Gears For Careers

Productive or just busy?

How much of your day on average would you say is genuinely productive, not just an activity? Not sure? Here are some tips to make your day more productive:

Put a value on your time: Time is the most valuable commodity and it’s perishable. When you stop seeing time as free, you’ll invest it on the right things.

Take a helicopter view: Don’t always put your head down and plough away. Take a few minutes to assess the scope of work and decide what you can bundle together to save time, delegate, postpone or simply not do? Don’t just do, think and plan.

Have a ‘priority’ filter: Are you doing what matters are simply what you enjoy? Don’t be tempted to stick with something because you’ve been doing it from time immemorial. Create systems and approaches that allow you to work in more predictable ways.

Think about your end user. Whatever work you do is not for your own benefit. So ask yourself; who are the ‘consumers’ of each piece of work? What are their specific needs? Is there a way to make your output more valuable? Aim to improve outcomes, not just deliver the work.

Stop seeking perfection: Perfection is wanting everything to be 100 percent, but that’s not effective use of time unless that’s the only thing you have on your plate. Rule of thumb is that it is better to get five things done 80-90 percent well than two done 100 percent. However, not needing to do something to perfection shouldn’t be an excuse to do mediocre work.  Perfection is worthy, but getting more done of reasonable quality is even more impressive.

Avoid ‘incompletion’: There’s a cycle of completion for everything to get the required results. Sometimes we don’t complete things because we are not sure of the way forward, think something else is more pressing or we just don’t feel we have the energy to deal with that difficult next phase. Do your best not to leave things hanging; if it’s important, make the time to complete it.

Now take action: If you had 10 hours a day, what would you prioritise?

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