Increasing personal productivity

Straightforward approaches to getting more done in your
life.

by Tom Cloyd,
MS, MA – Counselor / Psychotherapist – Bellingham,
Washington (360) 920-1226 – email: tc (AT) tomcloyd.com (please
read about content licensing)

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Document status: This is a second draft – only relatively minor changes remain to be done. Nevertheless, this document is not in its final form.

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I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by. ~ attributed to Dilbert (comic strip by Scott Adams)

It’s not too late at all. You just do not yet know what you are capable of. ~ attributed to Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi (1869 – 1948)

Many people want to get more done in their lives – to be more focused, more productive. If you are reading this, I assume you that you are such a person, and that you want to know how to do this. You’ve probably already tried a few things, and weren’t satisfied with the results. I will show you here how I maximize productivity in my own life. What I describe here works for me and for many other people as well. I expect it will work for you, if you give it an honest try.

Can you become more productive? Why not find out?

In a world where we have so much to work with, so many tools to help us, so much knowledge to support us, and so many people who might willingly offer modest amounts of advice and support if we but ask them, the hope that we might be able to increase our daily productivity seems reasonable.

Looking around you, you probably can see some people who seem to be unusually productive. They just “get stuff done”. You would like to be more like them, yes? Well, why not? If they can do it, then it must be possible. I propose that if you do what they do, you will almost certainly become more productive.

So, what are they doing? They are responding to complex tasks, demands, and opportunities in their lives by viewing them in a simple and useful way, and then quickly getting to work. I’ll show a way to do this.

Why you aren’t as productive as you want to be

The effects of our personal history and present circumstances can seriously affect our state of mind, so that simple, productive living can become difficult.

Unfinished concerns from your past can leave you with a very “noisy” mind, characterized by poor focus and a sense of confusion. Both are grave impediments to productivity.

Then too, the present affects the present. Trying to get work done in an environment that doesn’t support your work, or even worse, actively interferes with your work, can easily lead to a very poor outcome.

Finally, if you fundamentally don’t know what you are doing when trying to organizing your efforts, you can fail simply because of a lack of organizational skill. Planful, purposeful, goal-oriented self-management is a learned skill. You may not yet have this skill, but you could acquire it.

Some extra motivation: Productivity’s hidden rewards

Increasing your personal productivity often has excellent side-effects. The first is that our view of ourselves usually improves when we’re more productive. This is true in two very important senses:

• Our actions – what we do – matters. We are – or become – what we do, to a considerable extent, and this principle may be used to our own benefit (and that of others as well). This is an ancient insight, so perhaps we should pause a moment to consider it. The Christian New Testament reminds us that “Those who live by the sword, die by the sword” (Mathew 26:52) – the implication being that perhaps one should choose a way of living that doesn’t lead to death! More positively, Rumi, the Shakespeare of Persian literature, is said to have advised us to “Let the beauty we love be what we do.” It is sobering to consider how few people do that.
• When we do more, we feel more capable, more able to shape our life in ways that please us. For many people, this can be a vitally important shift. If you are struggling with self-esteem issues, or depression, or a sense of confusion about your life’s direction, elevating your opinion of yourself through productive activity can be a critically important achievement in itself.

The second effect of our productivity is its effect on others. Unless you live completely alone, what you do tends to affect some of the people around you. If you’re a mother, getting more done in less time will result in your having more time to engage directly with your children and your husband. If you’re in an intimate relationship, being more productive will give you more time to be with your intimate. If you’re part of a work team in a factory or office, being more productive will make you an example for your peers, and possibly a promotion candidate for your supervisors. Productivity has multiple rewards

A warmup: Prepare for success before you begin

New learning is often work. This won’t be a problem for you if (a) you have a clear desire for what the learning will make possible, and (b) you have a clear lesson to work through, immediately available to you.

