VU Partnership Professor: To Be Effective at Work, You Need to Be Effective beyond It

"Always have a wider perspective – work is only one-third of our lives. Another third is a personal life, and yet another is sleep. If your personal life is poor and your sleep is poor, you will not do well at work," says Dr Vytautas Ašeris, partnership professor at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of Vilnius University (VU MIF) and Vinted's director of engineering.. According to the expert, there are three main factors that help people become more productive, but he admits that at the end of the day, it's not the pluses on the to-do list that sum it all up – it's the feeling.

"Leave me alone, I'm very busy"

According to Professor Ašeris, very often when people think about productivity, they believe they need to work harder rather than more efficiently.

"Always look "For me, productivity is about doing more while working less. We don't want a person to work longer. On the contrary, we want them to work shorter but more efficiently. Productivity is all about efficiency," says the VU partnership professor.

When it comes to professional productivity, he believes that the most important thing is the person's own perception of whether or not what they are doing is effective.

"Imagine someone pushing a polygonal wheel. Another person comes up and says, "Why don't you push a round one?" And gets the answer – "Leave me alone, I'm very busy" This is the best example of a lack of awareness of one's own effectiveness," he says.

Formula for improvement: 70, 20 and 10

However, in his own environment, seeing people who want to grow, Professor Ašeris often observes bad examples. According to him, the most important formula for growth is based on three numbers: 70, 20 and 10.

"Say you want to learn a new programming language. 10% of your time should be spent on theory: reading, lectures, conferences. 20% – on working with others: consultations, meetings, reviews. The remaining 70 % is down to hard work and constant practice," he says.

He remembers once having a driving instructor who was ahead of his time: "That's how we used to learn to drive: 70% of the training was practice and 10% was theory lectures. The 20% I mentioned earlier, most driving instructors did not offer, but mine did. I was never alone in his car – there were always a few other students, and together we learned from each other's mistakes."

Often, he says, people focus on goals that are not very meaningful, such as reading five books a month about a subject they want to learn.

"I think it's a case of the engine howling in neutral gear. If you spend time on theory, but don't apply that knowledge on your own or with someone in your team, that's a flop".

Nutrition, soft skills, and digitalisation

Professor Ašeris is convinced that in order to be productive, it is important to take care of other aspects of your life, especially your health. The expert says there are three main points to focus on: nutrition, soft skills and digitalisation.

"Nutrition. We probably all know the basic tips – taking vitamins, avoiding heavily processed foods and drinking water. Everyone's body is different, but a few basic rules apply to all: eat more food from your own latitude, as your body accepts it better. Eat as colourful food as possible – all the colours of the rainbow should be on your plate during the day. If you want to follow a specific or very radical diet, you need to do some research to assess whether it will help or harm your body. For more detailed advice, eating a kiwifruit an hour before bedtime will prepare your body for a better night's sleep. Cannabis tea can also help you fall asleep," advises Vinted's Director of Engineering.

The expert also identifies sleep, meditation and sport as key soft skills: "Various methods of recharging the body, such as temperature shocks or floating, are also becoming very popular. Silicon Valley is even testing some more unusual methods, such as the dopamine diet. In simple terms, two hours a day without doing anything that makes your body happy makes the other 22 hours much happier and more productive. Hypnosis is also making a comeback. People will try anything to be productive."

Speaking about digitalisation, Professor Ašeris mentions various health tracking methods available to everyone – phones, heart rate monitors, smart rings. The expert reveals that he has also tested a permanent cardiogram measurement device.

"You let the device measure your cardiogram while you keep a diary of what you did that day. You then compare the diary with the cardiogram data. And you can see very well what makes you nervous and where you feel good. It's easy to draw conclusions", he says.

Asked to identify his most personally rewarding productivity habits, he mentions cannabis tea at bedtime and coffee in the morning as regular dietary items, as well as meticulous task filing and management and a zero inbox policy.

"How do I decide if it has been a productive day? I would say it's very much about feeling. Most of the time, that decision is made unconsciously on the way home or at home, after being asked "how was your day?". The answer usually lies in "I feel": "I feel I've done a lot" or "I feel I've wasted my time". After all, we are human beings, not robots," concludes the VU partnership professor.