Personal productivity is the way you handle tasks relevant to you professionally, consistently. It is the sum total of all the things you do in any given week. It is what makes you rich, not because you earned it, but because you spent a week doing something that made you happy. Personal productivity is everything to a successful professional, team, or individual. More than just a buzz word.
As an individual, as a team or organization, how can you be productive? As a leader, manager, or team, how can you best utilize your time to get the most from your time? As a parent, how can you manage your work-related time to ensure you can spend quality family time with your kids? How can you effectively delegate tasks to multiple projects? Here are some tips for making sure you are using your personal productivity skills to its highest potential:
Personal productivity tip number one - set up multiple project management tools. Project management tools such as task management and tooling for tracking, storing, and searching multiple projects makes it easier to stay on track. One tool that I've used for several years is Desktop Management Tool (DMT), which helps you manage multiple projects by task. It also lets you schedule future tasks and see what tasks are due next.
Personal productivity tip number two - don't let distractions get in the way of productivity. If you feel like you have too many things to do, ask yourself if you're truly focused on what you need to be doing. If you're taking a break and wasting time watching television or playing with the kids, remind yourself of all the tasks you need to be completing and prioritize them. If you feel like you're not getting any productive work done because of distractions, then set up ways to block these out. For me, I block out my cell phone when I'm doing other things, I turn off the TV when I'm reading and doing housework, and I even try to ignore emails and instant messages when possible.
Personal productivity tip three - evaluate your productivity systems. If you want to know how productive you are, you need to make sure that your system is in proper working order. If you are using an old fashioned paper and pen method of completing work, then you might be wasting a lot of time that could be spent doing more productive things. Evaluate your productivity systems, such as how often you check a email, whether you have the task list saved correctly, what you type when you're on the computer and what tasks you tend to complete more slowly or faster.
Another important productivity tip is to set up short-term and long-term goals and follow up with your plans. You can't give yourself a specific amount of time to complete a task, so if you don't set up some kind of goal or timeline for yourself, then you will simply drift through life without really knowing what you are trying to accomplish. Setting up long-term and short-term goals will keep you focused and will motivate you to do the tasks you need to do to reach your goals and make your life more productive. Find out more details in relation to this topic here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity.
