Thumb Rules of Productivity

I sometimes wonder why is PRODUCTIVITY still an enigma even when there's so much available on the subject in terms of research, tools and techniques ?

Maybe this post would provide both, a better insight on the above and a solution !

In many of my previous posts, I have covered a whole plethora of tools and techniques on Productivity (See Related Article: ) but still many clients reach out to me, totally confused about how to move ahead with these tools. I don't blame them because just about anyone is bound to feel overwhelmed confronting the wide range of tools and all that these clients need is a simple and easy way to get started somehow, somewhere but in a structured manner. My single piece of advice/ suggestion to them is to identify few "thumb rules" and get started. These "thumb rules" act as simple reminders to ensure that we are on the right path that lead towards productivity. Gone are the days when the only thumb rule for  WORK used to be "As much output as the input". This thumb rule doesn't hold good anymore in these times when we , on daily basis, face the challenge of maintaining focus on things that matter most to us. There's a need to look for "Thumb Rules" that are aligned to the changing times i.e. the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world. I share below few such "Thumb Rules" of Productivity that will make it easy for anyone to become judicious about investing effort and focus on the right things in life so that life remains under as much control as possible. 

First Things First 

The most important thing about life is that it is holistic in nature, which means its a cumulation of multiple aspects like Personal, Spiritual, Work, Family, etc. When our life goes out of balance, it's only by putting our focus on the right aspect/ area that we can bring it back to balance. If Family is out of balance, focusing on Work would not compensate for that. Unless we put our effort on the right element, we would not get the desired result and a certain hollowness or a sense of incompleteness will still exist in our lives inspite of putting our best effort. So, we need to look for that clue or indication suggesting what is causing the turmoil, chaos or confusion in our lives and then put it on top of our priority list. We need to always keep in mind that Productivity happens only when our Life is in balance. The WHEEL OF LIFE is a wonderful tool to identify which area/ aspect of our life needs immediate attention and once we know that then it's just a matter of choosing the right actions. 

Let me share a wonderful quote by Henry David Thoreau which will put things in the right context here. The quote is as below :

"It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about ?"

Let's decide where we plan to invest our effort but also be cautious about identifying that "where" !

So, whenever we feel lost about the BIG picture in life, let First Things First be our guide in getting the BIG picture right.

Most Important Thing 

Talking about the situation when we are presented with the task of selecting from similar tasks, how do we do it ? This may not be easy because when all the identified tasks are similar in nature and have more or less similar impact, the confusion is bound to get louder. The best way to deal with such a scenario is to resort to the concept of "Keystone".  The Most Important Thing would be the one which triggers the other positive impacts too. (Related Article : Habits Build Happy Life ). When confronted with the choice of making impactful change in pour lives, we tend to pick up the a habit which triggers other good habits, likewise, from among the available important tasks/ things, we should opt for the one which triggers the rest. An example could be when we set ourselves the task of say Living Healthy. There are so many of us who set this as a resolution almost every year because we never get going on that due to our inability to identify the "Most Important Thing" from the options available. Few options available to us for the same could be - Joining a Gym, Start Exercising, Adopt Healthy Diet, Do Yoga, Wake Up Early. A good look at the options would reveal that it's not difficult to pick up the "Most Important Thing", which in my case would be "Wake Up Early".  I see waking up early taking more of most of the other identified tasks. Likewise, in a work situation, picking up the "most important thing" is about selecting the task that will play catalyst or that will trigger a sort of domino effect.  

Big Thing 

Many a times, even when we have identified the "Keystone" task, we still hesitate to go ahead with it just because its time consuming or slightly complex. We need to remember that avoiding this "Big Thing" , which we know is the most crucial one for us, will keep disturbing us and adversely impact our productivity. However hard we we try to make up for avoiding this "Big Thing" by way of selecting much simpler and less time consuming tasks, we would not be able to avoid the  loss that we may accrue because of this avoidance. Citing the an interesting concept to drive home the point - In the West, nothing is much worse than eating a frog in the breakfast (as first thing in the morning) and if we do that everything else we eat during the day tastes much better. Drawing  a parallel of this concept to our lives, we can say that doing the most difficult task (but the most essential one) first paves the way for us to be more productive because achieving smaller wins becomes much easier. Doing "Big Thing" first in no way connotes finishing it first, it just connotes starting it first and in time. A complex and a time consuming task may spread over multiple hours/ days and all we need to do then is to start it in time and work out some strategy to finish it in time. There are plenty of strategies that could help us achieve that and few ones could be read at - Beating The Productivity Paradox  

