Why You Should Invest in Your Productivity
Learning About the Process of Working Could be the Highest Value Time Investment You Make
Friends of mine have been holding a remote ‘Book Club’ over the lockdown to share in reading Fiction. Sharing ideas and encouraging reading through this time.
I wanted to get in on this, but I read very little fiction. The main thing I enjoy from reading is learning from others’ experiences — normally reading books from someone who is really good at what they do.
These are books like:
- Jenson Button — Life to the Limit
- Steve Jobs — The Exclusive Biography
- Alex Ferguson — Leading
And also books with someone who has directly applicable idea, that you can apply to your life. Normally focusing on organisation, productivity or motivation.
Things like:
- Getting things Done — David Allen
- How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
- Atomic Habits — James Clear
- 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades — Thomas Frank
I always found these type of books more valuable to me. Not that Fiction isn’t valuable, it’s proven to increase empathy and understanding of others, but non-fiction can often be more directly and easily applicable.
I think it comes from my background in Engineering — you go to a book or a publication for an answer to a question, not for a story.
My friends were resistant to my notion of reading a ‘business book’ or something on productivity, I presume because it may take the fun out of it.
I get it though, times are tough at the moment. Immersing yourself in another person’s story can be an enjoyable escape. The problem comes with my focus on extracting value from reading and learning as much as I can from someone else.
I really enjoy these books and get a huge amount of value out of them. I think this is a huge advantage, if you can enjoy learning about productivity or organisation, and challenging your processes — you’re at a huge advantage.
You can be more productive, optimise your time more effectively and spend more time doing what you enjoy.
’Thinking about your thinking, changes your thinking’
I talk here a lot about Intentionality, I think one of the biggest shames in the world is when people coast through life, being told what to do by others — not considering what they want from their time.
You should always aim to challenge your decisions and understand if they are made by you, or by others. Ultimately understanding if it’s actually what you want to be doing.
For most of us, we spend the majority of our waking lives working, why not invest in understanding that process and optimising it for being more effective. I call this being ‘carefully lazy’.
It’s a modern trend, the idea of ‘hustle’. One side of this idea stands, you should work hard for the outcome you want. However, working hard isn’t always the answer, though. To get cliche; ‘work smarter, not harder’.
This Doesn’t Mean You Need to Become a Productivity Grease Monkey Though
I wrote a complete guide to the productivity resources, it’s aimed to guide you to the right place and getting the answers to your questions without wasting your time.
This comes down to listening to Podcasts that are entertaining and informative, Skillshare courses that are amazingly concise and full of valuable learning and reading blogs.
The idea of Ground State
What do you do when you’re not doing anything?
This is a real opportunity to make change to be more productive, if you can enjoy time being half-productive, you can be so much more effective. Replace Netflix with SkillShare, replace scrolling through Instagram with meaningful reading on Medium or games with Brilliant Courses.
Pay it Forward
One of the things that unites those who are successful is that they paid it forward. They invested time, money or both — this investment grows and grows.
Invest your time, in saving your time. It will pay dividends.
Have a look at these resources, it might change how you work.
