Three Ways to Stop Wasting Your Time and Become More Productive as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

Are your daily tasks merely keeping you busy, or are they driving real impact? Discover how to escape the trap of busyness and truly enhance your productivity in today's episode!

As a humanitarian and development leader, it's easy to get caught up in endless meetings and emails, feeling productive but not actually making the impact you seek. This episode explores why traditional productivity methods are failing you and offers solutions to achieve meaningful progress.

In this episode you will:

• Understand the difference between busy work and impactful work, and how to prioritize tasks that matter.
• Learn three practical strategies to stop wasting time and start being genuinely productive.
• Gain insights into how redefining productivity can lead to greater impact and success in your role.

Listen now and start transforming your productivity to make a greater impact!

Resources mentioned:

Slow Productivity:  The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout by Cal Newport

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This podcast empowers international development and humanitarian leaders to achieve high performance teams, fostering diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing, overcoming burnout and overwhelm, while maximizing impact and productivity. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Three Ways to Stop Wasting Your Time and Become More Productive as a Humanitarian and International Development Leader

In this episode, you will learn how escaping busy-ness is essential to making a greater impact as a humanitarian and development leader.

Welcome to The Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast, the podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress, burnout, and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey Peace.

Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hello, my aspiring modern humanitarian and development leaders. So today on this episode, you're going to discover why the traditional ways of leading and working in the humanitarian and development sector. Is making you busy, but not productive. What it means to be truly productive and make a greater impact on your team and the community. And three ways you can stop wasting your time and become more productive. So let's get started.

I know this has happened to me before, where I get to the end of the week and I wonder, what did I really accomplish this week? Like I know I was using my time. I know it was in maybe a lot of meetings or I was doing a lot of things, but what did I actually accomplish? Recently, I read a very interesting book on productivity.

It's called "Slow Productivity" by Cal Newport. And he talks about the traditional way of working, which originated from back in the day, when many of our relatives or distant relatives

were on assembly line type situations or in factories where our productivity was measured by the output we created.

In other words, the number of gadgets that we created, or the number of tangible things that we were able to produce.

However, the problem is things have evolved. And this includes in the humanitarian and development sector. So I would say that humanitarian and development sector is under the knowledge economy. Meaning that the value of what we create has more to do with our minds and the complexity of the work that we do is a lot greater than just creating gadgets from a factory line, right?

Like the things we're creating, like impact at a community level has to do more with using innovation and using our minds, rather than , just the output in terms of, things that, that are produced. But the problem is as Cal Newport explains that we've kept the same definition of productivity, partially because it's very difficult to measure this new way of doing things.

This knowledge economy type productivity. So I would actually say that when it comes to our work in the humanitarian development sector, true productivity is actually more about how much we accomplished in an area which leads us to where we want to go. In other words: the impact we want to create. So that means that in order to be truly productive, we need to spend time on the quality tasks that lead to greater impact rather than the quantity tasks that just keep us busy. I like to compare this to a high nutritional value task versus an empty calorie or zero calorie task. And what I mean by that is, when we spend time on the busy things like email, like lots of time in meetings that don't really add a lot of value to our overall work. Those are the types of things that are empty

calorie tasks or zero calorie tasks. And that means that, it's something that we consume or we do, but it leads to little or no value overall. When we eat empty calorie foods, we might feel full, but it doesn't really add much to the evolution or the development of our bodies. Whereas, if we focus on or eat the higher nutritional foods, then that does lead to a greater wellbeing and development. And same when we focus on these high nutritional value tasks, right?

When we spend more time on the things that lead to more innovation or to greater strategic thinking. These are the things that are going to make more of an impact. So. Maybe you understand this intellectually, but you think that the situation in your country, or maybe the political situation is such that you have to always be available or be the one to help your team, or you have to be the one to attend meetings, or you have to answer these emails or else things won't get done or things are just going to completely stop or fall apart. First of all, the first thing is to recognize that this is not a fact.

This is a thought. And from my experience, these types of thoughts often come from fear and they come from a very common way of thinking about our own role in something and inflating ourselves in terms of our importance and our role as a leader. And so when we recognize that this is a thought, it's not a fact. Then we can actually do something about it.

