Do You Fall Into These Productivity Traps?

productivity traps
How often to you review what you have accomplished? It does not matter if your reviews are monthly, quarterly or yearly. What is important, is to check and see if there is a trend showing that alerts you to something that needs to be adjusted.

As a productivity consultant, I often catch myself in a trap.

Do you pride yourself of being efficient? Well, what does being efficient mean? Being efficient is about accomplishing more in a certain amount of time. Many tasks can be streamlined and so made more efficient and that is a win. However, then there are tasks that cannot be streamlined and that is also OK.

At the end of the day, checking if you have been effective is what is more important than being efficient. What does that mean? Ask yourself: did what I worked on produce the desired results. That means, were you successful that day and it gives you a sense of accomplishment.

At the end of the day check if you have been effective. This is more important than being efficient, but what does it mean? Ask yourself: “Did what you worked on produce the desired results.” That means, were you successful that day and did it give you a sense of accomplishment?

How much busy work do you do in any given day? At the end of the day does it give you a sense of purpose? Did the work move you forward closer toward your goal?

Having a calendar where your goals are broken down into daily tasks to moves you forward and is more effective than having a task list that is a foot long that you never get done.

Productivity is the measurement of being effective. Whereas accomplishment leads to progress. Progress focuses on growing your skill set and leads you to work on making progress. Do you measure your progress? When you do daily, monthly, quarterly or yearly reviews, you measure your progress. Now you know exactly what you have done, how you have done it and where you have to make changes.