Productivity Secrets of a Very Busy Man

JUSTIN FOX: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Justin Fox. I’m talking today about personal productivity with Bob Pozen. Thanks for taking the time to join us today, Bob.

BOB POZEN: Thanks for having me.

JUSTIN FOX: By way of introduction, I guess I should establish why I’m talking to you about productivity. Until recently, you had two more-or-less full-time jobs. Right?

BOB POZEN: That’s correct.

JUSTIN FOX: What were they? And are they?

BOB POZEN: I was teaching full-time at Harvard Business School, which I’m still doing. And at that time, I was Executive Chairman of MFS Investment Management, which runs mutual funds and pension assets of over 200 billion.

JUSTIN FOX: You also have a lot of extra-curricular activities.

BOB POZEN: I’m on two corporate boards, two foundation boards, and I’m known to occasionally write an article.

JUSTIN FOX: And some of those articles are for HBR and hbr.org. And because Bob always accomplishes this with such frightening efficiency, we decided a while ago to ask him how he does it. And the result was first a series of “Pozen On Productivity” blog posts on hbr.org. And now there’s an article, titled Extreme Productivity, in the May 2011 issue of HBR. So to start, is there one single overriding key to being more productive with your time?

BOB POZEN: Probably the most important overriding principle is that you have to be focused on results, not on time spent. There are so many professions, and so many people, who pride themselves on how late they stay at night, or whether they billed a certain number of hours. And that’s really a bit wrong-headed in my view. The real question is what do you produce? Not how many hours you put in. We don’t want to create a system where we give people an incentive to spend as many hours as possible working. And it surely doesn’t do any good for their lifestyle. So let’s concentrate on results, not on hours logged.

JUSTIN FOX: Well, and you came out of one of those professions where there are incentives to bill more hours. Right?

BOB POZEN: Unfortunately, that’s true. At one point in my youth, I was a lawyer billing hours. I would say that really does create a perverse set of incentives. If you really are fast, and you really can figure out a good solution quickly, you’re, in a sense, penalized. Because then you won’t be able to bill as many hours. Really what we should be doing is encouraging that behavior, not penalizing it.

JUSTIN FOX: When you were a corporate lawyer in Washington decades ago, how did you deal with that issue?

BOB POZEN: Well after a while, when my clients got to know me, and felt more comfortable about my level of efficiency, I wrote them a note saying that, from now on, I was going to charge them twice the number of hours I put in. Because I felt that I was getting more done than the normal there. And none of them objected.

JUSTIN FOX: Well, that was nice.

BOB POZEN: It was a vote of confidence in productivity, I think.

JUSTIN FOX: Well then, to move on to the actual tools of productivity. First of all, just to start with– have you always been this way, or is this something you developed at a certain point early in your career?

BOB POZEN: I’ve pretty much been that way since I was in high school. In high school, I played basketball and tennis, and I also held down two jobs. I came from a family of modest means, and I was sort of obliged to get it all in. So I developed those behaviors and practices at a pretty early age.

JUSTIN FOX: In the article you’ve written for us, you lay out several principles for better productivity. One of them is, know your comparative advantage. What do you mean by that?

BOB POZEN: Most people think of comparative advantage in terms of what they’re best at, relative to other people. And that’s surely a relevant concept of comparative advantage. But I believe that the more important twist on that concept is, what does the organization need most from you? If you just look at it from your viewpoint, and you think about comparative advantage, you might decide that you should focus most of your time on financing, or marketing, or whatever you’re best at. But that’s ignoring what the organization needs you to do.

That’s especially important as a CEO. Many CEOs say, well here’s the three or four important goals of the organization. Which one should I focus on? Who should lead the effort? And they come up with the answer of them, for every single one. And that’s unfortunate. They may, in fact, be the best at each one, but they may not be the only one who can do certain things. It’s obvious that a CEO has to be the one who relates to the board of directors, in a certain way. It may be that the CEO is the critical person for getting out front, and certain types of PR for them, or for recruiting senior executives, or for talking to key regulators. So if a CEO wants to use his or her time well, they have to really concentrate on the question as, what are the functions that I, and only I, can do as a CEO?

JUSTIN FOX: But lower down in the organization, the same things come up?

BOB POZEN: I think, lower down, it’s the same thing. People have to not only consider what their comparative advantage is, but what the organization needs them most to do. And I think that that’s a perspective that sometimes gets lost in large organizations.

JUSTIN FOX: You obviously have given a lot of thought to how to be more efficient in reading and writing. One of your principles in the article is, think first, read or write, second. How does that work?

