If being productive is important to you (and for most of us, being productive is critical), you’re probably looking for any and every way you can find to improve your overall output and efficiency. However, productivity is not something that can be simplified to one or two principles. Hopefully you’re starting to see that. A very large number of physiological, mental, emotional, and external forces all affect what we do and how much we do it. Still, we have to start somewhere, and we can make a difference in our results with small changes in many places… the more changes we make, the bigger difference we’ll see.
I’ll start this one by referring back to a couple recent issues: Your Habits Create Your Outcome, where I discuss the need to be aware of the habitual behaviors that you have; and Gliding, in which I talk about the importance of doing only the right things rather than trying to do everything. These two factors, core habits and choice of action, have a huge impact on productivity. If your business or personal life suffers from not getting the important things done, these are the first things you should look at.
Another factor that affects productivity, and that is getting it done right the first time. What do I mean by this?
In the submarine (when I was in the navy), we had a saying: “Slow is fast.” In the fast-paced world of undersea combat, there isn’t time to do a job twice… it had to be done right the first time. It was all well and good that you got the crate tied down, but if it wasn’t tied well it would come loose again and have to be dealt with again. With a little more attention and effort the first time, however, you could do the job right and it wouldn’t have to be redone later.
This dovetails nicely into another saying, I believe from Anthony Robbins: “Perfect practice makes perfect.” By itself, practice makes good. What you practice again and again is what you get when it’s time to perform. On the field, this means if you practice at 55% then when it’s time for the critical play in the big game, what you’ll get is a 55% result. If you want to have perfect results performing at your best, you need to practice at 100% all the time. Practicing giving a speech? Make every word choice, pause, and inflection count. Practicing running a marathon? Every step you take should be exactly as you want to take it on race day.
Hopefully you’ve noticed that this is just another form of creating the habits to carry you through future events. What you practice when it doesn’t matter will drive your results when it does, so act as if it always matters. Make every effort your best effort.
If you do things right the first time, you won’t have to revisit them again and again, and you’ll find more time to spend on the important things. Whether it’s finishing a report for work or cleaning the garage, the extra few minutes you put into it now will save you those minutes many times over tomorrow.
But perfect results are not always possible (in fact, I believe they are never possible). So how good is good enough? That’s a question that applies fully and, unfortunately, has no one correct answer. However, I’ll explore that in depth next week. Stay tuned…
Other news
- Out with the bad cells, in with the good: Cloning treats mouse Parkinson’s
- If your girl jumps up and down, be concerned: Hyper girls ’struggle as adults’
- Bon Jovi’s ‘Bad Medicine’ may be an exception: Music as Medicine
Quote for the week
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
Healthy thoughts,
Jeff
