April is Stress Awareness Month, and this week is National Productivity Week, which has had me thinking about whether this is in fact an uneasy juxtaposition — with the push to get ever more squeezed into your day leading inexorably to more stress. It’s a trap I’ve fallen into myself with running a small business, but in the end I came to the conclusion that the key to being more productive is to… go slower and do less.

This is perhaps not as much of a surprise as it might once have been, with the popularity of flexible working and concepts like the four day working week on the rise. These are based on the idea that relaxed, rested people are more efficient, more creative, better at problem solving and better at working with others. And it makes a lot of sense! But are there some easy ways we can apply this day to day, even if it’s not currently an option to work fewer hours? I’ve found the following helpful:

Schedule fewer tasks per day

Something I had to learn with working from home is that there’s always more tasks. Or in other words, you never truly get to the end of that to-do list because there’s always something else that could be done. So the key for me has been learning to be realistic about what I can actually do in a day. After all, putting more things on the list doesn’t mean you can actually get them ticked off — usually it means either working later than you wanted or moving them to the next day instead, which then starts a stressful cycle of even more things each day! So now I try to only schedule what I actually think I can do, leave a gap for anything unexpected, and give clients a realistic timeframe.

I find doing this helps with both stress and productivity, because you may be able to get through everything for one or even two of the days, but your tired brain will then often manage less on the succeeding ones, taking longer to get going and finding it harder to focus.

Walk away when you’re stuck

Here’s a profound truth I’ve learnt — one hour of focused work beats two hours of unfocused work. This is especially the case if you’re stuck. Maybe you’ve come up against an unexpected issue, maybe something isn’t going quite as you thought, or maybe you just have blank page syndrome. When this happens to me I find the most productive thing I can do is get up and walk away. If I don’t, I find myself staring into empty space, sometimes checking my notifications, or reading and replying to emails, and not moving meaningfully forward with the task in hand. This is when I need to give my mind a rest, perhaps by going for a half hour walk, starting something creative, or even just doing the dishes and having a cup of tea! Inevitably, I find that when I come back to the task it’s been simmering away in the background of mind and it’s become, if not easy, then at least manageable.

Have an activity on the go

I like to do the odd craft or hobby for stress relief, but until last year I saw it as quite a big undertaking — something you do when you have a whole afternoon to get all your materials out and spend hours on a project. Then I committed to making lots of little homemade gifts for an event last summer and discovered that ten minutes at a time when I might otherwise be scrolling on my phone was enough to make real progress. So my suggestion here is to have a little project on the go—as well as maybe the bigger ones that do require lots of time and space—and make it as accessible as you can. For instance, instead of having my whole sewing box out, I made a little kit of just what I needed for that one particular handmade gift project and put it next to my chair. You could do similar with, for example, a mini painting set, a little indoor garden, or pocket journal.

This is not about finding more time, but more about fitting your hobby into the time you already have. Which is both productive and stress relieving!

Book regular time off

Regular time off helps keep you balanced and positive. If ever I get to the point where I feel I can’t have a break because there’s too much to do, I know that’s when I actually really need to book something, whether for an afternoon, one day or a few. A few hours in, I usually realise that my overworked brain was exaggerating the importance of the tasks on hand, and that they can equally well wait a day or two. And, as mentioned earlier in this article, I can get them done much more easily, quickly and to a higher standard when approaching them fresh. In other words, time off isn’t a drain on productivity, it’s an essential part of getting things done.

So, can slowing down actually result in accomplishing more? In my view, very much so. What do you think?