One Thing at a Time

We live with the "Busyness" paradox (Related Article: Busyness - The Utopian Paradox ) where pretence seems to rule over actual action and an outcome of the same is the myth of multi-tasking where engaging ourselves in multiple tasks is perceived to be more productive. A little self check would reveal that multi-tasking is lot more time consuming and less effective than mono-tasking because it consumes far more effort and resource in shuffling among the tasks, getting to refocus ourselves and to refresh our memory about the task. Research has also shown that at any given point of time , we have the ability to address/ deal with a single thought only. So, rather that getting enticed/ lured by the prospect of multi-tasking for better productivity, sticking to one task at a time would yield best results and this in no way suggest to leave aside the other important tasks. Through proper priortising and scheduling (Related Article: Beating The Productivity Paradox ), we can manage to be more effective and productive by addressing One Thing at a time.  

Suggested Reading

• First Things First by Stephen Covey

• Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy  

• The One Thing by Gary Keller

Let's get our "Thumb Rules" in place and hop on the bandwagon of Productivity !

N.B. : The images used in this post has been sourced from the internet

"ABSOLUTE" is the way to LIVE !

Living a complete and satisfying life is everybody's dream but not many of us manage to achieve it. At times, many of us just meander through life and mistake it as "going with the flow", whereas in reality it's a dilly-dally approach that we seem to adopt to suit our convenience. But this convenience in no way an assurance of a comfortable life. A comfortable life is not about living/ operating in our "comfort zone" but about taking risks, trying new things so that we align with the unpredictable nature of the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world we live in. One approach to identify what ails us in preventing us from living a good life, is to map our life on a YES-NO continuum and identify where we spend maximum of our life. We may be surprised to note that a big part of our life operates along the continuum but never touches the end points of YES and NO. Living like this may be fine as long as we feel okay being mediocre, confused and stressed in our lives. The cacophony inside our head may never let us realise that decisiveness is the key that open doors of opportunities for us and we need to take action to bring clarity in life.

Believe it or not, taking action to build the much needed clarity in our life, is as simple as deciding what we want and don't want in our life. Here, in this post, I share about a strategy that aids us in this process of bringing clarity in life. This strategy is both effective and very simple to implement. The strategy is "Absolutely YES -NO List" and is based on the context of "YES-NO" continuum mentioned in the previous paragraph. I read about this strategy for the first time, in the book Life Makeovers by Cheryl Richardson, where she mentions about creating an "Absolutely" Yes list. There are quite a few variants of this "Yes-No" list proposed by many other life coaches. I provide here my own variant with an aim to simplify the strategy further.

When we talk about goals and resolutions, we make use of techniques like prioritisation and scheduling to make the process of achievement smoother for us. But any technique is useful only when we have the right list of items identified. This is where the "Absolutely Yes-No List" strategy comes to our aid by suggesting making of two different list of tasks/ things -  1. YES List, jotting down everything that you want for/ in your life, and 2. NO List, jotting down everything you do not want in life. The objective of the list is to come up with 5-7 key items that need to be acted upon immediately, whether to be added in our schedule (YES list) or to be removed from our schedule (NO list). This may sound simple but it involves a series of steps to make the strategy work in our favour. Let's look at the seven steps that will help you achieve your desired goals 

• Identify Core Values - First and foremost, we need to identify our values/ core values. These can be thought of as guiding principles of our life. Once we have our core values defined/ identified, a framework is established for operating our life. Identifying all the possible operating values that we can think of and then boiling down to top 5-7 would be helpful. Below is the my list of top 5 operating values (the circled ones). I started off by identifying all the possible values i related to and then boiled down to top 5. There are plenty of downloadable list of core values available on the internet and those could be used to do this exercise 

