Productivity is essential for every person. Whether you run a business on your own, or work for your boss, or work at home at your free will you need this thing called productivity. If you have your own business, you see that you are productive yourself and you also want your staff team to be productive. If you work for your boss, you are accountable to him/her and he/she wants you to be productive. And, you are also accountable to yourself because you get paid for what you do and your future career or life depends on your current performance. If you work at home you cannot be unproductive because no one is watching you. Your very purpose of working from home will be at risk if you don’t take enough efforts to boost your productivity.
Let me discuss 6 key factors that decide how productive you are.
Do you have a goal?
If you don’t have a goal you are not sure about what you are working on. In that case, how could you expect yourself to be productive? I mean, there are two basic connections between having a goal and productivity as a measure: If you don’t have a goal, (i) you don’t have something to work on, (ii) or, you don’t clearly know what to work on (but there is something for you to work on). In the case of both (i) and (ii) you simply either don’t work at all or you don’t work effectively. Case (ii) is where you put forth all your efforts, hard work and energy but you don’t know where to focus them. Hence all your hard work will go waste since things are not streamlined.
On the other hand, when you have a goal, you have a strict focus.
Passion
Passion is THE key that makes you work on your goal. It makes you to work whatsoever. You don’t have to wait for the right time, a comfortable zone or a favorable situation to work towards your goal, if you have passion inherited. That is why it is very important that you start working on things you are passionate about.
For instance, in the case of blogging, you would have heard a lot about choosing a niche to blog on. Instead of choosing a profitable niche on which you are not interested on, you have to choose a niche in which you are passionate about. When you choose a profitable niche and you are not passionate about it, you cannot stick to producing quality content after a while (things might be exciting in the beginning).
Commitment
Getting committed to your goal is another important key and it automatically follows your passion on the goal. I don’t think that anyone can go without getting committed if they are truly passionate about what they are doing.
For instance I am passionate about blogging and writing articles. And this very passion automatically makes me to be committed towards the goal. Although I have a full time job (as a Research Scientist in the field of Medical Physics, not just 9-5 kinda stuff but even more; you know it’s research), a family to take care and my personal self to take care, I put a regular amount of time everyday into blogging. I write content every day, I hone my blog articles, I write guest posts, I take care of the design, administration and other management tasks associated with my blog and so on. I do all by myself and I don’t have an elegant group of staff working on things.
But I don’t feel that I am getting squeezed, while in fact I am. The commitment comes by default when I have passion towards doing what I love.
The very fact that I am committed to what I do makes me productive. I don’t just work hard but work smart because of my passion and commitment.
Discipline
In general, a disciplined person can get a lot out of the available time and resources and hence can easily prove to be productive.
A disciplined person is organized. There are very little chances of looking into lost things again and again and hence wasting precious working time.
A disciplined person has goals and action plans. They know where they want to focus their energy and hard work. They also know how to achieve something, that is the actual route to achieving something.
A disciplined person is well aware of time wasters like TV, mindless browsing, pointless texting and chatting, endless reading online or offline (without making use of the content or taking action) and so on.
A disciplined person has many good habits that boost their productivity. And, they have very less bad habits to waste their time and energy upon.
Being organized:
This follows simply from a disciplined lifestyle. As I said earlier, you cannot stop a disciplined person from being organized. They can get a file or a paper from their desk or their shelf within 15 seconds.
When you spend enormous amount of time in figuring things out, that is a big hit on your productivity. If you are organized, you have already figured out most things, you remember them (or make it easier to remember) and hence those things won’t seem new every time you attempt to do them.
Being organized also helps you to have things and resources handy. This increases your reliability among the others. I personally like a person who could explain their work clearly with handy resources and stuff.
Do you work according to your flow?
Sometimes it is easy to get addicted to rules. Such persons who are addicted to their systematic life schedule won’t give flexible schedules for themselves. They train their body, mind and their surroundings in such a way that everything should go according to the plan. This is good unless and until it is not overdone.
Often times it is needed that you work according to your flow to get things done in an efficient manner. For instance, you may have scheduled your time after lunch for drafting your project dissertation. This would have worked well on all days except for one day when you feel sleepy or tired. It is OK to shift to something else that is more exciting and interesting or you can even take a nap. Be flexible so that you can get more out of your time.
If you are not flexible and hence want to sit and write your dissertation along with your sleepy mood, you may be sitting with your laptop ON, but you won’t produce quality stuff. Your productivity does not depend on the time you are trying to work, but it rather depends on the time you are actually working on.
Do you have these keys? If not, then work on those that you are lacking.
Article by JaneSheeba
+Jane is the founder of Problogging Success. She is an expert blogger, consultant, freelance writer and blog designer. Don't forget to get your hands on two FREE Ebooks she offers.
Jane has written 258 awesome posts for Problogging Success.
I've known Jane for quite a while now and one thing I can say about her services is that she never fails to deliver. Actually, no, she always over delivers.. If you are looking for some to assist you with your blogging needs, that being, an audit of your website, a redesign (or even minor tweaks), and to do that all important site maintenance for you, give Jane a try. You are in good hands.
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How productive are you? Check with these keys to productivity: Productivity is essential for every person. Wheth… http://bit.ly/eGVzl7
Getting your employees to stay motivated is the job of any effective manager. Everyone is motivated and inspired to stay productive for different reasons. If you can identify and push that person to stay motivated and achieve their personal goals, the company as a whole will benefit.
I think those factors are very big help in being a successful productive. Maybe you can call this “KEYS TO SUCCESS”.
Being organized is very important on our daily lives. We must have to follow this 6 keys!
Those keys are really important in productivity however in my case, Preparation is also one of the keys in being productive. I prepare all the tools that are needed in my online business such as proprietary softwares and references. This helps me to work faster and be more productive than usual.
RE wasted time and email… I’m a busy professional, and we need true email inbox management that’s eyes-free and hands-free. There’s a smartphone app called Talkler —billed as “email for your ears.” Talkler is a free smartphone app that’s voice-controlled, and reads your emails aloud to you. There’s more at Talkler.com.