productivity [ proh-duhk-tiv-i-tee ]
noun
1. “Doing what I said I would do, within the time that I promised.”
Ok, that's my definition but with these techniques you will improve your performance at work and will show you how to make your best even better, how to achieve more in work and in life. It will provide ideas you can begin experimenting with right away and provides extraordinarily helpful tools for improving workplace performance. It will also help you focus on improving and that will help you maintain your momentum as you forge your path to more success.
Look around and think about your work, life, community, family, and habits. The life you are currently experiencing is the result of accumulated thoughts, discussions, actions and experiences. If you would like your life to be different, then it’s very important to get started. You can begin right where you are—right here, right now—to make things better.
I define productivity as: “Doing what I said I would do, within the time that I promised.”Dramatic performance improvement is not necessarily the byproduct of gaining new knowledge or doing more work; it is more often the result of getting rid of distractions and interruptions.
1. Work Smarter
A constant feeling of pressure to try to do more often with less. What percentage of ya'll got less time and fewer resources while you’re managing bigger goals with more complexity? Lets not forget the opportunities that arise, surprises show up, and life changes on a personal level, as well. How smart you do your job depends on how well you recognize yourself, how clear your next-level goals are, and the way you’re using that all-too limited resource, TIME. With only 96 15-minute blocks during a 24-hour day, and more to try to do than we've time to try to do it in, we'd like to figure smarter, getting more of the proper things done. once you identify tasks that take an excessive amount of time, and practice ways to figure productively, effectively, and efficiently by applying focus to when you’re at your best, you'll improve the way you approach the items you would like to get done, both at work and at home. Don’t just wish things were different; set yourself up to interact and make new things possible. rather than wishing things were easier, wish you were better.”
2 Identifying Your Role in Making Your Best Better
Nike launched its Just Do It ad campaign and ever since, those three words are used to motivate, inspire, encourage, and even demand people to take on more types of goals and work harder to make things happen—personally and professionally. What have you ever tried to “just do”? in fact , that slogan may resonate for a few people, some of the time, for a few of the items, But if you’re anything like me, you’ve occasionally found that "Just Doing It” is often hard. To spot your role in making your best, better, you must know how you work, how you think, and the way you make things happen. The more you understand yourself, the more you'll be able to figure effectively and efficiently to get the important things done.
Stop and ask yourself:
Where do I begin?
What if it’s an excessive amount of work required?
What if something doesn’t work out?
What if I’m not yet able to start?
These sorts of “contingency” questions are extremely useful when you’re project planning. You've got the chance to mention all types of possible scenarios. Unfortunately, for more creative people (you among them, perhaps?), these sorts of questions may very well slow you down; you may even stop and you finish up "just not doing it', instead of claiming “Just get started!”
“Okay, how do I do that?
1. Identify a really specific area you would like to enhance . Focus your attention on making the simplest better in one area of your life, and It all starts with a thought.
2. Develop strategies to learn to recognize and then interact in specific actions and techniques to direct your professional improvement and private development.
Acknowledge the process—remember, you’re just getting started!
An important aspect is that the most critical changes people make usually start small, are repeated with consistency, and often end in a payoff greater than anyone could have hoped.
Experiment by planning for and taking actions that generate bursts of momentum. Experimenting gives you the liberty to prevent, at any time, to undertake something new. It also provides a more objective framework in order that you'll determine whether you ought to stop or continue moving forward. Once you take specific actions to be your best IT continues to get better.
Assess the worth of any trouble that might have been created. Here is the question, I consistently ask myself, my friends, and even my family, Is what your doing even worth the effort?
3 Focus on Making Your Best Better
Three steps—concepts, really, which I firmly believe are crucial to focus on making your best better:
1. Set a goal. A goal goes a long way toward making more things
possible. A clear outcome helps form a structure, clarifying the destination while making obvious the direction to go in. Once you have set a clear path to achieving a goal, it will be easier to say no to things that take you off-course.
2. Be consistent. Consistency is key to personal and career success.
If you can repeat positive, valuable behaviors, develop routines that
build upon each other and that generate and enhance momentum, you will demonstrate your trustworthiness to everyone you work with and around.
