It’s not your Job that is Exhausting, It’s the Way you Work

Wu Jun, the author of The Top of the Wave, said that when Google first entered China, at the beginning, Google headquarters ’evaluation of the Chinese R & D team was very low.  ”Three or four engineers in Beijing could not match an engineer at Google’s headquarters. Later, Wu Jun helped analyze the reason, and he found that Those engineers were not good at finding the most important jobs and completing them first. In the course of this write-up, I will be highlighting the reasons your job is exhausting. Truthfully, it is not your job that is exhausting. It is the way you go about it that is tiring!

In the Chinese R & D team, all engineers are newcomers, and no one tells them how to work. At Google headquarters, new employees are only a small part, so it is easy to quickly master the work skills with the help of experienced employees.

In the next two years, engineers at Google headquarters came to China to help the team sort out their work methods. Also, the Chinese team went to Google headquarters to communicate. This situation was improved, and the Chinese Research & Development team was finally recognized by the headquarters.

Fallacies About Work and Fatigue/Stress

We have always believed that if a person has a normal IQ and a high willingness to study and work, he can achieve results. This is a fallacious statement, as you will soon find out.

Here are some of the Reasons your Job is Exhausting

Some people are very willing to study and work hard, and the IQ and educational qualifications are normal, but their work output is very low. So low that it is even worse than many people with lower qualifications.

I think back to how these people work, and comparing them with high-yielding people, I find that they have three problems without exception. As mentioned below:

The Comparison: Efficient Workers Vs Low Output Workers

1. Scenario 1: Focus on tasks, not Goals

If your boss is on the plane and has 1 hour to land, you need to make an important report to the customer, and you also need to make a Microsoft PowerPoint(PPT) for him. But because you underestimated the time, you hastily finish the PPT, and you find that some of the data are not available. What should you do?.

• The inefficient people’s approach is: that they will frantically look for data when data is available, they will face the PPT although, by this time, there may be no time to finish the doc. Or the quality is not high.
• Common people’s approach is: find someone to help them find data and complete the task.
• However, the most efficient people will judge the role of these data according to the purpose of the boss’s report:

If the effect is not great, then spend your time improving the number of important pages instead of looking for data. If it is critical, ask others to help or find alternative data.

Summarily, the gap between these three categories of people is actually the gap between task-oriented and goal-oriented.

A Notable consulting company, when doing high-potential talent research, found that:

Commonalities of High-Potential Workers

High-potential talents have commonalities. People with these commonalities can do almost everything.

• Among them, one thing in common is Result-driven.

Those with high output may not move faster but are more adept at judging what is the most effective for the result. In addition, they use every means to ensure that the result is achieved instead of holding on to the original task. Result-driven is not just a work habit. It is a way of thinking. This end-to-end thinking mode is one of the most useful modes I deliberately train myself with.

For example, if a student asks you,  “How do I make myself have insights into an industry?”  how would you answer?

My answer is to ask him/her: “What is the purpose of having insight? Do you want your customers to trust you more or your boss to see your progress?”

Suppose you want customers to trust you and think you understand them, then you have to look at the grievances of customers in this industry and then research and analyze these pain points to gain more insights.

Therefore, when there is no result-driven thinking, in the end, it is almost impossible to work.

Especially Relevant:  The Best Employees Often Leave first, but not for Money-Here are Ways to Prevent this

• Stress work as Opposed to Coordinating/Cooperative Work

If you observe colleagues around you, you will find that people rushing all day, jumping up and down, and switching between various tasks sometimes have the lowest output.

The productive ones, on the other hand, working method is like hitting a gopher. After finishing one, the other appeared again, and even the watchers were anxious. On the other hand, they are focused, organized, and seem calm, but in the end, all the difficult things are done silently.

The difference between the two is that the first type of person always works under stress.Unfortunately, the first thing they get up every day is not to plan the work of the day, but to put into work immediately, so that after work, they find that there are still many things that have not been done, and what is not done maybe the most important thing.

In addition, the leader gives a task temporarily, the customer temporarily asks for it, and the colleague temporarily asks for data. They all stop working on it and go to do it. In the end, they spend a lot of energy on switching tasks.