• List all the daily tasks undertaken - There's always plenty that keeps us busy all through the day. Somewhere, Busyness has overshadowed Business (Related Article : BUSYNESS - The Utopian Paradox) . Listing down everything in front of us brings it all in our line of view. We just need to list down everything that consumes our resources of time, effort, energy, etc. For example, my list of daily tasks include exercising, writing, commuting, reading, family chores, meetings, social media time, etc. ( Related Article : BRAIN DUMP - Declogging a Cluttered Mind )

• List the resources available - We always operate within some constraints and therefore knowing the resources available to us in terms of time, knowledge, skills, etc. helps. We need to be aware of the effective time that gets available to us to focus on and do what we want to and this may easily be calculated by taking in consideration the commute time, sleep hours, important chores, etc. It may happen that from the 24 hours that gets available to us every day, only 9-10 hours turn out to be the effective available time. So, getting to know how much we can invest helps us to become more judicious about investment of resources at our disposal.  

• Identify the current Focus Areas of Life - Life is a composite entity and therefore we should  always perceive it so and look at it in terms of multiple areas like Family, Work, Health, Friends, Finance, Personal Growth, etc. But remember that not every area needs the same level of importance all the time. Different periods of time require us to focus on different areas, based on what's creating imbalance in our lives at that point in time. A good way to select the right focus areas is use the WHEEL OF LIFE tool. (Related Article : WHEEL OF LIFE - Creating a Balanced Life)   

• Establish relevant and appropriate Goals - Once we identify the Focus Areas, we can establish appropriate goals pertinent to that area. This is where we need to refer back to our core operating values to pick up the relevant goals. Few of my own goals are 

• Get Fitter - Growth
• Upgrade my Coaching Certification - Vision and Growth
• Be more disciplined in Blogging - Being the Best
• Read 100 books this year - Personal Development
• Write 2 self-help books this year - Vision
• Establish a Life Coaching Forum/ Helpline - Making a Difference

I have mapped each of my identified goals to my operating core values

• Create Action Plan for the Goals - Achieving every goals requires a set of actions. In this step, we list down all those steps that we need to execute to move closer to our goals. Related to some of my above mentioned goals, few action steps could be

• Get Fitter - Run/ Exercise, Eat Healthy
• Be more disciplined in Blogging - Join Bloggers Community, Create a Blogging Plan, Attach with a Blog Buddy
• Read 100 Books - Join reading challenge (Goodreads), Join Readers Group, Join Book Club

• Match Action Plan with the Daily Task List and Resource Availability to arrive at the final Absolutely Yes and Absolutely No List. It should look something like this ( see the image below ) 

Live ABSOLUTELY to Live COMPLETELY !

Investments That Never Fail Us In LIfe !

Undoubtedly Money is the most prioritised resource for most of us and special care is taken while investing it. It does not require much thinking to decide where to invest money. The most obvious strategy being to invest where it gives the maximum returns. We try our best to invest our money in the right place and at the right so as to get the best returns on it.

Now, let me shift the context to the most crucial aspect of our existence i.e. our LIFE. How many times have we given a thought to the investments that will maximise the returns on our life and enable us to live a more fulfilling life ? I am sure most of us have not even thought about it ever. We just seem to be crawling along and satisfied with whatever comes our way.

In the wake of the decreasing human attention span (which is about 8 seconds), "minimum attention, maximum retention" seems to be the only mantra that most of us swear by and live by in today's time. We live with the principle of extracting the maximum output from the input but this principle aids our growth and development only when we have a clarity about the "inputs". Apart from money, what are those other "essential resources" that impact our life considerably in terms of success and growth ?  It's not easy to identify the other "resources" from the plethora that we confront every day but here, in this post, i cover 4 such resources that abide by the basic principle of "minimising-maximising" of the times. These 4 resources could prove to be a good investment if handled with care and caution (wisely). Let's discuss these four crucial investments that can turn around our lives for good.

• EMOTIONS : Emotions are the bedrock of a complete/ whole personality. Whether it's about ensuring a holistic personality, creating balance in life, excelling at work or building strong relationships, emotions play a crucial role. Investing emotions wisely can help us prevent spiralling downwards in life during crucial events and situations. Imagine getting into a regrettable relationship and wasting crucial years/ period of your life without any gain/ growth/ stability whatsover. Emotions work on the concept of "attachment or bond(ing)". The more attached we feel towards something (person, product, situation, etc.), the more emotions we invest into the thing. An emotionally disturbed person can never take rational decisions and also becomes very tentative in approach towards life. This leads to drop in confidence and esteem which directly impacts the personality of the individual. So, be wary of where you invest your emotions. 

