Everyone should be dedicating some portion of their time to improving their productivity. Productivity is about being more effective and efficient; in other words, doing things better and faster. If you can develop a productive mindset, you can apply this to almost every aspect of your work and life.
This is why I’m so passionate about being productive. It’s not actually that I want to be productive. It’s all about the end result. Productivity is just the skill you can apply to get the results you want, faster. For me, that could be growing my business, freeing up my time or improving my health.
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It does matter what you do. We all have goals or things we’re trying to do better at. And if you think about these aspirations through the lens of productivity you’re more likely to achieve what you want.
Remember, effectiveness is about improving your end result:
- Working on tasks that have a greater impact instead of filling your time with miscellaneous ‘busy work’ (stuff that feels productive, but isn’t).
- Improving the quality of your work or results (this could be improving the quality of your product, video, course, or podcast).
- Getting a better outcome (this could be more revenue, a better grade, losing weight)
Efficiency is about doing this work in less time:
- You could delegate certain tasks to your team so you can work on higher-impact things.
- By coming up with a streamlined process, or standard operating procedure (SoP), you can create a formula for doing certain tasks quickly without compromising on quality. I use task templates in Asana to create a checklist of things my team and I need to do for every YouTube video or podcast we publish.
- There may be tools or services that help you to do your work in less time. e.g. I use TextExpander to store email templates, Asana to manage my team and Pipedrive to manage client follow-up so no one slips through the cracks. I could do my work without these tools, but I wouldn’t be as efficient.
And as I said, you can apply this mindset to anything that you do:
- How to you spend your time at the gym. What exercises and movements do you do to lose weight or build muscle.
- How you prioritise your time at work. Deciding what to work on and how to cut out waste.
- How to spend your free time. Making time for your hobbies, friends and family.
- Keeping the family fed and healthy. Doing meal prep and choosing what to spend your money on at the supermarket.
A productive mindset will help you to always be thinking: “What am I trying to achieve and how can I do this better, or more efficiently?”
I’m not saying you need to re-invent or optimise every aspect of your life. I can be lazy and slow at certain things. But adopting this mindset can help you to identify easy opportunities to achieve your desired results in less time, and who wouldn’t want that?