I provide the “clear lesson” plan, below. You can, yourself, see that you maintain a “clear desire” by actively reminding yourself of the benefits of being productive, as I’ve discussed them above. Desire is important: A hungry person will always work with more focus on preparing a meal than one who has just eaten! Be hungry. Want what you’re working for.

Expect to encounter some problems, as you work to learn this procedure. Problems are a good sign, so welcome them. They indicate that you are actively working to improve yourself – in an area where you actually could use improvement. Don’t worry because you have problems – worry if you don’t have problems! That would likely mean that you aren’t working at all, or that what you are attempting is too easy for you – in which case you need to tackle a more difficult problem so that you will learn more.

So, begin now. Expect there to be bumps in the road. Simply persist, and watch yourself learn how to get this procedure to work for you. Consult with anyone you know to be productive in their life, is you want to. I believe that if you just persist, you will get a real and significant reward for effort you invest in learning this procedure.

So, here’s what you need to do, to start teaching yourself to be more productive —

Procedure for increasing personal productivity

Productivity is about doing, not thinking about doing. However, a little thinking, before you begin, is still recommended!

1. Determine how much time you have. Time is a critical resource, so consider how much you have for your productive effort. It can be as little as an hour or as much as several days, but most often will be a day or a part of a day.
2. List tasks. List a small number of tasks you want to accomplish during that time – 3 to 8 is a good number. Focus on major concerns whose importance to you appears rather obvious. Write this list out – this will help you make a formal commitment.
3. Prioritize this list. Do this by picking the one item you would accomplish if you knew you were only going to get to do one. Place that at the top of a new list. Return to the first list, and do this “pick one” trick again. Place that item below the one you just added to your new list. Continue with this unto you have moved every item from your first list to you new list. If two or more items really seem to be of equal importance, then it doesn’t matter in what order you place them on the new list. Just place them there, then move on.
4. Focus, then break things down. Begin with the #1 item on your prioritized list. Break it into a number of smaller steps. Each should be fairly easy to accomplish. This is a critical step, and will help you break through procrastination and other blocks to productivity. Make the beginning steps small and easy, and you be on-task and working in very little time. ANY TIME something seems so large and challenging that you notice yourself developing “productivity paralysis”, just break the task down into small pieces.
5. Start quickly. Immediately get busy with the first of the small steps. Upon completing it, continue as far down the list of small steps as possible, until the first item is accomplished or you run out of essential resources (time, space, materials, etc).)
6. Keep going. Continue with the #2 item on your prioritized list, in the same way as you handled item #1. Continue on down your prioritized list in this way.

Improving this procedure

One can get more out of this procedure. As it is given here, it is basic, elemental, and minimal. It’s sole focus is to get you moving, to get you producing, so that you can start to get some of the benefits of productivity. Follow the procedure, and you will rather quickly get to work on the most important task in your life at present.

You can do more. Consider these ways of turning up the procedure to make it more sophisticated:

• Time budget: Briefly discussed in the next section, this is a way of addressing well the problem of having multiple goals. Basically, you make a series of appointments with yourself, for various tasks, then try to keep the appointments. You may find this to be rather challenging, if you are accountable only to yourself. We are more likely to keep appointments with other people than with ourselves.
• Make it a game: Set goals, time budgets for each, and allow extra time for self assessment at the end of your structured time-block. When you reach the end of your time budget, rate yourself on each goal – give yourself a percentage score for each, with 100% meaning that you accomplished the goal. Compute an average percent-goal-completion score for your day. Now…can you beat that – tomorrow? This “game” will teach you to set realistic goals, and will help you to use your competititve nature to increase your productivity. It’s also rather fun to play this game – at least for some of us! The next step beyond this is to give yourself a similar score to staying within your time budget. (I find this, personally, to be my greatest challenge!)
• Structure your time “in reverse” – instead of planning and acting on the plan, just act and then track your actions. This is a good thing to do on a weekend, when it’s nice to be less structured than during the work week. Track how much time you spend on each major activity of your day. At the end of your day, look at your tracking record, and evaluate how you spent your time. What do you think about your choices? This way of doing time structuring “in reverse” will increase your awareness of choices you make when you are NOT strictly following a structured plan for your day.
• Use a spreadsheet. If you have a computer readily available to you much of your day, use a spreadsheet to plan and track your day. This can make the process easier, and more readily visual and rewarding. If you’re a bit of an accountant, it will also make personal data tracking and analysis easier. (I’ve developed such a spreadsheet for my own use, and have for quite some time used it daily to structure my time management. I’d be happy to share it if you want a copy – email me at “tc (AT) tomcloyd.com” – replace “AT” with “@”, of course. Be aware, that my spreadsheet is for Microsoft Office Excel 2000+, and can run as well on OpenOffice Calc.)