So the first thing is to challenge this way of thinking. So, is that really true? What is the worst thing that will happen if you don't attend all of the meetings or answer all of the emails? Because this idea that you have to be the one attending all the meetings or be available all the time. Once again is a thought, it's a perspective that you have.

It is not a fact because someone else in your same situation may act very differently from you and may have chosen to not attend some of the meetings you have or not respond to the emails. And still have been able to survive, and do well as a leader. And I would argue maybe even better in some ways. So this choice, whether you're saying yes to answering emails and attending meetings or no, does come with consequences. And you may think I have to attend all the meetings or else things will fall apart and the project will fail.

But what is the consequence of attending all the meetings? There's also a consequence to showing up to all of these meetings and answering all the email. You are also sacrificing something there. You are sacrificing the ability to get more impactful work done. And ironically more work done that may solve the very problem that the meetings are about. So in the long run where will these meetings lead you?

Where will this busy-ness lead you? Probably not to greater impact. So I would start by just experimenting with this thought that you have, that you have to always be available all the time, or you have to say yes to extra work, or you have to be, at all of these meetings and see what happens. Just by saying no to one and test your assumption based on actual evidence and not just fear based thinking.

Here now are three ways that you can stop wasting your time. The first one is that you need to know what is the impact you want to create? You need to know where you are headed. If we don't know the goal we want to achieve, or we don't have clearly defined the impact we want to create, then we do not know where we are going.

We are like getting in a car and not knowing our destination. You need to define it so you know where to head and you know what activities will lead you there. Otherwise, we're just going to be blindly taking action, but not able to evaluate if our action is actually taking us where we want to go.

So that's the first thing is just defining what is the impact I want to create? Where is the destination I want to go? Secondly, you need to understand how you are currently using your time. In my digital course

" Becoming the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader"

we do a time diary. And I compare this to doing a food diary. The purpose of doing a food diary is so that you understand what you are consuming, you're writing it down. So you become aware of what you eat throughout your day. The same thing with a time diary, you take a day out of your week,

that's a typical day for you and you write down what you're doing, how you are spending your time. The purpose of this is to become more aware of it. So not to change what you're doing, but to see how you're using your time. So you don't get to the end of your week and realized like where has all my time gone and not even understand how you used it. It can be very enlightening to write down how you use your time throughout your day, because the next step would be to look at how you're using your time and ask yourself, "are these activities that I'm focusing on leading me to the impact I want to create or leading me to the goal that I want to achieve"?

Once you have your clearly defined impact our goal,

you understand how you're using your time, then you can decide how to prioritize the tasks. And make time for things that make the most impact. This is what the modern humanitarian and development leader does. They know which areas that they focus on will create the most impact. Regardless of how you use your time, you will be working on one thing or another.

You could be busy and lead to low productivity on empty calorie tasks, or you could focus on the high value, high nurturing tasks that lead you to where you will want to be in a year or two or three from now. So why not choose to prioritize those things that will lead you where you want to go? Try this week by first defining the impact you want to create,

or maybe you already have it in your performance plan,

you could start with those goals.

And then notice how you are currently using your time.

Once you do that, try and shift more of your time towards those things that will lead to creating the impact you want. Start small, perhaps by saying no to empty calorie tasks like meetings, for example. And then see how you can slowly shift your schedule to one where you're more focused on high value, high nurturing tasks. Remember traditional productivity is just getting things done for the sake of being busy, but to be productive and become a modern humanitarian and development leader, you need to focus on quality over quantity: the nurturing tasks that will lead you to the impact you want.

Okay, and on Wednesdays quick quote episode, learn the commonly overlooked signs that predict if you will achieve your goals as a humanitarian and development leader. Until then keep evolving bye for now.

Are you the type of leader that tells others what to do? Or do you let them figure it out for themselves? Understanding your leadership style is the first step to deciding what's working for you and what's not. To find out your leadership style, take my free quiz "what is your leadership style?" You'll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team, and a few practical ways to become an even better leader.

Just click on the link in the show notes, www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz,. Fill out your quiz and click submit. So what are you waiting for? Go to www.aidforaidworkers.com/quiz, and discover your leadership style now. Your team will thank you for it.