Productivity is at the heart of business. We measure it at a macroeconomic level. Managers worry about it. Employees are often measured on it. Most people work at or near the practical maximum production capacity (Figure One). This is not to say that their activities are necessarily effective, but people tend to stay busy. 
Most people would agree, their lives (work and personal) tend to hover around their maximum capacity, sometimes in overload, sometimes a bit less than their maximum.
On the surface, this looks like the optimum scenario, the content of what we are doing notwithstanding which I'll touch on in a bit.
It appears we are making the most efficient use of our time and talents. But, as usual, there is a fly in the ointment.
Figure Two shows us the fly.
As soon as we are confronted with any change, any surge in workload we immediately go into overload. I think everyone would agree that overload is not our best gig. Tempers get short, stress increases, work hours cut into family time, sleep deprivation starts to impact our effectiveness.
Granted, there are those who would say they do their best work under pressure. I'm one of them actually and there is some basis of truth to this. However, over the long haul, the cost in physical, emotional, relational well being, clarity of thought and action belies the notion that this is a desirable scenario in any way.
The quality disciplines for example demonstrate conclusively that it is the consistency of throughput that yields the highest quality work and that spikes and slack times undercut quality.
This brings us to the workload paradox.
What if we throttled our activities back to something that looked like Figure Three?
Well, the first complaint is that we're not being as efficient as possible. At one level, clearly this is true. But let's look at it from another point of view. What production manager ever born does his/her production planning based on the assumption of 100% uptime of production machinery?
None.
Murphy lurks on every factory floor. Machines break, machines require preventative maintenance. Smart
production people conduct predictive maintenance. All this downtime has to be factored into any and all production expectations.
Why do we consider this principles not applicable to human beings (ourselves as well as our employees)? Imagine the overload scenario in Figure Two taking place in the context of the workload of Figure Three. The result is shown in Figure Four.
In this scenario, we have surge capacity. We can assimilate changes in our world. We can deal calmly and effectively with crises.
Here's the real kicker.
"I really should train Bob/Sue to take this responsibility off my plate but I'm just too busy to take the time. It's quicker to just do it myself."
Anyone out there in blog land ever had that conversation with themselves? It's OK. We've all done it. This is called being trapped and it is a byproduct of working at your maximum practical capacity. If you don't have time to leverage yourself, you're trapped. If you don't have time to work yourself out of a job, you're trapped. Whether you're an employee or the CEO it doesn't matter, you're still trapped. Ironically, trapped in a prison of your own making.
As a leader of a company, division, or workgroup or even just yourself, getting out of this trap requires voluntarily driving yourself into overload for some period of time. You have to do more before you can do less. What are the steps?
1) Identify the least strategic, important, or skilled activities you spend your time doing.
2) Identify who you can offload them to. If you don't have anyone to offload them to, ask yourself the question, "What would happen if I just didn't do them?" You'll be surprised at how often nothing of importance would happen if you just quit doing some of the activities you do routinely.
3) Be prepared to defend your lower level of activity. You will be bucking the trend of the people around you (and above you).
4) Demonstrate the value of your new level of productivity by taking on new, more important activities or assignments, being sure to push an equivalent amount of your least important work down to others.
The results will be that you will do less and accomplish more. You will be clearer minded. You will be better rested. Your family will be happier. Your employees will grow and progress faster which will attract the best talent in your organization. You will be doing increasingly more strategic and important work which will be rewarding to your career, be you entrepreneur or employee. You will be having more fun and be happier. Others will enjoy your company more. In other words, you will have created a self-reinforcing updraft.
Will you be less efficient? Yes. Will you be more effective? Also yes.
In one of his early books, Peter Drucker, the great management thinking and writer once said (and I'm paraphrasing), efficiency isn't necessary to create success, it's necessary to sustain it. To create success we have to be effective. He characterized the difference between the two by saying efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.
Doing the right things is the key to resetting your workload to a lower but more effective level.
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