How to become more Productive

The man or woman who wants to get more out of life strives to become more productive. When we think of productivity we normally think of a workplace contribution but productivity can apply to our hobbies and also to sport. When we talk about being more productive we are talking about getting more bang for your buck so to speak. In other words we want to get more or better work done in less time or with less effort.

The biggest key to productivity is organization. The person who is organized will get more done in a shorter period of time. I found when I was in the Army that I could be more productive than my peers by having a clear sense of what I needed to accomplish each day and a plan to accomplish it. I found that when I listed the tasks that I needed to accomplish the next day and prioritized them work went very quickly. I had much more time left over at the end of the day to do whatever I deemed most necessary. When I had to do something which required me to get in my car and drive I would schedule it around traffic. In other words there was no sense fighting rush hour traffic. I would schedule these events for when I knew there would be little traffic on the road. If I had to visit an agency where I might have to wait in a line I would deliberately go during the slowest business period.

I was not naturally a productive person. I had to become productive to be successful in the military. You can learn to be more productive also if you follow the general guidelines that I follow.

I learned that the person that I needed to please was my boss. I found what was most important to him and this is where I focused my efforts. I didn’t waste a lot of time doing errands or favors for others. Don’t get me wrong here. I would do for others if I had the time but I wouldn’t do their work for them. I knew which phone line that my boss would use to call me and that was the one that I kept open. I honestly didn’t answer the others if I was busy.

I also found out what was important to the organization. For example there were always periodic reports due from me when I was in the military. These were the reports which higher ups had you to do for them in order to make their job easier. I learned that many times these reports would become obsolete or were no longer needed or even looked at by higher ups. My solution to this was to ignore everything for about the first thirty days. If no one called for a report within that time frame I knew that it was no longer necessary so I just didn’t do it anymore. This saved unnecessary time and much wasted effort.

I also learned to schedule tasks way ahead of deadlines so that if there was a last minute snafu which required me to have to jump through hoops I could handle it very easily. When the situation has been handled beforehand minor corrections were not an obstacle.

I learned to know my capabilities and the capabilities of the people who were with me. We never bit off more than we could chew and I didn’t allow others to push more on us than we could handle.

When I applied these techniques to my work habits I was consistently able to leave early. I would try ro accomplish all of my daily tasks early in the day. This left me the latter part of the day to react to the unnecessary BS that the higher ups would always come up with at the last minute. Riceland Enterprises