Personal Growth Source

What is increased productivity in terms of Personal Development?

It is important to ask the question: what is increased productivity should be as a part of Personal Growth and Development. Being productive is a crucial habit that every soul has to have to be able to grow and develop personally.

Productivity is a broad term. It comprises time management, planning, being efficient, making wise choices during scheduling works, etc.

Time Management

Wow! time management is like losing weight! 🙂 There are so many techniques out there where most of them are useless! Just like many boomerang loser diets! On the other hand there are some time management techniques that are actually working. The pomodoro technique is one of them. Personally Pomodoro technique revolutinized my working efficiency and effectiveness. I can honestly say that I could finish my PhD thesis with the Pomodoro technique. Otherwise it would have been very difficult because before discovering this technique, I was really struggling and was stuck on writing the thesis. I have spent days without being able to write a single paragraph. If I could finish a single page, I was feeling relieved that day. Nevertheless, just after I had begun to implement the Pomodoro technique, I started to work effectively and I could at last compose much more content compared to former days.

Pomodoro technique is actually very simple and very easy to implement. You have time slots for working with deep focus, and time intervals for resting. In the working interval, you concentrate at only one task. You switch off every item that may distract you, mobile phone, email notifications, other tasks in front of you,etc. Then when working time is over, you have a rest. You can check your mobile phone, emails, messages at that period. Typically the working interval is 25 minutes. It is set like this because it relies on the fact that after 25 minutes, human brain starts to degrade during deep concentrated work. It needs at least 5 minutes for regaining its cognitive capacity. There are 4 work-rest cycle that means 2 hours. After this block, you are awarded for a long 30 minutes break! Then you continue with another 2 hours work-rest combo. Please check pomodoro technique at web, there are tonnes of information and there are many applications, browser extensions that are set as pomodoro timers.

Scheduling, Planning and Setting Goals

Scheduling and planning is also very important to be productive. You shall prepare daily, weekly, quarterly and yearly schedules and goals. If you don’t schedule, you can fell in the deep hole of procrastinating. You will spend your valuable minutes, hours, days, even months while deciding which mission you should start. On the other hand if you schedule and plan your to do list, the day ahead, you will most likely accomplish your duties. By this way, you will not waste your precious hours thinking about where to start. You will kick off operating as soon as you sit on your desk because you will know beforehand what you will start to work first. The tricky part of planning on the other hand is to prepare an achiavable schedule. If you fill your to-do list with numerous tasks that is impossible to finish in a day, you will probably accomplish nothing at the end of the day. You will be stressed and feel guilty if you can not finish your to-do list. This leads to the failure of scheduling. You shall keep your daily task list achiavable. If a task is hard and time consuming, you can break it into small task pieces and scatter to days. It is very important to have the feeling of completing your tasks to get the motivation. Robin Sharma suggests that if you accomplish 5 achievements in a day, that means you have 5 daily victories!. That translates to 1825 victories  in a year which will transfom you as a person who got stunning personal growth and development achievements

Setting Goals is also crucial. If you don’t have a target in front of you to pursue, you may lose your motivation and focus. You shall establish weekly, quarterly and annual goals. Some people even have 5 year goals. Accomplishing a goal is one of the most satisfying feeling for human beings. When it is done, you feel valuable. You gain your self-confidence. You realize and sense in your deep soul that: “Yes! I have made it! I am an achiever! I can do more!”. Like scheduling, you should set reasonable goals. If you aim impossible targets, you may end up feeling like a loser. At the beginning of the process, you shall establish easy goals. In that way, you will experience the feeling of achieving something. This emotion will be addictive for you. Then you will force yourself to overcome tougher jobs.

Do not Multitask!

Multitasking is the number one killer of productivity. Although there are advices to multitask in order to be productive, it is not true! Human brain is not created for multitasking. It can only concentrate on one task at  a time. So, if you multitask to save some time, I am very sorry but you are wasting your valuable time! Please force yourself on full concentration on one duty at a moment, and observe the results. You will be shocked how much it differs than multitasking. But when I say concentrate, I mean it! You shall shut down every distraction! Notifications, messages, phone ring rings! Some of you will be mad at me but I have to say: Even listening to music distracts you! I know you are addicted to listen music while studying, or working but I have to say the truth: Listening to music also consumes your brain power! Therefore if you are busy with a difficult task that needs your brain’s full capacity, please don’t listen to music at the same time. If you are doing ordinary stuff that requires less brain energy, then it is ok! Free to have some music! For example, some Metallica hits would be awesome during cooking! 🙂

Eat that Frog!

Brian Tracy is one of the well known and most respected personal growth and development gurus. His famous book, “Eat that Frog: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time” is one of the best sellers in personal growth and development field. In his book he set forth that we shall complete hard tasks first in the morning. He advises that you shouldn’t read a single mail before 11 am in the morning. He tells that early morning is the most productive time interval because in this period our cognitive power is at its peak! Therefore, it is better to listen Brian Tracy’s advice and perform your difficult assignments as first thing in the morning. I strongly advise you to read Mr. Tracy’s book!

Productivity is an essential part of Personal Growth&Development;

We are in the pursue of growing and developing ourselves. These mighty process begins with establishing productivity. If you can not manage your time, if you can not be effiicient most probably you will never accomplish what you need to and you desire to. Because otherwise, you can not find available time slot for reading books, studying online courses, watching mentors, etc. Please try the pomodoro technique, it is very effective. If it doesn’t work for you, you can experiment other time management practices!