Four productivity hacks for sustained insight

How do you define high performance? For me, it’s not about short bursts of excellence, but the ability to sustain strong performance, productivity and impact over time.

In recent years, burnout among business leaders has become increasingly common – accelerated by the Covid pandemic, economic uncertainty, regulatory change and the rapid evolution of AI.

So, when yet another managing director came to me exhausted at the start of 2025, I wasn’t surprised. Karen had spent most of 2024 in constant motion. The pace was draining, and worse, she felt her effort wasn’t translating into meaningful progress for her organisation.

As MD, she worried not only about business results but also about setting the wrong example – one of busyness rather than focus and impact. She knew the saying “don’t confuse activity with productivity” but recognised she had fallen into exactly that trap.

Helping Karen reset reminded me that sustained performance isn’t an accident – it requires deliberate habits. Here are four practical hacks drawn from more than a decade of working with elite leaders, athletes and coaches:

Priorities and discipline

The first is deceptively simple: get clear on your priorities and stay disciplined in sticking to them.

Start by defining what matters most for the business over a set period, then map how your time should align. Use the approach that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, famously takes: “What is it that only I can do?” That question helps separate the essential from the optional.

However, clarity alone isn’t enough – discipline is needed as well. Three simple tactics help: first, make priorities visible. Keep them somewhere you can see them daily: on a wall, a whiteboard or digital dashboard, so they stay front of mind.

Then, track your time. When I worked as a lawyer, timesheets were a chore. But when I started my own business, I brought them back, this time as a self-management tool. Each quarter, I would set three or four key priorities and check whether my time reflected them. If too many hours went elsewhere, it was a clear sign to recalibrate.

Finally, learn to say no. Every “yes” carries a cost. If a meeting or task isn’t tied to your priorities, saying yes helps no one. If you struggle with this, prepare a polite script, something like: “I’d love to help, but my current priorities mean I can’t give this the focus it deserves.”

The time-out hour

The second hack is inspired by Gilbert Enoka’s book Become Unstoppable: The blueprint from the world’s most successful sports team. Enoka, long-time mental skills coach for the New Zealand All Blacks, highlights the importance of regular reflection.

He cites the “Shultz Hour” – named after former US secretary of state George Shultz, who set aside one hour each week for uninterrupted reflection.

Here’s how to apply it: schedule a weekly, non-negotiable block of time. Go somewhere quiet, leave your phone behind and sit with a blank sheet of paper. At first, you’ll feel restless. But with practice, this hour becomes one of your most productive and impactful, where you do your most powerful and deep-reaching thinking.

Cut meeting times

Few productivity hacks are as simple, or as effective, as reducing meeting length. Ask yourself: what’s your default meeting length? If it’s an hour, make 45 minutes the new norm. If it's 30 minutes, try 20. The principle is straightforward, work expands to fill the time available.

Even a 15-minute reduction across multiple meetings adds up to hours regained each week. Those reclaimed pockets of time can be invested in deeper work, rest or reflection – all of which enhance long-term performance.

Some teams even hold standing meetings to encourage brevity. That may not suit every business, but the mindset is what matters: discipline, focus and respect for everyone’s time. Longer meetings have their place – for relationship-building, coaching or creative collaboration – but they should be the exception, not the norm.

Tripwires

In 2011, António Horta-Osório, then CEO of Lloyds Banking Group, famously took an eight-week leave of absence to recover from burnout. The headlines focused on his breakdown, but what interested me more was how he managed to avoid a repeat after returning to work.

One key strategy he adopted was using tripwires – pre-defined triggers that flag when behaviour starts drifting away from healthy habits. For example, Horta-Osório set a rule not to check emails after a certain time each evening. If he broke that rule more than twice a week, it set off the tripwire – a cue to pause, reflect and reset.

Tripwires are powerful because they externalise self-awareness. Instead of waiting until you’re overwhelmed, they alert you early. They can apply to almost anything – sleep, exercise, delegation, even emotional reactions. The point is to define your limits before you breach them.

You might decide, for instance: if I work past 8pm more than twice in a week, I’ll revisit my schedule or if I skip two workouts in a row, I’ll block out the next one as non-negotiable.

These are not punishments, they’re safeguards – reminders that sustained performance depends on healthy boundaries.

If you want your organisation to thrive long term, you need to lead in a way that sustains your own impact. Karen learnt this firsthand. Within months of applying these four hacks, she regained her energy and sense of control. Her team noticed, too: meetings were crisper, communication clearer, results stronger.

High performance isn’t a sprint, it’s a cycle of focus, discipline and renewal.