Laura Stack* says that being productive is often confused with getting lots of little jobs done but it’s the quality, not quantity of Putting the prod in productive that moves the team forward.
It’s easy to forget what productivity truly is, especially when it’s cluttered with various initiatives, politics, and personal agendas.
I thought it would help to clarify the basics (both procedural and human) that must underlie productivity for it to really work.
Here are five items I consider basic to understanding and achieving productivity.
An understanding of productivity:
Many people don’t understand what productivity means.
Unless your job consists entirely of doing such tasks, it doesn’t involve answering emails, handling social media, or checking little daily jobs off your list.
You can delete and delegate such things as part of the necessary housekeeping of your job.
Productivity is work that moves your organisation forward in some way.
Officially, productivity is one’s output per time unit; the more the better, if the output is high-quality and doesn’t require correction or discarding.
Make your goal maximum productivity with minimal waste.
This may sometimes require you to slow down or conserve your work materials to maintain quality.
Accountability:
This stems from willingness to not only do good, productive work, but also to stand by that work unflinchingly.
When something goes wrong, admit your failure and learn from it.
As long as you didn’t significantly harm your organisation, your superiors will be pleased to see you take responsibility for your actions and will trust you to continue to try to do your very best.
Take care of yourself:
In many ways, your most important tool is yourself.
Humans are endlessly adaptable; it’s why we’re the dominant species on this planet.
However, no matter how flexible you are, you’re like any tool: You can’t stay busy constantly.
The mind-body connect does matter, so get a decent amount of sleep each night, eat well, hydrate yourself, exercise, keep your mental facilities sharp, and have preventative maintenance done on a regular basis.
When you make mistakes, don’t dwell on them. Learn from them but leave them in the past.
It’s important for you to forgive yourself your failures.
It’s not just about labour costs and profits:
In some organisations, those measuring productivity can’t see past labour costs and, if relevant, the bottom line.
While productivity contributes directly to profitability and ideally offsets labour costs, not every job produces direct profits.
Consider HR jobs and some management positions, which rarely profit a business directly but are crucial to their functioning.
Do the best possible work you can that moves the organisation forward, maintaining high levels of productivity.
It’s not about somehow finding a new ‘profit point’ when your job isn’t designed for that.
Use systems and routines:
To maximise your productivity, learn to manage yourself carefully — what most observers call time management.
This requires you to find and use an effective system to keep you on track and productively balanced, with the inclusion of routines that eventually become automatic and easy.
Finding the right routine and systems will take some time, so do some experimenting.
Sometimes you must start over to move forward.
You may have others in addition to the five basic principles I’ve chosen, but this is a good place to start your research toward a productive future.
* Laura Stack is a keynote speaker, author and authority on productivity and performance. She has written seven books, the latest being Doing the Right Things Right: How the Effective Executive Spends Time. She can be contacted at theproductivitypro.com.
This article first appeared on Laura’s blogsite.
