make Daily Progress on Goals

Most people think intensity is the key to accomplishing huge goals, but Jerry Seinfeld would disagree. When this stand-up comic, co-creator of Seinfeld, and actor worth $950 million considers the reason for his success, he credits one word: consistency.

Early on in his career, Jerry started writing at least one joke per day. He hung a giant calendar on the wall, and every time he finished his daily joke, he drew a big red X over the day. Over time, the string of Xs formed a long chain. Jerry says the draw of money and fame didn’t motivate him. The real motivator was to not break the chain.

This daily joke routine is a perfect example of a habit goal. Habit goals keep you focused on small tasks that can be completed each day. Consistent victories keep the momentum going. A more popular goal is an achievement goal. These are big hairy goals that end up paralyzing you instead of pushing you. They require intensity. As a seasoned achievement goal setter, trust me when I say it’s not worth it. It’s the little steps that make a big impact.

If you want to make progress, you’ll need to trade intensity for consistency. Follow these 4 steps to get moving on your goals today.

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If you want to make progress, you’ll need to trade intensity for consistency.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Step 1: Get clear on your goal.

You can’t accomplish a goal until you’ve defined it. Vision always comes first. Whether you’re working toward a habit goal or an achievement goal, get clarity about the end result you want.

Get specific about your goal. And write it down. Thoughts disentangle themselves as they pass over the lips and through pencil tips. Until you can write down a clear goal, you don’t really know what you want.

Writing down the goal is especially important when a team is involved. You may feel clarity in your brain, but you can’t create alignment until it’s on paper. This first step is critical to success.

Step 2: Identify the right behavior.

Next, determine what behavior will enable you to achieve your goal. Don’t make this behavior too difficult. When practiced over and over again, it should get you incrementally closer to major change.

I recently crashed through a big physical barrier by sticking to a small behavioral change. I had 25 stubborn pounds that just wouldn’t fall off. Instead of muscling my way through the weight or booking an intimidating Ironman triathlon, I cut out sugar and processed carbs.

That’s it. Every day, I focused on this simple step. It was super easy. It didn’t feel like an insurmountable goal. It was a simple behavioral change. I stayed consistent. Those pesky pounds dropped off in about three months. Just like a fad diet, intense goal setting doesn’t work. It’s about lifestyle change. Consistently follow the right behavior.

Step 3: Track your progress.

Tracking progress accomplishes two objectives:

It reinforces the habit through self-accountability.
It boosts motivation by showing you visual progress.

Like Jerry Seinfeld’s compulsion to keep the chain going, recording your progress will keep you motivated. Seeing the string of success will generate more momentum for the days to come.

If you aren’t sure how to get started with tracking, my team can help. We put together a free Perfect Progress Checklist that you can download here.

Step 4: Enlist an accountability partner.

Building a relationship with an accountability partner might be the most impactful step you can take. I’m not the first person to say that. Remember verses 9 and 10 in Ecclesiastes 4?

“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his fellow. But woe to the one who falls when he is alone.” That’s the value of accountability.

Once you decide to enlist an accountability partner, it’s critically important to choose the right person. Years ago, when focusing on my golf game, I chose a partner that ragged on my mistakes. You can probably guess what happened. The more he ridiculed me, the worse I got.

Your accountability partner must be encouraging. It might be a friend or coworker. It could also be a professional counselor, coach, or trainer.

Progress is within reach for you, but you might need to restructure the way you think about goals. When you lean into habit goals instead of achievement goals, you’ll get moving in no time.

The Top Lead to Win Highlights

We know you love Lead to Win. We also know that life is busy, and you don’t always have time to listen to your favorite podcast. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a highlights reel so you could catch up on the big insights from this season? 

How to Recharge on Low Battery Workdays

With the rise of industrialization, a false belief spread like wildfire. In the pursuit of efficiency, we started viewing humans like machines. We assumed we could consistently operate at maximum capacity so long as we managed our time appropriately. This is short-sighted. Yet, somehow, this belief persists today. It’s time to confront reality. Productivity isn’t about clockwork. It’s about energy management.

You’ve probably heard the question, “Are you a thermometer or a thermostat?” On the topic of energy levels, a thermometer will simply notice an energy drain. A thermostat will learn to manufacture energy and regulate appropriately.

Your time is fixed, but your energy flexes. You have agency over your get-up-and-go. When you recognize this fact, you can speed through more work in less time. To make the life you want, this is essential.

You’re not a machine. To maximize human productivity, follow these 3 secrets to managing your energy.

Secret 1: Don’t sacrifice sleep for work.

Rest is the primary driver of mental and physical energy. Although it’s tempting to skip sleep during busy work seasons, this can negatively impact the quality and speed of your work. The more tired you are, the less productive you are.

Mood changes, concentration issues, and decision-making difficulty come from poor sleep. In a sleep study conducted on medical professionals, sleep deprivation increased mistakes by 20 percent. It also lengthened tasks by 14 percent.

A good night’s sleep drastically changes your outlook. You might go to bed feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. Get enough sleep and bam! You feel fantastic. 

My friend Shawn Stevenson caught me up on what’s happening in the brain during sleep deprivation. When you don’t get enough rest, the activity in your prefrontal cortex is suppressed. This part is responsible for executive functions like decision-making and social control.

In contrast, the fight-or-flight part of the brain (called the amygdala), operates with heightened activity. This means your sleepy mind makes primitive decisions you’ll likely regret later.

Optimize your sleep so you can make better decisions and ultimately live a better life. 

Secret 2: Fuel your body with whole foods.

To strategically fuel your body, you’ll want to focus on healthy meals and snacks that keep your blood sugar level. That’s not to say you can’t indulge in high-glycemic carbs. But you need to be strategic about when you consume those energy draining foods.

For example, I prioritize whole foods for lunch on workdays. This dietary choice reduces mental fog for afternoon projects. If I crave a high carb meal like spaghetti or pizza, I save that for dinnertime.

You might be guilty of saying, “I’m going to skip lunch and power through work today.” This is counterintuitive. It’s like trying to drive without stopping at a gas station. Your mental energy will lag, and tasks will be more difficult.

If you’ve formed a habit of skipping meals, reframe your thinking, and put wholesome foods within reach. Chronic meal skippers can fill a drawer with healthy staples like popcorn, nuts, and beef jerky. This quick-fix will keep your energy levels steady on busy days.

Secret 3: Conserve mental energy by making fewer decisions.

You make 35,000 decisions each day. Some leaders hoard decision-making because it makes them feel powerful. This is a mistake. Learn to delegate decisions to your team. And don’t second-guess everything your peers decide.  

Save energy by choosing to not have a preference on everything. The farther you move up the food chain, the more responsible you become for big, thorny, complex decisions. The best use of your mental energy is on major issues. The rest can be decided down the ladder. Highly successful people protect their brain power by reducing decisions.

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Save energy by choosing to not have a preference on everything.

—MICHAEL HYATT

When it feels like there aren’t enough minutes in the day, don’t reach for a book on time management. Instead, monitor your energy levels. Get a good night’s sleep, eat nutritious meals, and pass off decisions. 

Focus on This Spotlight: Two Rituals to Start and End Your Days

As a high achiever, you have the ability to laser focus and put out huge productivity. But it can seem like your life has no boundaries. Good habits slip away and unproductive ones take their place.