“The Ultimate Guide to Productivity”

Over on his Instigator Blog, Ben Yoskovitz last year started a very interesting Group Writing Project Meme called “The Ultimate Guide to Productivity”.

So far, people from all over the world have contributed their own top tips on productivity and Ben has been busy collating all of the top tips into a useful guide for all of us.

Among the best tips that I’ve seen so far are:

Clarity – Monk at Work (Adam Kayce) suggested this little gem and states that clarity comes from having a message: “Your Message is the sum of who you are, what your passions are, what your values are, and what comes to you naturally to give, share, and contribute to your world.”

Just do something, already – Lorna Doone at Something Good. Don’t let yourself feel “too down” by looking at your mile long to do list. Just start taking the first step and the next will follow.

The childlike secret to productivity – Kim and Jason at Escape Adulthood have got some very good and simple ideas about how you can plan as long as you remember your passions.

So without further ado, I’d like to add my own suggestion to this. It all comes down to the general principles of the "oldie but goodie" Time Manager® planning tool.

Plan using Key Areas

Pretty much everything you do in life can be organised under some major headings – whether it’s at work or in your private life. If you divide all of your tasks and activities into 7 – 9 major key areas then you can also plan how to spend your time more effectively. I.e. if it doesn’t relate to any of your key areas it is very unlikely that it is important enough to require your immediate attention.

An example of how my key areas as a company CEO look are as follows:

1. Finance & Administration
2. Sales & Marketing
3. HR
4. Product Development
5. Organisational Development
6. Personal Development
7. Private

For each of these key areas you are likely to have some goals and it will require you to undertake a number of tasks in order to achieve that goal. Some tasks will be a lot bigger than others and you will therefore have to break the tasks down in a number of activities.

Let’s take a closer look at one area: Personal Development. I have a wide range of things that I would like to improve in my professional and personal life. My goals can be described as the following:

• Be able to conduct a business negotiation in French by the end of 2009
• Improve my ratings on public speaking engagements by 10% by the end of 2008
• Speak at 5 major conferences

Therefore my tasks under Personal Development look like follows:

6. Personal Development

6.1. Improve my French

6.2. Improve my public speaking skills

6.3. Secure speaking engagements

If we proceed to break one of these down further, then what exactly would it take for me to learn enough French to conduct a full scale business negotiation? Looking at the level that I’m at now I know that it would require a lot of work and there are a lot of activities that I would need to undertake. As with any big goal in life you need to break it down into manageable portions (sometimes referred to as the Elephant Technique):

6.1.1. Learn 5 French business terms per day

6.1.2. Attend French classes weekly for 2 hours

6.1.3. Book extended stay in Paris with personal tutor – 4 hours per day

6.1.4. Spend Summer holiday in France to improve conversation

6.1.5. Sign up to and read French newsletters

6.1.6. Subscribe to Le Monde newspaper

6.1.7. Sign up for events at French chamber of commerce

Based on the activities that I have listed above I can then start to plan my time knowing that I will need to find the time for:

Learning 5 French business terms per day – 10 minutes per day

Attend French classes – 2 hours per week

Extended stay in Paris – 2 months

Summer holiday in France – 2 weeks

Read French newsletters – 30 minutes per week

Read Le Monde – 20 minutes per day

Attend events at French chamber of commerce – 2 hours per month

Based on this information I now know that I can plan my time around the following:

Daily activities: 30 minutes per day

Weekly activities: 2 hours

Monthly activities: 2 hours

One-off activities: 2 weeks of holiday and 2 months of leave

In reality this means that I will be able to get my French from zero to a very good standard with a daily expenditure of 30 minutes, attending one monthly meeting of 2 hours (instead of spending the time at the pub or watching a movie on the couch at home), fitting half an hour in weekly to read the newsletters, spending 2 weeks of my holiday and taking only a 2 month leave. Suddenly the project doesn’t seem completely insane and I will still manage to keep up my day job – even while I’m in Paris. It just means that 4 hours of my day are blocked off for learning French and that I will spend my spare time talking in French with French people. Hey presto!

This combination of using key areas and the elephant technique means that you can actually make a start on doing something and it also helps you keep clarity as I know that I:

• WANT to learn French
• And breaking it down into manageable portions I actually don’t fear the task and keep on putting it off – rather I now know what I have to do in order to achieve it

It might mean reprioritising some of the other things in your life, but then again it would probably be better to spend the 30 minutes a day spent focusing on learning French rather than surfing aimlessly round the net or however you spend the last 30 minutes before you go home.