Problems – and what to do about them

• “This all seems so hyper-structured! I really don’t want to live my life like a computer-controlled robot.” OK, who does? However, a great many people do make appointments with other people, keep those appointments, and get a great deal of work accomplished within a structured time schedule. That doesn’t make them robots, nor will it make you one when you do exactly the same thing with yourself. The point is not to structure your time constantly, but to be able to do it when it will be helpful to you. It’s a useful skill, and you really should have it available to you, don’t you think?
• “I can’t afford to focus on just one item. There is more than one thing I simply must get done today!” Fine. Not a problem at all. Simply budget your time. Decide how much time you will give to each of your several critical items, then go to work immediately on the first item. When your time is up, move on to your next task. Consider each block of time as an appointment you made with yourself. Keep your appointments. Can you adjust your time budget as you go? Sure. You’re the boss. You may want to try at least some of the time to stick to your original budget, however, to combat any tendency you may have to get overly focused on one task and lose sight of the others.
• “I tend to get so absorbed in what I’m doing that I just lose track of my schedule and blow it.” Before you start a task, put a clock or watch in front of you. Write down your desired ending time for a given task on a slip of paper, then place it where you can see it as you’re working. If you find that you’ve lost track of your schedule, simply get back on track as soon as you can, making adjustments to your schedule to reflect the time you have left. It is not particularly natural to work according to a schedule, but it isaskill you can learn, with practice, so…practice.
• “I just never seem to get everything done!” Sure, and there are also movies you’re never going to see, and mountains (a lot, actually!) you’ll never climb. Welcome to real life. You’ll find, however, that by doing the most important things first of all, your satisfaction with your accomplishment will tend rather easily to absorb distress you feel about not getting other things done.
• “I seem to spend too much time every day just figuring out how I’m going to structure my day.” This is particularly a problem for people who have complex lives. Try this: Develop a plan for a “usual day”, or perhaps for two or three types of days. You might have a standard plan for Monday, when you expect to travel most of the day, visiting branch offices, and another for the other four days of the week, when you in your office and at your desk. Or perhaps each day of the week needs its own plan. You decide what your needs are, then respond to that. Next, set up your standard plan(s) so that it doesn’t include all time in your day, and then fill in around the standard plan with the needs of the day – which you’ll best be aware of when the day arrives. This structured yet flexible approach is a great time saver, I’ve found.

The long term goal: Productivity as a way of life

The formal approach described here is most appropriate when you’re feeling overwhelmed by the demands in your life, or confused as to what to do first, or tired and discouraged and unmotivated. On the other hand, when you have a clear sense of what you need to do, then simply get started, stay on-task, then celebrate your accomplishment when you finish. Sometimes life is simple – when it is, let it be so.

However, when it’s not simple, this procedure is something you can do to avoid “productivity paralysis”, get control of your life back, and get to work.

More than that, by routinely responding to productivity blocks by engaging this procedure, you will be making fundamental competence a habit – something which will serve you well throughout life. The rewards for doing this are built in to the process: You will be pleased with your success. You will want to repeat the experience. It’s that simple. So, start with this process as soon as you can. Right now would be an excellent time!