What Exactly is Productivity Anyway?
Productivity is indeed about efficiency and performance, and there are best-practice tools and techniques out there, but the productivity formula for each of us is different.
The more responsibilities we take on, the more complex that individual formula becomes.
Productivity is A Learned Skill.
We are often not naturally born productivity gurus. We may be born with a healthy dose of talent, but it takes experience and honing that talent to develop it into a skill.
In fact, Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers talks about the 10,000-Hour Rule which says that to develop the skill to an expert level it takes about 10,000 hours of practice. So we’ve got that recipe for any skill. The same is true of productivity.
So, start by assessing these 5 components of productivity –
Energy Management
It’s been proven now that we are at our peak performance when we are in our high energy zone – physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.
Hence, our ability to get into this peak performance zone by understanding what motivates us to do our best work and creating the environment where that is possible is a key productivity skill. Even more, our ability to and stay in this peak performance zone by managing stress and distractions is a key component to being productive.
Organisation
This is the component that most people think about when thinking about productivity. While it is not the only component, it is certainly a key one. Though it takes time to set up and maintain these organizational systems, the idea is that you can always find what you need without wasting time or effort.
Delegation
One way to pump up productivity is to not work alone, especially when there is someone or something else that can do the task faster, better or cost-effectively, but delegation isn’t simply lobbing the task over a wall.
It is a skill that includes identifying the right person to do that task, providing sufficient context to get the task done, and being able to check on progress with a frequency and method that works for both people.
Information Management
In this information age, there is no shortage of information coming at us at a regular, high speed. You could simply turn it off, and certainly we all need to do that every once in a while, but the more tools and techniques you have to capture, assess and utilize information that is, or could be, helpful, the more productive you’ll be.
Enablement
This is also the technology age and there are tons of systems and technology that help you and your teams get more productive. This could be anything from techniques such as running effective meetings or effectively taking notes to practices such as Kanban and the Pomodoro technique, to systems like Getting Things Done and Holacracy, to technology tools such as Evernote and Omnifocus.
Your enablement ecosystem might look very different from everyone else’s but the question is do you have one and does it enable you to be more productive?
Why not find out with a 10-minute quiz from Cobalt Consulting made free for enyonam.com blog followers? To get the quiz, sign up here .
