By Jonah Erbe

“The average American worker works for 8.8 hours per day. However, the average American worker is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes per day.” – Bureau of Labor Statistics

Productivity does not equate to working longer hours. In fact, productivity equates more to lowering average amount of time worked and exponentially increasing the number of measurable results achieved.

What if you could lower the amount of time spent working to free you up to pursue hobbies, spend time with loved ones, and other interests? What if while doing that, you could achieve greater results than you are currently achieving while being overworked, stressed, and burnt out? This is possible!

Productivity may look more like eliminating low-payoff activities and distractions than adding more activities to your already busy schedules. The reality is 60% of individuals admit they feel they “don’t have enough time” to do what they need to do every day. However, the average individual spends about 4 hours per day on their phones. This number does not include time watching television, or on a laptop.

Other statistics share that 83% of workers report work-related stress and 89% of workers experienced burnout in the last year alone.

According to Harvard Business Review, “Overload burnout occurs when you work harder and more frantically to achieve success, often to the detriment of your health and personal life.”

We are spending nearly 4 hours a day on our phones, which have been proven time and time again to decrease all positive aspects of mental health when time is spent on them for more than 2 hours a day. We are overloading ourselves with the little time we have left away from our phone. All the while, we are more unproductive than ever before (2023 measured our lowest labor union productivity rate in 75 years), more stressed, and lacking purpose.

What can you eliminate today in order to increase overall productivity, results, and fulfillment in all areas of life?

Here are some options:

• Turn off your phone by 9 PM every night and do not sleep next to it
• Limit yourself to only watching one episode of a show per day, no binging
• Limit social media use at work to lunch time
• Identify your highest payoff activities and only do those from 8 AM – 12 PM
• Set a minimum number of activities you will do in each high payoff activity area per day

Here is one success story from a recent LMI Graduate:

This individual set a goal of locking his phone up for the first 45 minutes of every hour, then pulling it out for the last 15 minutes to train his brain that it was not needed to have it in sight. He quickly came to find that he would not pull the phone out after 45 minutes. His productivity increased, and his results increased exponentially. Had he simply focused on the results, nothing would have changed. By changing the inputs (locking up his phone), he was able to naturally trend towards effective activities.

He then implemented this practice at home. He noted that his marriage had gotten significantly better and time with his children increased as well. He was full of joy!

Again, what can you eliminate today?

“Your life is no more than the sum of what you gave your attention to.” – John Mark Comer