The MTL Professional Development Programme is a collection of 202 PowerPoint presentations that will provide you with step-by-step summaries of a key management or personal development skill. This presentation is on "Non-Doing Work" and will show you how to include periods of non-active work in your daily time management plan. 

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
NON-DOING WORK
Do less and be more productive
MTL: The Professional Development Programme

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
Attribution: All images are from sources where a Creative Commons license exists for commercial use. All icons are on subscription
from thenounproject. All clipart is from free sources. The MTL Professional Development Programme is copyright of Manage Train
Learn.
Non-Doing
Work
Introduction: The Industrial Age that preceded our current Information Age had no time for
non-doing work. Work was organised to fill up the time with as much productive activity as
possible. Today productive work requires intelligence and creativity. Time to stop and think
has become an essential feature of working. In this topic, we’ll show you 7 key features of
non-busy work.

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
1. LET THINGS
HAPPEN
One of the reasons why stress is at record levels
in all our workplaces is the belief that you must
be active all the time for anything to happen. In
fact, the contrary is the case. When you remove
yourself and trust that things will happen as they
should, then, even if we don’t always understand
how, things will happen at the right time in the
right way. To succeed in this approach, you need
two things: attention to focus on what you want,
and intention, a deep desire to see it come
about. Both attention and intention are non-
doing functions of the mind.
Sometimes things get done by doing nothing
Flickr attribution: /sblackley/6111634247/

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
2. USE YOUR
BRAINS
All of us possess an amazing machine in our
brains known as the creative sub-conscious. This
is the source of all our best ideas. Yet, when we
are rushing around like headless chickens, we
don’t allow our sub-conscious brains to come to
our rescue. Often we put a lot of busyness into a
task only to realize later on that, if we’d stopped
and thought about things, we could have found a
smarter, quicker, or more productive solution.
Better thinking means better execution
Flickr attribution: /chrisfp/13917804392/

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
3. STOP AND
TUNE IN
In his book “Life Tide”, writer Lyall Watson
records the phenomenon of a group of macata
fuscata monkeys stranded on a Japanese island
who discovered a completely new food, sweet
potatoes. At first only a few monkeys worked out
that they had to wash the potatoes in order to
eat them. More and more monkeys worked it out
and when the number reached around a
hundred, suddenly monkeys on other parts of
the island and on other islands were doing it too.
It was as if there were a collective consciousness
telling them what to do. The same thing can
happen to human beings. We can sense the
times, sniff the wind, and roll with the tides. In
this way, we can tune in to what is happening
and make the journey free and effortless.
Sense the collective consciousness
Japanese monkeys: Attribution: Wikipedia

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
4. TAKE A
BREAK
Breaks are essential for productive work.
Research shows that there is a basic physiological
rhythm to our day governed by our automatic
and endocrine systems. This is known as the
Break – Rest – Activity Cycle and lasts between
90 and 120 minutes. That’s why breaks are
necessary to give us energy and refresh us.
You must stop if you want to do a good job
Flickr attribution: /104284854@N07/10381427286/

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Non-Doing Work
5. TAKE TIME
TO PLAN
In the West, we prize action over inaction. We,
therefore, complete one task and hurry on to the
next. In the East, by contrast, non-action is prized
as highly as action, if not more. These cultures
like to measure progress by more than just
results. They spurn impatience and hurry,
knowing that, if you prepare well, a moment
eventually arrives when things are ready for
implementation and they practically complete
themselves.
Find a balance between time to plan and time to do
Flickr attribution: /bibi81/4940642556/

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
6. TAKE TIME
OUT
It is when you work in fast-moving environments
that you need to remember to take time out.
Time out enables you to get away from all the
problems that usually clutter up your work and
see things more clearly. When running Microsoft,
Bill Gates used to take a week out of his schedule
every year to go somewhere where nobody
could reach him just to think things through. This
habit helped to make him into one of the richest
people on the planet.
When you get away, you can see the big picture
Flickr attribution: /zachd1_618/6617944545/

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MTL: The Professional Development Programme
Non-Doing Work
7. MEET WITH
YOURSELF
Just as sufficient planning before action can
reduce the time a project takes, so can review
after the action. In fact, in repetitive tasks it is
vital. Review, or meeting with yourself, enables
you to look back and learn. You can see the big
picture and put things into some kind of
perspective. It also enables you to see the
mistakes you made and to consider how you can
do things better next time.
Reflect, consider, relish, move on
Flickr attribution: /elpadawan/19765882222/

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Non-Doing Work
This has been a Slide Topic from Manage Train Learn
AFinal
Word
Non-doing work isn’t just thinking and planning; it’s also recuperating and refreshing yourself. In
his bestselling book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey called it “sharpening
the saw” and made it one of the keystones of personal effectiveness.