How to be more productive (a story about assembling Adirondack chairs)
Want to be more productive? Do something more than once.
Want to know why that works? Keep reading for my super unscientific study of one.
A few months ago, The B99 and I decided that it was time to get rid of the very old and very splintered Adirondack chairs next to our fire pit. They had long since served their purpose, and it was definitely time for an upgrade. Because we wanted them to last, we knew that we’d spend more on the new ones, and because we enjoy others sitting around the fire pit with us, we decided to get four.
Fast-forward a couple of months, and we were nearing our daughter’s graduation party. We didn’t have enough to buy four new chairs, but we’d saved enough for two. We pulled the trigger, and Amazon delivered them the day before the family party.
On the day of the party, we went to the graduation, and then came home to make the final preparations for the party before family and friends arrived. My part was to assemble the two new chairs, and I had three things working against me. One, I’m not a handyman. Two, it was hot. Three, I’m not a handyman.
I opened the first box, and was immediately overwhelmed. I knew that, given enough time, I would figure it out. But I didn’t have days. I only had hours, and I was certain this would be an overnight project. All you handy people think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not handy. Did I mention that?
To keep this from becoming a novel, let me just say that my nephew was in town for the party, and he is handy. He also, for reasons that I will never understand, enjoys putting things together. It was fantastic.
(Shout out to Seth. A bigger shout out to his wife, Kristin, for volunteering him!)
The problem for me, though, was that I had to eventually order two more chairs, and since we didn’t have any more graduations on the horizon, my nephew wasn’t going to be around to assemble them. Yikes!
They arrived recently, and I set aside my day off — yes, the whole day — to put them together. My to-do list that day looked like this:
- Assemble Adirondack chairs
- Don’t cuss
Just for the fun of it, I decided to set the timer and see how long it took me to put them together. I assembled the first one, and checked the timer. Just over 38 minutes. I. Was. Stoked. Not because that’s particularly fast, but because it wasn’t 3 or more hours, and also because the chair was staying together. Woo-hoo!!!
I began to feel handy-ish, and so I opened the second box to see if I could beat my time. There was a defect in the product, and so I actually had to repack it, return it, and exchange it for a new one. The test would have to wait.
The replacement chair arrived yesterday, and I assembled this one in just over 21 minutes. I also sat in each of the chairs, and they didn’t collapse. This is a win, y’all.
What’s the unscientific conclusion? That I almost doubled my production simply by doing it again. Too many times when we attempt something new, we find it harder than we expected, and so we tell ourselves that we can’t — or shouldn’t — do it. But the first time is always slower and harder. There’s a learning curve, and after we’ve learned it, we’re able to do things more efficiently and effectively the second, third, or fiftieth time.
Productivity can increase simply because we do something more than once, and learn as we do.
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