“You may delay, but time will not.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
I trust you are having a productive week. Talk about being productive on a Monday Morning! I was scheduled to conduct a leadership learning workshop for the directorate of a large agency at the Federal Secretariat in Abuja on Monday morning. My staff and I arrived bright and early and to my utter disbelief, the entire secretariat where over seven thousand civil servants go to earn a living and contribute to smooth functioning of the Government was in darkness! I could not believe this!
Apparently, this was the third week of no power. I was overcome with multiple emotions – disbelief, embarrassment, anger, sadness. My assistant had mentioned the problem the week before, but I guess I was hoping against hope that normalcy would have returned by Monday.
I was so tempted to talk down on my beloved home country – Nigeria, but I restrained myself. I know the power of words! Was my effort in helping build leadership capacity in the Public Sector a futile exercise? But this thought lasted for a moment, when the participants in other branches started to arrive and all were filled with excitement as they looked forward to the commencement of the workshop. Most of them voiced their frustration and helplessness. We unfortunately had to reschedule the event until when ‘light comes’.
As we returned to our office in utter disappointment, we started to discuss the impact of this tremendous loss in productivity on the nation? Whatever the reasons for this situation, they were totally unacceptable.
Perhaps, because of this experience in the morning, the rest of my day was unproductive. I could not get much done for the rest of the day. But you know, regardless of your conditions, you can intentionally choose to be productive. The question on “How To Increase Your Productivity”, was posed to the top personality productivity experts, and this is what some had to say:
- Get stuff out of your head – Essentially write out all that you need to do and prioritize
- Use RescueTime – This is an application that monitors your internet activity and alerts you on when you are wasting time. I have not tried this application, but I think I need it. Most of my Monday was spent checking my emails more often than necessary, too much time on social media platforms – while these are excellent tools, but if not managed can be huge time wasters. Do you agree with me?
- Really really know why you do what you do – Analysts have repeatedly said that the number one reason why people are not productive is a failure of purpose. I am currently facilitating an online mastermind group session (registration closed) on Putting Your Dream To The Test. And we have spent some time really exploring and gaining clarity on our dreams and purpose.
- Put a wall around your best time of day– Are you a morning, afternoon or night person? When do you function the best? Spend your best time tackling your top 1-2 tasks and the others later. It is vitally important to guard this time.
- Get sufficient sleep – It will amaze you to know of how little most people get to sleep. I hope you are not in that number. Adequate sleep from all research indicates helps you to be super-productive.
- Focus on tasks and less on time – When you employ a task-based mindset, you allow yourself to deal with items of importance but when you keep your mindset align with time alone you will find yourself forced to deal with items of urgency. Task-based productivity is far more proactive than time-based productivity because time plays a secondary role as opposed to a primary one.
- Do a weekly review – This task has really helped improved my productivity. The idea is to take the time to review your week, relive the magic moments, capture all your thoughts/worries/to-dos, and finally schedule them out. The scheduling part is where most people miss, so the plan remains just on paper.
Question – What else can you do to improve your productivity?