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