• ENERGY : If momentum is what maintains consistency towards success in our life, then energy is what builds up that momentum. Most of the times, its that surge, that burst of energy that spurs us for unabated action when faced with the likelihood of giving up in life. If we can manage to direct/ redirect our energy at the right moment towards the right task, then we can be assured of accomplishing our goals in a timely manner. So, when it comes to investing your energy, be careful about expending it on the right areas/ tasks/ activity and at the appropriate moment so that it yields the best results. Never let go of any opportunity for the lack of desired energy that may be needed to complete the task. While running the sprint, its the final burst of energy that decides the winner between/ among the sprinters running neck to neck. There have been so many instances in the sprint world when the winner was decided on the basis of fraction of second. The runner who put in that required energy in time came out triumph. So, be like the sprinter and be ready for the "burst" when the need arises. 

• FOCUS : One of the big paradox that we are living today is that of FOCUS. The more we lose it, the more we demand it. Surrounded and bombarded with umpteen distraction, we just can't seem to pay sufficient attention to the things that demand it. With constant dwindling of human attention span, the resource of "Focus" had become more crucial in our lives and gradually moving towards becoming a "rare commodity". The market boasts of many tools and practices (based on the concept of Mindfulness is one such example) aimed at improving focus and attention span. Few examples of the same are Mindfulness, Pomodoro  and TimeBoxing The best strategy to derive the maximum return from FOCUS lies in "monotasking" instead of multi-tasking and paying our full attention to the task till its completion.

• TIME : Everything in our life, whether work, relationship or self-growth consumes a part of our time. But being a perishable resource, we can only give a portion of our time to each of the item and if we get the time allocation wrong, it takes us many steps backward in life and leave us with many unfulfilled tasks and things. The "limited (in quantity)" nature of Time makes it imperative that we make the optimum use of time available to us and the best way to do so is to imbibe the practice of Prioritisation in our approach to work and life. We will always have plenty of things seeking our attention but the moment we gain clarity about the sequence to invest our time is when we extract the best from our investment in time. Few techniques that can help us in this regard are Pareto Principle, Eisenhower Matrix    

Remember, success and happiness in our life will always accrue from making the right investments  !

7 Mantras For An Awesome 2020 !

Another year has gone by leaving us with plenty of experiences and memories. Like every year, 2019 also had its share of good and not-so-good moments for us, some cherishable and some forgettable ones. The times we faltered and failed were also opportunities to learn from our mistakes and get wiser. Now, it's time to consolidate on the learnings from 2019 and apply them to make 2020 a better year. 

Here are Seven Simple Mantras to make 2020 an awesome year 

   

CREATE A VISION for your Life - We are strongly driven by the desire of accomplishment and

the more we achieve, the more motivated we get to go after big/ bigger dreams of our life. But the trick to accomplishing and achieving our goals lies in knowing and establishing the big picture first i.e. gaining clarity on what we want to achieve and how our current actions/ tasks will contribute to achieving what we want to. A clarity-induced action is more effective than a random one. For our actions and efforts to make an impact, we need to clear about what they are aimed towards. So, before you set any expectations from the new year, set clear expectation from your life first. Understand and know how you see yourself years ahead from now (maybe 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, and so on) ? how would you like to contribute to the society/ world ? how would you like to be perceived/ remembered ? Using vivid imagery (including all the senses to describe) could help us create a vision compelling enough to inspire us and motivate us to keep going strong for the entire year and beyond. Always remember that a well crafted Vision is the foundation of establishing appropriate goals.  Here's an excellent video to help create vision - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkrW3OgB9K0


ADOPT A POSITIVE OUTLOOK - There will always be times in our life when certain events or episodes would not work in our favour and we will feel as if life is slipping away. The moment we let these "unfavourable results" seize control over us is when we actually lose grip on our life. Life is always a mixed bag and the sooner we accept this reality the better prepared we will be to deal with the troubles and tribulations of life. Why should we fret about things that lie outside our scope of control ? Worrying about such things (events, situations) only distract us and render us unproductive as we tend to skip taking any action at all. Can we, instead, inculcate an outlook of possibility and optimism, so that we remain focused on doing what's in our control - taken progressive action even the chips are down !


