Productivity has become a national conversation across Australia and New Zealand. However, at an individual level, many professionals remain stuck in the same cycle – full calendars, constant communication and very little meaningful output.

According to productivity expert Donna McGeorge, author of Red Brick Thinking: Make Space. Find Focus. Move Forward, the core issue is operating at 100% capacity with no buffer. “When there's no margin in the day, any unexpected demand sends everything into chaos.”

Linking our productivity slumps to burnout, poor sleep and chronic decision fatigue, McGeorge explains: “Burnout isn't just about working too hard, it’s about working too hard on things that no longer feel meaningful, in systems that reward availability over output.”

McGeorge says the instinctive response to these challenges is often to add more – more tools, more meetings, more processes. But that approach misses the real issue.

“Red Brick Thinking is that instinct to look for what to remove, rather than what to add,” she says. “In accounting or business, it might mean cancelling the monthly report nobody acts on, cutting the four-hour strategy meeting to 45 minutes or stopping a legacy process that was set up for a problem that no longer exists.”

McGeorge recommends asking a simple question: “If this disappeared tomorrow, would anyone miss it? Would anything break? If the answer is no, you've found your red brick.”

She says research supports this approach. Reducing cognitive load and narrowing focus leads to better performance. “Our brains are serial processors, not multitaskers. When we subtract the clutter, the signal sharpens.”

For busy professionals across accounting and finance, McGeorge points to five practical things to stop doing to immediately reclaim time and improve productivity.

1. Stop letting notifications run your day

Constant notifications and email checking are among the biggest hidden drains on productivity. Says McGeorge: “Turn off all notifications and check email at scheduled times. I believe twice a day is the goal, but even moving from constant monitoring to three or four check-ins is transformative.

“Technology should serve your priorities, not redirect them. The simplest test: if a tool or platform is consuming more of your attention than it’s returning in value, it’s a red brick worth examining,” says McGeorge.

2. Stop trading time for output

Many professionals still operate under an outdated model where longer hours equal better results. McGeorge says this industrial-era thinking no longer applies in knowledge-based work.

“The industrial model of productivity of more hours equals more output is broken. What actually matters is not how long you work but how much of your best thinking, judgement and creativity you bring to what matters most.”

Her advice is simple: “Stop trading time for money and start trading energy for impact.”

This shift reframes how work is approached. “Rest becomes strategic, saying no becomes responsible and protecting your energy becomes professional, not selfish,” she says.

3. Stop wasting your peak hours

“Our peak cognitive alertness, the state where we make our best decisions, do our clearest thinking and produce our most complex work, occurs in the first few hours after waking for most people,” says McGeorge.

Despite this, email – a low-value activity – is often the first task of the day.

“The first two hours set the tone and trajectory for everything that follows. Starting with your most important, high-intensity work before the demands of others crowd in is the single biggest lever most people have for improving their productivity,” McGeorge says.

For those who work better later in the day, the same principle applies. “The core idea is to match your highest-intensity work to your period of peak alertness, whenever that falls for you. If your peak is 10pm, protect that time just as fiercely.”

4. Stop defaulting to outdated ways of working

McGeorge says most people spend 50% or more of their day communicating, rather than doing deep, high-value work.

While some communication is essential, much of it is unnecessary or inefficient. McGeorge recommends a more deliberate approach. “The opportunity lies in batching similar tasks, protecting the first two hours of the day for high-intensity work and asking one honest question about every meeting on the calendar: ‘Does this actually need to happen?’.”

That thinking also applies to long-standing processes. “Look at legacy processes, for example: reporting nobody reads, approval chains nobody questions, tools that generate more work than they save. Every professional has red bricks hiding in plain sight,” McGeorge says.

5. Stop saying yes when you mean no

A reluctance to say no is another major contributor to overloaded schedules and diluted performance. “The key is recognising that saying no to one thing is always saying yes to something else and being willing to name that.”

Rather than a blunt refusal, McGeorge suggests reframing the response. “A useful reframe is to say ‘not yet’ or ‘not this’, rather than a flat refusal. Something like: ‘That’s not something I can give the right attention to right now, can we revisit it next quarter?’”

Another effective strategy is to make the trade-offs explicit. “Asking ‘What would you need to deprioritise to make room for this?’ puts the trade-off on the table honestly.”

Importantly, setting boundaries tends to strengthen, rather than damage, professional relationships.

Says McGeorge: “People respect boundaries and clarity far more than they resent a thoughtful no. What damages relationships isn’t the no, it’s the grudging, resentful yes that leads to half-hearted delivery.”

Take away

Donna McGeorge’s ebook, Red Brick Thinking: Make Space. Find Focus. Move Forward, is available at the CA Library.