Revisiting Productivity Habits
Let’s Make This Simple!
Productivity tips are hugely popular.
‘This app will save you.”
“ These tricks will add hours to your day…”
etc…
Here is a search for “productivity” from my InstaPaper service — whoa!
The Problem Is…
They generally don’t work for most of us. Not without a lot of discipline and behavior change to go along with the tool(s)!
So How Do I Approach Productivity?
I try to keep things simple..
Identify the areas that are pain points in your daily routine — this should take no more than 10 minutes.
Then ask yourself these three questions:
- Can I Change It?
- Will (or Have) I Changed It?
- If Not, Why Not?
At this point, you quickly have identified areas that 1) NEED to change, 2) You CAN change it, 3) Or have accepted — for now — that you will not change it!
How Do I Apply This Approach?
When I work with clients, I formalize this methodology.
Here is a sample grid — it’s basic, but using this quickly makes it clear where you stand on things. Are you serious about getting more productive? And, if not yet, you understand why!
A few observations about this grid:
- Keep the “challenge area” broad — this is NOT about detailing every pain point that you encounter. The observations should be brief and directional!
- Conditional formatting is used to quickly identify opportunities.
- Assign a “Pain Rating” (I use 1–3, with 1 being the most painful). This way, start with “1's” to provide focus to your efforts.
That’s it. You now have a simple road map to start your efforts to enhancing your productivity!
In a future post, I will show you how I use this framework to start making changes — the why, what and how of actually making changes! Stay tuned!
About Don
“It’s time for DIFFERENT”
Don is passionate about helping professionals and organizations keep up and adapt to the changing business world that we operate in.
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