Here is a Brief Analogy of the company’s operations:

Suppose you can complete each task in half an hour on average, and switching between tasks usually takes half an hour. If you often switch to the next item without completing one item, even if each task is switched halfway.

That means that for 8 hours of work, you spend at least 4 hours on task switching. This stressful way of working is undoubtedly inefficient. So, what is efficient? Coordinated work.

Characteristics of a Truly Integrated and Coordinated Job

1. Work in a Planned way

Try to schedule your daily work for the upcoming week on Sunday evening.

In addition, make sure the task list is kept open and updated in real-time during work. When one item is deleted, one item is added temporarily, and the corresponding period is inserted. Change to the second one of the day for non-urgent tasks that are not completed on the day.

This way, you will have a lot of control. No matter how many things come, you will not mess up.

Of course, when planning, you need to allocate the most dedicated time to high-value issues. Because most people do useless work 80% of the time, the fundamental reason is that they don’t figure out the problem to be solved.

2. Form your own fixed time habits

Do things that require brainstorming in the morning, read books, and focus on replying to your emails and chat messages. When you are tired, Have a meeting with the team and a summary in the evening.

This habit, on the one hand, matches the work of different difficulties with its efficiency peaks and valleys to maximize efficiency;

On the other hand, I will know clearly what 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and 30 minutes can do for me so that I will not habitually dine with my circle of friends as soon as I have fragmented time.

3. Timely record and summarize daily

When you work, the boss assigns a task, and the customer asks another question. What will happen to you?

Many people jump directly to temporary tasks, but the perfect way is:

• If it’s not one hundred thousand rush, you can quickly use keywords to write on the notebook without thinking, immediately return to the task just now, and then look at the notebook when you are done.
• In addition, you must keep a record of what you have learned and made mistakes during the day because, after that time, you will soon forget and then continue to make these mistakes.
• Of course, these records need to be sorted out at night.
• In addition, recording also has the benefit of reducing the burden on the brain.
• You can make a list of your daily routine work and your common mistakes.
• Your brain is used for thinking. It is very valuable. Don’t force a pen to do something for your brain.

Innovations are Products of Laziness

Laziness is the primary productive force. Take a closer look. Which of the following innovations is not because of laziness?

• I won’t walk, I have a car, I don’t feel like climbing a building, I have an elevator, I don’t want to clean, I have a sweeping robot.
• Laziness” mentioned here not only means to make good use of tools but also to make good use of others.
• For example, if you have never done data analysis, find out what your predecessors did.
• Furthermore, if you have your team or intern, don’t do anything they can do.
• Another example: running the community and exploring a set of incentives for the owner is much more efficient than being the owner yourself.

Apparently, these three ways make your supposedly hard work easier.  But why can’t many people do it? I observed that there were several obstacles:

Obstacles to Coordinated and Cooperative Work

1. Limited by the Working Environment

The nature of many people’s work is not result-oriented but task-oriented. What his job requires him to do is to complete the task. As for the starting point behind it, there is no need to know.

Moreover, the leadership may evaluate the effort and the labor, not the output.

In fact, the impact of the nature of work on a person’s way of thinking and behavior is beyond imagination.

When you just graduated, a schoolmate and a professional classmate looked similar. But after a few years, you will find that you can roughly determine his profession as long as you contact a person for a few minutes and listen to him say a few words.

2. No Senior Experienced Person to Coach Workers

As can be seen from the case at the beginning, a group of people as good as Google engineers also need experienced people to coach after entering the company from campus.

However, many companies do not attach much importance to cultivating newcomers like Google and have raised Work Smart to a very high position.

They tend to focus on teaching employees what (what needs to be done, what tools to use, etc.), but not How (how to do these things smartly) and Why (what do these things help the company, customers, and what they want to achieve ), Leading to the inability of employees to display their talents and sense of accomplishment.

3. Solidified Thinking

After working for many years, some people will discover the adverse effects of the nature of the work and the working environment and wake up and want to change.

However, the past few years of entering society from school are critical for forming thinking and working methods.

Several people are task-oriented and stress-oriented. When you work with them, you will feel the pain and struggle of them fighting against their inherent thinking. However, not everyone can finally struggle and break through.

Therefore, when you choose a job at a young age, you choose not just a job but a habit of thinking, a way of working, values, and even a lifestyle.