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How to set personal goals to achieve a richer life

Most people are either completely goal-less or goal-obsessed. People without goals tend to drift through life without being completely happy – and not knowing why. Goal-obsessed people are the ones who tend to be stressed out at all times and they may (or may not) achieve material success, but are seldom happy. It is important to find a happy medium to achieve a sense of both happiness and balance in life.

Some people feel happy by just having a certain “direction” in their lives, but this can often lead to impulsive and reactionary behaviour in the (often vain) hope that it will someday lead to a greater sense of satisfaction. However, what often happens is that these people will wake up one day late in their lives and feel that they’ve missed out on all of the good things.

If you just focus on the goals alone, you will probably find that you’re the type of person who always find a new goal that has to drive you on and without a goal you feel restless and without a sense of purpose. No matter how many goals you achieve they will not make you any happier because “the grass is always greener” and you have to achieve the next milestone because you BELIEVE that will make you even happier. But you need to stop up and ask yourself: “When will I be TRULY HAPPY?” If you recognise this, then you’ll probably also be the type of person who never enjoys the journey or even celebrates a success by enjoying the here and now. This is what happens to goal-obsessed people.

Goal setting is about not just setting a general direction for your life, but about giving you some milestones of achievement that will give you satisfaction both on the journey AND once you reach them!

If we learn to set goals and work towards achieving them – whether they are material or immaterial – early in life, our lives will be more rewarding and substantial… but it is NEVER too late to begin!

Before setting your goals you need to understand what a goal really is.

A goal describes a situation (or state) that you would like to find yourself in. It is where YOU WANT TO BE after you have completed a number of tasks and activities.

In general management theory about goal setting it is commonly acknowledged that goals must be “SMART”, of which there are a number of variations:

S - specific, significant, stretching

M - measurable, meaningful, motivational

A - agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented

R - realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented

T - time-based, timely, tangible, trackable

But you can also distil it into four main criteria:

1. The goal must be CLEARLY DEFINED
The goal must describe a desired state or situation as clearly as possible. Wanting to “learn a language” is not a goal, whereas “be able to conduct a business meeting in French” is.

2. The goal must be REALISTIC
You have to be able to achieve your goal without drawing upon resources to which you not have access, i.e. you cannot do something that you know will take you 3 years of full-time dedication and application in 2 years while holding down a full-time job and raising a family.

3. The goal must be CHALLENGING
If it is something you can easily do with little dedication or application it is NOT a goal. You must see this as a challenge to which you must dedicate time and effort in order to overcome. Start by setting a goal that might seem slightly beyond what you believe you are capable of. It is important to ensure that there is a balance between the realism and the challenge, but you’ll find that if you put your mind to it you can DO MORE than you think.

4. The goal must be MEANINGFUL
It has to give you a sense of achievement to reach the goal and you must make the achieving of the goal a high priority.

What goals should I set?

It is important to understand that you can set goals both small and large. If you only set large goals you will likely find yourself becoming disillusioned along the way – and even big goals can often get broken down into smaller segments. To take the example of learning to conduct a negotiation in French you could break that down into several components: learning a vocabulary of X number of business terms and words; learning the cultural background of doing business in France and so on.

You can also set goals for different periods of time, e.g. a day; a week; a month; a year or; perhaps even, your life. This is what a lot of people do at the start of the New Year, but they lack the understanding of what is required to then break down that goal into its achievable components (something that will be covered in later articles).

You might think that this isn’t relevant to you because of your age, your current situation or some other explanation, but this is where you must realise that your age and experience play a very important role in terms of your life goals. Therefore, you should ensure that you re-align your life goals at least once a year.

Types of goals

We all have different types of goals, but in general they can be organised into the following categories:

• Health and well-being
• Education and skills
• Work and career
• Economy and material wealth
• Relationships
• Attitudes and values
• Use of your time

Helping you achieve your goals

There are some very simple rules that you can follow in order to help you attain your goals. These rules will dramatically increase the likelihood of you achieving the goals that you have set:

1. Record your goals (on your computer or on paper)
   
2. Determine the tasks and activities that you need to complete in order to achieve them
3. Set deadlines for the tasks and activities
4. Expend your time AND your energy on the tasks and activities that you have defined

I hope that this has given you a bit of inspiration to start setting some goals and below you can find some links to more information about goal setting.

LINKS TO OTHER ARTICLES ON GOAL SETTING

• SMART goals on Project SMART
• Setting Goals Effectively on Mindtools
• Links to articles on goal setting and achievement on Top Achievement
• Goal Setting Guide's SMART goals

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