1810 that was the first time a human ever said the word Productivity and now it’s been 214 years since then and productivity has become the most valuable skill and productive human being have become a hidden gem. Today after reading this article you will
- What makes some people more productive than other
- How do you become more productive
- What is the key to sustain productivity
And once you master the art of productivity you will have mastered the most crucial skill to succeed.
What Makes Some People More Productive Than Other
A productive person is a valuable person.
The reason is a more productive person can get work done more faster and hence has more time and in this world time is the most valuable assets we have and someone who has more time is more valuable then someone who is crushed under the weight of time. So why are some people more productive than other the simple answer is because they follow a system. Before I had discovered this secret my day was completely chaotic where I couldn’t do anything which I needed to do and my productivity was non-existent but after making my own system. Productivity Sky Rocketed I went from not being able to finish all my tasks for the day to now having enough things to do in my day. This is the power of building a system. I am not a successful person by any means but one thing that all the successful and productive people have in common aside from a lot of money is having a system. So the better your system is the better your productivity will be.
Productivity is directly proportional to the effectiveness of your system.
How Do You Become More Productive
As we have already established to build productivity you need to build a system. And not just a single statement instead you want to build a system for every single thing in which you want to be more productive at.
A system is just a bunch of steps which if done will lead to a desired outcome. So all you need to do is to clarify what steps you are going to take to complete your work. The reason this works well is because the way we normally do work is what I call a cavemen way of doing things because just like cavemen we just keep strolling randomly with a vague idea of what we must do and this wastes a lot of time. But now when you build a system you go from cavemen to being a machine. A Machine has every step already pre-programmed into it and knows what it has to do at any given point of time. So let’s learn how to build a system with a few examples
- The first step to any system is to define it. What is the system about? What will I accomplish because of this ? When will I use this system ? Once you answer all the question you have a good idea of what your system is about and most importantly you have clarity and have already moved above the cavemen.
- For the second step we will take the example of writing -: So the second step to my writing system is to look at my list of ideas. Now this is going to change for whatever you are doing if you are building a system for gym then your second step is to wear your shoes and leave the house. The main thing you need to focus on is that your task should be crystal clear and easy to do.
- The Third step is to give yourself a time limit or a deadline -: When Humans work under a time limit they have the “If I don’t reach the tree before the car I will die ” mentality. We can use this to our advantage and this works best when you use a pomodoro timer. Personally I use a app called Forest where I would set a timer for 40 – 50 minutes and then after that I would take break of 10 minutes. If you are not able to finish the task there is no need to punish yourself but if you want to be extreme you can force yourself to take a notebook and write down why you failed. This makes it so that if you were not able to complete your task because of procrastinating when you write this down your ego takes a hit. And we as humans hate it if our ego gets hurt and we try and protect it as much as possible.
- The Fourth step is to find a way to have fun in it -: This is a step which I learnt from Ali Abdaal and his book called Feel Good Productivity. In this step we have to figure out a way to make our task feel like fun. One way to this is to use music. Music can make anything more fun but there are many other ways such as using this app called Habitica where you level up for completing your tasks.
- The Final step is to reward yourself -: This is the final layer of our system and is the most fun step. You can reward yourself in whatever way you please for me it’s watching a episode of Anime, Web Series, Movie or playing God of War. But you can reward yourself by whatever makes you feel good and refreshed.
What Is The Key To Sustain Productivity
Okay now we are finally productive and have become valuable.
But now a week has passed and we are back to where we started and our value has also fizzled out with productivity. So How Do we avoid this dreadful outcome. The best way is to make it effortless and reduce any kind of friction which you face. And to reduce friction we need to figure out what is causing the friction. This can be anything – Stress, Poor Time Management or even the task being too hard. The key here is to do something about this and find a way to solve it. For example to eliminate stress it to eliminate the stress cause but in some cases you can’t just eliminate your boss. So in these moments instead of removing the cause of stress you remove the emotion of stress through different method like meditation and everything.
But the fact is if you can make your system feel effortless you must eliminate all kinds of friction and pain you feel.
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