Productivity

When Your Focus Waxes and Wanes…

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If you’re like most people, you struggle to maintain focus throughout the day. Maybe you’re distracted by your phone buzzing at your desk, or you can’t seem to stay off email and Facebook during meetings. 

Instead of beating yourself up, take steps to better understand you’re patterns. For one week, pay attention to when your focus waxes and wanes. What times of day are you able to concentrate? When do you find your focus faltering? Most people’s focus peaks in the morning and dips to its lowest after lunch. The pattern varies from person to person, so learn your specific pattern and use it to plan your day. 

Make sure your most important activities and meetings are scheduled around the times when your focus is strongest. Tackle lower-priority items when your focus is weakest. And don’t give in to distractions — notice what kinds of things derail you and do your best to avoid them.

3 Ways to Stop the Guilt Cycle…

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We all feel guilty at times. Why didn’t I start that project earlier? Why did I make that comment in the meeting? Why didn’t I apply for that job? While pervasive, second-guessing yourself like this can waste valuable energy. Here are three ways to stop the guilt cycle.

Unplug from your responsibilities every once in a while. 

It’s not always a bad thing to chill out and do nothing. In fact, self-care is a crucial step toward achieving your goals. Don’t let your workplace or cultural norms drive you to feel guilty about not using every minute of every day to do something productive.

Take care of yourself before assisting others. 

You can’t help anyone (whether it’s your boss, friend, or family member) if you’re a nervous wreck. Make time for your priorities. If you’ve chosen a path, don’t second guess yourself or be pulled off course by others’ needs.

Pay attention to how you’re affecting those around you. 

Your insistence on being perfect may be spilling over into your relationships. For example, if you’re constantly pressuring yourself to perform, your team may feel guilty for not meeting your same standards.

Re-energize Your Team…

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If your team is depleted, demotivated, and drained, you can deploy a few strategies to re-energize them. 

Proactively initiate purpose-driven career conversations.

And make them routine. People want to know they’re on a path of growth and opportunity for a more significant impact. Include caring feedback on areas to improve so that your employees are ready to take on new opportunities when they arise. 

Create team rituals that foster relationships and a sense of belonging. 

When people feel deeply connected to their peers, it energizes work and makes it more fun. You might open team meetings with various prompts—for example, asking people to share something they’re grateful for that day or one word that describes how they’re feeling. The idea is that, over time, the team becomes a place of collective refuge and trust. 

Swap productivity paranoia for helpful prioritization.

Finally, rather than worrying about whether or not people are working enough, spend time helping people prioritize what’s most important. Help them eliminate non-value-added activities and connect each person’s work to the organization’s most important priorities. This will help create a sense of positive productivity as people engage in purposeful work rather than work for work’s sake.

To increase productivity divide your tasks…

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Every week jot down all the tasks you have completed over the week. And categorize them as:

1. Tasks that you hate doing and can hire others to do for you.

2. Tasks that you hate doing but cannot delegate to others.

3. Tasks that you like and want to do yourself.

Consolidate these over a period of 2-3 weeks for these task buckets:

  • Tasks in #1  –  Hire someone (Even if it’s a slow start), it will help in the long term.
  • Tasks in #2 –  Build a system where you can work on those tasks while multitasking like watching football matches, listening to music, watching shows, etc.
  • Tasks in #3 – Work with a focus on it and grow yourself, as this is your favorite list of tasks. Become an expert in these.

Race against time…

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The value of time is much more critical than the value of money.

Money cannot buy time but time can always outrun money. 

Imagine what we can accomplish today with our knowledge, if we can do that 5 years ago, where we would be today? 

Instead of playing a catching game with time if we can value it now and envisage things in the future, that’s the real wisdom and value of time.

We always regret our past decisions; one of the main reasons for making the wrong decisions is at that moment we don’t value time, don’t value knowledge, and don’t value the effort to put into our decisions. Later we regret the same not even understanding that it is all on us since we couldn’t value the right time and see thru the future to make the right decisions.

So instead of racing against time, let’s value time, let’s value our current diligence to ensure we make the right decisions for our future.

The right problem…

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Are you solving the right problem? Or are you solving a problem that is easier or because others are solving it?

If we don’t know the problem how can we find the solution, most of the time that is what is crippling us.

Let’s find the right problem, give 90% of the time to finding the right problem and the solution will fall into place.

Amateur vs Professional

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I needed to get my visa photos, first given to a local digital studio, with a lot of “ohs” and “aahs” he gave me the photos, that were rejected. Wasted money and time.

The second time gave it to a professional digital studio, he did the job in half a time, without any fuss, with almost the same costs, and finally got the proper photos for the visa.

That’s the difference between amateur and professional.

An amateur will work hard but still screw the work and will waste time and money.

A professional will do great work, in a much shorter time and might cost a bit more but still be reasonable. 

You can make out a difference even if you are a novice. Like the photos, I can make out the difference.

A professional is born out of an amateur by learning, practicing, and being motivated to do the work, she doesn’t take a shortcut.

An amateur is a beginner who can choose to become a professional but with hard work, dedication, and lots of motivation to strive for better.

It is always better to choose a professional than an amateur as it will save time, and money and will lead to much better quality.

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