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Key Takeaways When Covid shut everything down, we experienced a 600% demand surge almost overnight. Instead of forcing long work hours, I told my team to take breaks and engage in non-work-related activities.
Stepping away from work and engaging in activities that require your full attention improves performance.
Identify the task you dread the most each day, and knock it out early. Then, take a break. This helps you build momentum and adds up to sustained performance over time.
I was CTO at Automation Anywhere when Covid shut everything down. Our cloud product demand surged 600% almost overnight. Businesses suddenly discovered their employees weren’t going back to the office for months — maybe longer — and they needed automation to survive. This wasn’t a scenario anyone had planned for. There was no playbook.
My investors had one natural fear: Would the crisis kill employee productivity? Would we let our customers down? Would the business weather the storm?
Most leaders would have required 80-hour workweeks. We did the opposite.
I told my team to take walks. Read a book. Learn something new. Play a sport, go for a hike — whatever helped them step away from their screens. It worked. We didn’t just survive the storm; we ran faster than ever.
Related: To Improve Productivity, Tell Your Team to Go Take a Hike
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