3. Strike a deal: Ask a mentor, coach, or friend to serve as an accountability buddy. Identify one very specific goal you have, either in your personal life or at work, and tell your accountability buddy about it in person, over a Skype call, or on the phone. Then, every 5 to 10 days, schedule time to talk. Ideally, you’ll meet several times over the course of a couple months. Decide at the beginning of the process just how many meetings you’d like to have. This clarifies the beginning, middle, and end. Over the course of those few conversations, you’ll share your goal and progress, and keep your ears open for what that person can share with you. I have done this even with my articles, because it is someone who I hold a sense of value to his opinion. This kind of a check-in process gives you a special opportunity: You get to see your progress through someone else’s eyes and as a result, notice some things that you might not see on your own. As fast as life happens, sometimes it’s simply easier to think about and refl ect on what needs to be done than to put the time, energy, and focus into reviewing what you’ve done and how it’s leading to something better.
As your accountability buddy reflects back to you what you are sharing, and asks you the kinds of questions you need to answer to continue improving on the situation, you will make more progress—faster than you thought possible.
4. See yourself in your goals. There are three kinds of goals: (1) goals you think about, (2) goals you write on paper, and (3) goals in which you actually see yourself. There is one person I go to with my most personal things, and that I know will never steer me in the wrong direction which most of the time its not the way I wanted but it took him to keep me straight......The One Looking Back At Me in the Mirror. Before you start your day Ask him, “What do YOU want to get better at? What do YOU want to make more of?”
When you return home, before you go to sleep. ask, “Based on what I wanted to have happen today, how did I do?” Listen to the answer and use that information to help guide you toward the following day.
4 Acknowledge the Process of Making Your Best Better
Repeated improvement seems to prove that small actions— identified,
completed, and reviewed with consistency—can build positive
momentum. When you review your day-to-day activities , what do you remember about the day?
Do you reflect on the actions you took toward the goals you said you wanted to reach? One of the most important, and time-saving, things you can do to speed the process of improvement is to continually define, clarify, and create the support structure you need to succeed. By identifying what you expect to happen, creating realistic and specific milestones, and asking for help when you need it, you put yourself on the way to a whole new level of success.
As you continue on the path to making your best better, make the people around you aware of the kinds of things you’re working on, and ask people WHO DO YOU KNOW WHO . . .? One chance meeting and one extra conversation may wind up moving an entire project forward by leaps and bounds. And it may have started with one simple question, “Who do you know who?”
How about “So, what do you do?
” I have found that this question, more often than not, actually causes a division between two people. Despite the fact that it’s intended to begin a conversation, it instead creates a sense of contention, as each person starts unconsciously to compare him or herself to the other. By instead asking a question like, “Where are you looking to expand?” you invite the other person to a different sort of conversation. As he or she is talking, you can even use a conversation script based loosely on the one above by saying something like,
“Hey, I know someone who . . .” Being interested and interesting in conversation is another way to positively take responsibility for your own improvement.
When you’re at work, Work. Understand to not distinguish between personal and professional expression of work; this definition of "work" simply means “Anything you’re doing right now. Wherever I am, no matter what I am doing, I need focus on the task at hand. Have one intention: to engage completely and give as much of my focus as possible to the endeavor.
It is important to recognize, however, that it’s not realistic to give 100 percent, all the time, to everything you do. The phrase “the stress of it all is killing me” comes to mind. What does it mean? It means that the anticipation of trying to get it all done can kill the motivation to even begin on a single task. For that reason, you must make important choices; in other words, you have to prioritize. Understand the Impact of Your Style of Working and your individual role in making your best better requires that you:
(1) Know the way you work and get things done, and (2) Constantly ensure that you are aligned with the way you work and get things done, (3) Keep your defined “work” actions to 15 to 30 minutes each. These are the “chunks” of time you can use to stay focused, minimize interruptions, and work effectively.
5 Maximizing Your Limited Resources
Chances are you already know when during the day your energy is
You know the direction and already have an idea of the destination you’d like to reach. The more clearly you identify where “there” is, the easier it will be to efficiently identify the actions you can take now and in the near future you need to make to get started. Once you make those decisions, it’s time to maximize your limited resources. They will give you a clearer definition of your role in making your best better, and specifically how you can work smarter.
