Productivity is a measure of output per measure of input. Productivity is about producing the best possible results with the limited resources you have, usually time.
Being productive is not the same as being busy or ticking a lot of tasks off your to-do list. The most productive people focus on results i.e. they ensure that the right things get done.
As you can see, productivity is something you cannot bargain with if you have decided to grow in all spheres of life. Your business or endeavor cannot improve unless you make conscious efforts to personally improve.
I will be taking you on a PERSONAL PRODUCTIVITY series to show you amazing ways to be productive.
You might want to ask why Personal Productivity is important? Well you must always remember that your time has a value and needs to be treated as a precious resource.
Before I delve into the series properly in the next post, I’d like to give you a practical exercise:
- Think about how much you are paid every month to do your job, divide that number by the number of days you work in a month (on average, 22), then again by the number of working hours in a day – usually 8. The figure you get is your hourly rate.
- So let’s say you discovered that your hourly rate is NGN200. If you waste 2 hours on a task that produces no results, you have just cost your employer NGN400 with nothing to show for it. If, on the other hand, you use that 2 hours to build a relationship with a client that eventually yields a big deal, you are making a return on your time.
This doesn’t only apply to people in sales or marketing, it applies to everyone getting paid for a certain work even if you’re the business owner. Even if you are doing an important administrative task, such as working on a project plan, that contributes to the overall success of your business, then you are generating an output.
Every output should ultimately deliver a return. What you just need is to identify the tasks that will produce the most valuable results and focus on those.
A manager or business owner certainly would not spend money on a machine or person that never produces anything. So everyone needs to produce value for whatever they’re paid for.
Well this does not mean running around pretending to be ‘busy’ all the time. Highly productive employees and professionals focus on producing useful results.
These and more would be discussed in this Series.
You can still check out the previous series which is The Goal Setting Series, where you will be taught how to set goals and the different aspects of it.
CHEERS
