HABITS OF A HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE PERSON! PART 1

What do you define as a "productive" person? Is it the ability to robotically churn out work, hour after hour? Is it the amount of discipline one has? Is it the speed at which one works? Before we can discuss what makes a productive person, we should first define what productivity is. The common notion of productivity is the ability to churn out a lot of work in a short span of time. True, but not complete. IMO, true productivity is the ability to create a lot of high impact work in a short span of time. This is the kind of productivity we should concern ourselves with, not other kinds of productivity which are more empty / busy work that create no impact in the long term.

For example, let's say Peter types very fast and can reply 1000 emails a day. That doesn't make him/her productive, because there's little output (product) to speak of (unless the emails contribute to tangible, high impact outcomes). However, if John completes just one task in a day that has more impact than the 1000 emails put together, then he's more productive than Peter is.

A few days ago I finished designing my lineup of workshops next year, and earlier this week I conceptualized the idea for a new book. That's all while maximizing other aspects of my life, such as keeping to my exercise regime (I exercise daily now), having a positive social life, keeping in touch with old friends, all at the same time.

I think productivity is really how you manage yourself, and the habits you practice. By selectively practicing certain habits over others, you can get a lot more output for your time. Here, I'll share with you my eight top habits in productivity. Practice them and watch as your productivity sky rockets thereafter. :D

Habit 1: Ruthlessly cut away the unimportant (and Focus on the important)

The first habit of productive people is to slice and dice everything that's unimportant.

Whenever I go to my work desk, I write down a list of things to do for the day. I then evaluate which are the most important things out of the list, first circling them, then ranking the items. After which I'll challenge these items to see if they're the best use of my time. What impact does doing these make? Can I be doing more high value tasks? Doing so helps me ensure I'm working on the absolute most important things for the day.

Then, for the non-important ones, I either push them to a later date or find a way to take them off the list. (Learning how to say no to others is very important here.) Those who have the 30DLBL Program might recognize this as the 20/80 List in Day 8. It's my favorite daily self-management tool.

For everything you're doing now, ask yourself how important this is. Does this bring you dramatically closer to your dreams?Does this create any real impact in your life in the long term? Is it the absolute best way to spend your time or can you be doing more high value tasks?

If the answer is 'yes' to all the questions, keep this task. If not, perhaps it’s time to ditch it. No point doing something unimportant! Say you’re handling a project that makes no difference to your business after it’s completed. It wouldn't matter whether you take an hour, three hours, or one week to do it—it’d still make no difference at the end of the day!

It's part of knowing what your end objective is and doing things that serve this objective. Read: Keep Your End Objective In Mind.

Many people tend to wrongly classify regular tasks as high value tasks. A good tool to set them apart is the Time Management Matrix that classifies our daily activities into 4 different quadrants. Your most important tasks fall under Quadrant 2. I've written about it extensively complete with diagrams and recommendations on how to deal with tasks in each quadrant, so read them here: Put First Things First.

Going by the questions I raised above, my most important tasks are the ones that bring me closest to my dreams when I do them. For example, working on my blog allows me to reach out to more people out there, which lets me achieve my end vision of enabling others to achieve their highest potential and live their best life. For you reading this now, I'd like to think that you found this blog partially through my efforts in reaching out to people out there, and partially thanks to the universe. Thank you for being here at the blog. This is why I prioritize Personal Excellence blog development over all other tasks, such as writing guest articles, getting new speaking engagements, etc. While other tasks help me progress in my goals too, they're not as effectively as working on my blog.

It doesn't end with correctly identifying the high value tasks. Often times, we'll be imbued with a stream of random, miscellaneous requests throughout the day. I used to give immediate attention to these things. Say random request # 1 comes in and I’ll do it immediately since it takes just 5-10 minutes, max. This is the same for random request # 2, #3…. all the way to #20. After a while, I realized these things take a lot of my time and I don’t even get any meaningful result out of them. Not only that, I never finish my high value tasks. I may think I’m being very productive when I finish the random things, but truth is it’s just fake productivity.

So nowadays, I use a separate "do later" list for these urgent tasks. I dump all the incoming tasks here and work on my 20% high value tasks (that lead to 80% of the value I get in the day). At the end of the day, I allocate a time slot to clear these tasks. I batch the similar urgent tasks, then clear them at one go. Turns out I’m always able to get them cleared in an hour or less, compared to the few hours I’d have taken if I attended to them in the day.

Continue PART 2

By Celestine Chua