Productivity is big business these days.

 

Morning routines.

 

Task batching.

 

Habit stacking.

 

Tactics to deal with email overwhelm.

 

The list goes on.  Words and phrases that were not part of our vocabulary, just a few short years ago, are now used daily.

 

We’re all searching for the secret sauce, the next hack that will make us ever more efficient.

 

But productivity is just a tool.  It’s not an end point.

 

How Efficient Do We Really Need to Be? 

The irony of productivity is that it can become a distraction all of itself.  We can busy ourselves trying to get ever more efficient at things that may not matter much!  To paraphrase an often quoted, but totally underutilised, Peter Drucker line – does what we are doing even need doing?

 

Productivity should be something that relieves some of our stressors, not adds to them.  Fretting that we’re not using the right combination of hacks to be at our productive best can add a weight of unnecessary expectation.  Feeling that we’re never quite as efficient as our projected selves could be, causes its own sense of frustration.  It becomes a burden.

 

But how efficient do we really need to be?  How much is enough? 

 

There are a multitude of tools and tactics that can help us but we can personalise them.   They don’t all need an exotic name.  They don’t all require we fill our heads or bookshelves with the words of every productivity ‘guru’ out there, or sign up to their expensive and over-elaborate online courses.  This stuff can, and should, be simple.

 

Our personal productivity ‘system’ could be as simple as just committing to two major tasks each day and working off on those, in a focused way, while keeping distractions to a minimum.  It could involve batching repeat tasks such as email/calls/meetings to certain parts of the day only (i.e. no meetings before 10am).  It could involve using positive constraints that help us stay focused, such as turning wifi off, for periods of time.

 

We could use paper lists, electronic lists or no lists.

 

Many ways work.  Pick a way that suits your situation, personalise it and then commit to putting it to work.  Combine these with other tactics that appeal and formulate habits and processes that fit you.  Refine it until you have something that is efficient, easy to navigate and most importantly, works for you personally.  Simple, not necessarily easy.

 

A Tool to Improve Life

Productivity should make our lives better.  It should reduce friction, so we sweat the small stuff less.  It’s there to help us focus on the important things.  It’s there to make sure we have time for what, and who, matters most to us.

 

Productivity is just a tool, use it accordingly.

 

 

Note: This is refreshed idea originally shared on the Huffington Post

 

 

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