BOB POZEN: Well, I think unfortunately a lot of people sit down and read a magazine, or read a chapter in a book. And it’s only at the end that they really might think, well, why am I really reading this? What am I trying to get out of it? I believe that the most productive way to go about reading is to think– before you read some chapter or newspaper– what am I really trying to get out of this? And then really read for that. For example, I read the Wall Street Journal every day, and then I read The Financial Times. Well, when I read The Financial Times, I don’t want to really spend much time on the stories that relate to US financial affairs, because the Wall Street Journal has already covered that. What I’m looking for in The Financial Times is their coverage of international events, and their coverage of certain things that really aren’t covered very well, or not covered at all, in the Wall Street Journal. So that’s my focus. I know which articles to skip over in The Financial Times, and where to focus.

JUSTIN FOX: Turning that around to writing then, what is the think first approach?

BOB POZEN: Well, my recommendation is to write an outline first, especially figuring out where your conclusions are going to go. I’ve met so many people, who wrote large amounts– pages, large chapters, maybe even whole books– and only at the end did they figure out where they were going. Unfortunately, that’s a very inefficient use of time. And you see it happening all the time. People do research. They’re not sure where the research is going, so they spend literally months, maybe years, doing their research. My recommendation is to write an outline as soon as possible– if possible, the first week. And then you may revise it over time. But you’ve really got to know at every step, where you’re going, what conclusions are you trying to reach? That will tell you what facts you’re interested in, what arguments you’ll have to develop. But if you wait to the end to figure out what your real meaning is– well, that may be pretty late, and then you’ve got to rewrite the whole thing.

JUSTIN FOX: And that relates to another of your principles, which is prepare your plan, but be ready to change it. How does that play out when you’re preparing for the work day?

BOB POZEN: Well, every night I’d look at my calendar for the next day, and I try to give myself a sense of priorities. What are the highest priorities that I need to achieve? What do I want to get out of certain meetings or certain phone calls? I start the day with that approach, but of course, as we all know, things come up. Things happen. I might get pulled into an emergency because of a problem in the financial markets, or I might get asked to go on a news show, or something like that. So you’ve got to be ready to change your schedule, and be very flexible. So it’s a combination. On the one hand, you want to be prepared, have your priorities. But on the other hand, you want to be flexible. Your preparation helps you when you have emergencies, because then you can say, well here are the things I really need to get done today. I’ll concentrate on those. Here are some nice-to-haves, and now that this crisis has come up, I’m going to push them for a few days later.

JUSTIN FOX: You also have a lot of very specific productivity tips. The flashlight you carry with you on business trips, for example. What’s that for?

BOB POZEN: Well, that’s one that’s a little bit of fun. You know when you get into the taxi cab or to a car. Sometimes the light isn’t very good, and you want to read. This little hand flashlight just lets me read when the light isn’t very good. So I find that a very useful tool.

JUSTIN FOX: And you don’t get carsick reading in the back of a cab?

BOB POZEN: Usually I don’t get carsick. I’ve been pretty well trained not to do that.

JUSTIN FOX: Ok, that’s handy. Another thing you swear by is naps.

BOB POZEN: Oh, I am a great believer in naps. I’ve read a lot, and it appears that most people, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, whether it’s 2:00 or 3:00, reach a physical low. And they’re really not very productive at that time. If you can get a 30 minute nap, and really fall asleep, you feel totally refreshed. And you’re so much more productive the rest of the day. I know people sometimes say, oh how can I really go to sleep for 30 minutes? It’s not really possible. But again, it’s a question of practice. For me, the key is to put my feet up. I happen to have flat feet, so my feet are usually tired. If I can put my feet up on my desk, then I can go out like a light for 30 minutes, and wake up pretty much automatically at those 30 minutes.

JUSTIN FOX: You also have an interesting approach to breakfast and lunch. What’s that?

BOB POZEN: Well, I believe in having a very boring breakfast and lunch. For me, I’m not trying to make this a culinary experience. So I eat pretty much the same thing for breakfast every morning– a banana, bowl of cereal. Then I have a cup of coffee at work. And then at lunch, I have pretty much the same chicken salad sandwich, and a drink. I think, that way, you don’t spend very much time or effort thinking about what you’re going to have for breakfast or lunch. It’s pretty rote. And you can focus your attention on something else.

JUSTIN FOX: So the key to productivity is– well not being boring– but choosing the things to be boring about?

BOB POZEN: Yeah, I think that’s a good way to put it. It’s one thing if you go to a great restaurant at night, and you want to order some excellent French food. But if you’re having a busy workday, and you’re just trying to have breakfast and lunch, it’s probably good to be pretty boring about that. And spend your time thinking about more important things.

JUSTIN FOX: Bob, thanks again for talking with us.

That was Bob Pozen. The article is Extreme Productivity. For more, please check out the May issue of HBR or visit hbr.org