Productivity 101
Did you know that a major aspect of being hyper productive is scheduling time off? Being highly productive is quite different than being busy all the time. Being busy simply means that you’re doing something, regardless of what you’re doing. Being productive, however, means that the activities with which you busy yourself are intentionally planned to get you closer to a desired goal. This might sound weird, but if you tackle whatever comes your way as it comes, chances are that you’re highly unproductive and spend most of your time stressing out on what will come next and less focused on what you’re doing now. Let’s explore this topic a bit further, shall we?
How do you measure your productivity? Do you measure your productivity by the amount of tasks you complete in a given day? Or by the amount of hours you spend working on a given activity? Do you measure productivity by the amount of money you make? Or by the amount of hours you take to make so much money? Though none of these are wrong, some might give you a more accurate figure of how productive you truly are.
You might spend eight hours a day at work. During these eight hours, you are busy. But how many of these hours are you actually producing something? If you’re extremely productive, I’d assume you have about four productive hours on average in a given workday. The other four hours are spent chatting away, on the phone, checking and replying emails, planning what to do, setting your priorities, going to the washroom, making a cup of coffee, quickly checking your social media or answering your wife where you want to go for dinner on Saturday. Moreover, every time you are in fact being productive and someone pops in to ask you a question or your desk phone rings, you get completely sidetracked and it may take you up to twenty minutes for you to arrive where you left off. Nevertheless, you have been busy as throughout your day(s).
To increase your productivity, the first thing you should consider is requesting some time off well in advance. Perhaps three, four or even six months in advance. This way, you guarantee you have something to be excited about every day. Second is to determine what goal you intend to achieve between now and when you go away. Break it down into quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals and daily goal - yeah, ONLY ONE! Third, block the first half of your working hours to be completely dedicated to achieving you daily goal. When you do this, you’re committed to saying no to everything else that might come up in those hours. No urgent meetings with clients, no planning, no checking emails, no to all kinds of distractions. The other half of your day, you’ll be feeling a lot more relax and content as you'll already have reached your daily goal and will be on track to your bigger goals - weekly, monthly, etc. So, what are you going to do with the rest of your day? Schedule meetings with your boss, team, suppliers, clients, deal with admin stuff, attend to your emails, plan what to do tomorrow, organise a secret birthday party to the receptionist, whatever. Your commitment with progressing toward your medium/long term goal is completed. If you want to take it a step further, reassess your medium/long term goal so you can achieve more and negotiate a raise or a promotion. After all, being more productive means that you are able to deliver better results and with better results comes greater responsibilities and therefore greater compensation.
What are you gonna do with your time off? Is there an activity you like to do just for fun? Photography, music, kayaking, skydiving, trying gourmet restaurants or exploring regional wineries? Notice that when you are highly productive at work, you will unlikely use your time off to escape from the daily madness that is work. You won’t need to overindulge in activities that will hinder your ability to be productive. I’m not suggesting you won’t drink, smoke pot or experiment some hallucinogens, but I’m sure you’ll be far less tempted to overindulge. Part of being highly productive is to be able to take care of our bodies so we can continually produce extraordinary results. If we can’t move our bodies to its full capacity, our brain won’t be as capable to perform at the highest level. The brain will be overly concerned with the survival of the body, hence directing most our energy to deal with whatever is impairing the body to function properly. Just for curiosity, google the top 100 entrepreneurs, CEOs, high effective professionals and see how many of them are overweight or seem physically impaired. Our body is the very tool which enables us to produce results and succeed in our professional and personal lives.
To be able to perform at the highest level you should start off your day with some sort of ritual which will generate physical, emotional and spiritual energy. I do meditation first up with my wife so our intentions and spiritual energies are in alignment with what we’re about to do. Then, we run and work out in order to prepare our bodies for coping with the highest of demands of work. A cold shower so my mind is ready to tolerate stress and a nutritious breakfast so my body doesn’t run out of fuel while I’m working on my daily goal full-on. Notice that everything starts and finishes with time off. Our careers and enterprises are meant to serve others, but in order to do so, we must first serve ourselves.
