| Boosting Your Personal Productivity
With so many tasks fighting for our attention, it’s
no wonder we struggle with feeling productive. For most women,
it’s important to us that we feel productive, and we
usually measure our productivity by our output – how
much do we get done in a given day? If we get a lot done,
then we feel happy, but if at the end of the day, we have
to ask ourselves what we did all day, irritability sinks in.
If you have a business deadline, a family and home that need
attention, and a volunteer project that begs to be completed,
how will you pull together the resources and energy you need
to successfully manage these commitments without compromising
yourself? Boosting our personal productivity is possible if
we know how to do it. Productivity involves three components:
getting things done, the ability to make the right decisions
quickly, and being able to create innovative solutions to
our perceived challenges.
Getting Things Done
Getting things done requires both external and internal resources.
Externally, it involves using people, time and money to achieve
the results you want. Utilizing our people resources means
we have to give up this idea that we are alone and on our
own. We have to look at who in our life may be able to pitch
in and help out. Can you involve a babysitter or spouse to
help with the kids while you work on your business commitments?
What other volunteers can you pull together to help you accomplish
your projects?
Managing your time involves your ability to organize yourself,
evaluate your priorities and focus on what’s most important
to carry out your mission. More often than not, a lot of people
have a large ongoing “to do” list that they work
from. Everything has equal priority and focus is lost because
the list is too overwhelming. Break up your list by order
of importance and focus on only 2-3 tasks per day. You will
be more successful in getting things done.
Internally, getting things done is all about your motivation
behind the task. We come to every task in our lives with a
certain level of energy, or attitude about the task. When
I asked one woman why she wanted to take care of herself by
exercising, her response was because she needed to make sure
she was healthy enough to take care of other people. It’s
very subtle and hard to see, but her motivation was out of
fear. She was afraid if she didn’t take care of herself,
she wouldn’t be able to take care of her family and
business. When we are motivated by any kind of negative emotion
like fear, worry, anger, or guilt, the energy we come to the
task with is low. When you associate a task with pain (I hate
exercising; it’s so hard), you are less likely to do
it.
Complete this sentence: I want to…. Most likely, your
answer was some kind of task or activity that you enjoy. Perhaps
you said, “I want to read a book” or maybe you
said “I want to take a vacation.” The energy behind
wanting to do something is high, and unless you let guilt
get in the way, you will very likely complete a task you want
to do. Always focus on why you want to get something done,
even if you have to seek out the benefits received from doing
a task you feel you have to do.
Making Decisions
If there is one thing that will bring your productivity to
a screeching halt, it is the inability to make decisions.
I don’t know how many decisions we make everyday, but
I know it’s a lot. Should I get up? What will I have
for breakfast today? What should I wear today? What do I want
to do first? Should I take a nap? Hey, a short nap can improve
your productivity.
For the last two days, I have been dragging my feet on making
a business decision. On Sunday, as I was working on creating
some visuals for an upcoming presentation, my husband says,
“It’s too bad you can’t find a way to make
your visuals more professional looking.” That started
the decision making cycle that I am stuck in. How can I create
professional looking visuals on my budget? While I wait for
the “perfect” answer to come to me, my project
remains undone.
The ability to make fast and accurate decisions can make
a world of difference in your personal productivity. What
is your perspective on making decisions accurately and quickly?
Do you avoid making decisions for fear of making the wrong
choices? Do you look at decisions as opportunities to grow
and develop as an individual? Wouldn’t it be nice to
view decisions as an effortless task? What gets in the way
of all your decisions being made accurately and quickly? Leaving
decisions pending in your “inner” inbox can deplete
your daily energy level, even if you are not consciously thinking
about them.
Creating Innovative Solutions
Have you ever had a day or a situation when everything seemed
to work out smoothly? You were “in the zone” and
you were accomplishing more than you ever could have imagined.
Your energy was high, your mood was great, and you were amazed
at how easy life was. When we are in this “genius”
mode, we have the innate ability to eliminate all obstacles,
noise, and clutter, externally and internally. We are able
to let go, focus, and let our intuition take over.
Recently, I have been faced with a situation that needs an
innovative solution. My teenager hates English and is unmotivated
to do what is required of him in this class. He is resistant
to reading, but yet he has a 400 page book that he has to
read to complete a 14 page research paper. A traditional approach
of telling him he better start reading or he’s going
to fail won’t work. A slightly different approach of
suggesting he read just 20 minutes a day doesn’t work
either. In order for me to be successful at coming up with
a creative solution, I must be able to see multiple perspectives
all at the same time. What is blocking my son mentally? What
motivates him? How does he learn? What does he need to accomplish?
How can I partner with my son to create an opportunity for
success? By keeping an open mind to all the possibilities
that are available to me, a solution will be delivered. So
far I’ve thought of reading the book together, downloading
the book on his iPod so he can listen to it, motivating him
with a reward dinner at his favorite restaurant, and renting
the book in movie format. As I stay open to my intuition,
more solutions will come to me.
While it would certainly be nice to live a life that is truly
simplistic, it is not possible or realistic to think life
will not have challenges that require innovative solutions.
We will always have competing demands that require us to pull
together our resources to get things done, make quick and
accurate decisions and utilize our creativity and intuition
to find solutions to whatever trials life brings us. When
you can successfully implement these three keys, you will
experience personal productivity every day of your life.
Lori Radun is a certified life coach and professional speaker
specializing in helping women be effective leaders of their
home and work lives. To receive FREE personal development
tips and the special report “5 Tips for Maximizing Your
Time”, visit her website at http://www.loriradun.com
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