TOOLS:
There are countless systems, apps, and tools available to help you. Learn one or two new features of each of the tools you use, you can save time, by working smarter each day.
FOCUS:
You have the ability to be interested in and concentrate on something specific as long as you can—until you get distracted. I’m talking about attention span here, and we all have different limits. What one person can sit down and focus on for hours at a time, another person may get up and walk away from after just minutes. think about how many times you were interrupted by others, distracted from what you were working on, or even forgot what you were just about to do. It happens to me all the time. You leave one room to get something in another room, and by the time you get there have completely forgotten why you went there in the first place? Your attention span will always affect what you get done.
ENERGY:
You are already aware that there are certain times during the day when you are more productive, as well as when you’re not. One of the most effective things you can do is study the times of the day and the physical locations you work in to identify when and where you have the most energy to give to your important projects. Matching your tools, focus, and energy is always one of the most effective ways to save time while you’re working.
Time: Do you say “I wish I had more time,”?
Or, “I just need another hour in the day.” There are only 1,440 minutes in a day, and there are just 168 hours in a week. time is the most limited resource of the four (time, energy, focus, and tools), and it’s often the one we have the least control over.
6 Have Clear Goals
When you have clear goals, ,you automatically begin to make things better, and you can continue moving in a positive direction. n is important for two reasons: (1) You’ll notice more opportunities, while (2) you narrow your focus. The more you can see the direction in which you are heading, the easier it will be to collect ideas and information to get you closer to achieving the results you’re after. Stay away from these goal stoppers, But, what if goal-setting doesn’t work? people set the bar too high, taking on goals that are too big to begin with. They take something on, work on it, stress about it, think about it, work on it some more, only to realize that for some reason), they won’t be able to “just do it. They won’t be able to finish what they started. Other times people prefer not picking anything to specific to work toward, they keep themselves open
to living life in the moment and taking advantage of what shows up, as it shows up. “Sure I’d like to know about that next promotion, if it’s ever offered. If not, it’s okay; something else will show up.” Abraham Lincoln: “A goal properly set is halfway reached.”
7. Start Where You Are
Ask yourself, “What have I promised to do that I have not completed?”
As the work you have to do gets more clear, you will realize the importance of improving your productivity and performance.
Start right where you are. Now is the time to identify when you’re at your best. There are all kinds of things that can happen at the beginning of any day to set you off on the wrong foot. Ask yourself
Did I wake up rested?
Is my mind already on overdrive, thinking about all I have to get done today, this week, this year?
Are there certain people who, just by thinking about them, cause me stress or overwhelm me?
As I start the day, am I able to anticipate to any degree of certainty what I may be able to accomplish?
Make a note of those mornings that start in an unproductive and in a bad way. You don’t have to track everything that happens to you; just notice those things that you can use to your advantage.
Often, when we know what gets in the way of our having a good day, we can take steps to preempt them, so that they don’t knock us as far off track as they have in the past. Give yourself the gift of your own attention!
It is human nature to return to some point by doing what you normally do. Recognizing your habits and routines are very significant aspects of reaching your d goal By focusing on that which is within your control, you give yourself one simple key to success. Knowing, focusing on, and practicing the actions you must take to be at your best requires initiative and discipline. True, working when you are at your best might require significant behavioral changes, but, I assure you, the process will produce significant and sustainable quality of life improvements.
Starting your day with a focus on “me at my best” will result in a proactive, productive change. Focusing on your daily habits will often result a better mood, and a reduction in both work and life-related stress. This is what I'm talking about,
I Am At My Best When . . .
- I get enough sleep and eat breakfast each morning.
- I arrive on time
- I reach out to clients in advance of meeting with them.
- I create a list of daily objectives
- I’m prepared for my meetings and presentations.
- I have everything I’ll need on my computer/in my smartphone.
- My electronic gear (ereader, BlackBerry, laptop, etc.) is fully charged and ready to use.
Now that is a way to work smarter and make your best even better
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