ADAPT TO THE UNCERTAINITIES -  How many times does it happen with us that we find ourselves unable to cope with the fast turn of events ? Definitely, that happens quite a lot  because it's not easy to survive and thrive in a world that's dynamic by nature and where we are expected to do things "on the fly", most of the times. To be prepared for every eventuality is just not possible in this VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world, because most of the factors responsible for triggering any event, are outside our scope of control. However hard we may try to control the outcome, there will always be some additional factor(s) that will further impact/ alter the outcome. So, in a world characterised by the unpredictable nature of things, the best way to prepare ourselves to meet the challenges is to be flexible in our approach and always be prepared to accept the things as they turn out to be, without judging them. The moment we start anticipating and expecting too much is when rigidity creeps in our approach and we tend to mess things up and land up in precarious situation. So, let's always be ready by being flexible !


AFFIRM YOURSELF EVERY MORNING/ DAY - Positivity is a habit and we inculcate it through consistent practice. Every morning, when we set out to start our day, stating our positive intentions emphatically ensures that we make the best of the day. Affirming ourselves regularly and on daily basis helps us do away with doubt and fear in our thoughts and actions, and instills in us the confidence and courage to go ahead and execute our intentions. So, let's be emphatic enough to invite the right energy from the Universe, in our life, to support us in bringing goodness in ourselves and in everything around. So, let's state every positive thought/ resolution as emphatically and consistently as we can to make it become a reality.

CELEBRATE EVERY SMALL WIN - Haven't we all heard/ read the following quotes :

• "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step"
• "Success is a series of small wins"
• "A little progress each day adds up to big results"

Each of the above quotes holds validity in context of the times we live in, where we always aim high

and big, but tend to ignore or skip taking those small steps that lead us closer to our goals. In the absence of acknowledging the power of these small steps, each and every goal of ours become so overwhelming and a huge task to accomplish. We need to realise that "success cannot be hurried up" and is a process which takes its own sweet time to materialise. Even if we just take small, tiny but progressive and positive steps regularly, we would manage to accomplish all our goals and dreams. The best that these small wins do to us is that they help us build/ maintain the desired momentum to keep moving forward in life and instill in us the key virtues of Patience and Focus, that are so much desired to thrive in this information-overloaded world. Lets perceive "big picture" of our life in terms of small manageable goals, and lose any moment in celebrating and cherishing small successes.     

TAKE RISKS (TO MOVE OUT OF COMFORT ZONE) - Comfort and Convenience is never an indication of growth but that of stagnancy. The more comfortable we get with what we have and where we are, the more we prepare ourselves for a slow but sure death (not literally). To derive the maximum out of our life, we need to keep inventing and re-inventing ourselves and that happens when we keep growing and evolving regularly and continuously. Growth comes from venturing into the unknown and attempting new things. So, letting go of the "fear of unknown" is the starting point for moving out of our comfort zone and when that happens, we live a more fulfilling life because there's so much to experiment, explore and accomplish.  A constant self-reminder that  "a comfort zone is a beautiful place but nothing ever grows there" always keeps us on our toes to keep trying new and different things and make our life adventurous.   

SEEK INNER GUIDANCE/ WISDOM (CONNECT WITHIN) - There are times and moments in life when all our attempts to seek answers from outside fail because for certain problems, the answers lie within only. This is why being our biggest ally helps because this support system is the most reliable one, is always available to us and will never fail us. Falling back on others may not be a feasible option always, so it's better to be our own cheerleader. There's an Inner Guide within each one of us that has all the wisdom that may ever be needed to live an enriching life. At times, when we need hope, courage or clarity, the inner compass ensures that we stay on track. So, the more deep is our inner connection, the more clarity and confidence will be visible in all our actions. Let's put trust in our inner guru and it will never let us down because it knows what we want and what is best for us !

So, look no further than these simple 7 principles and set yourself on course to a rewarding journey in 2020  !