Getting Excited About Productivity

— the best-kept secret to business success in any economy

Many businesspeople I consult with hear the word productivity and immediately fall into a deep sleep. There’s just nothing exciting about the word.

But I have to tell you that the difference productivity can make in your life and business is very, very exciting. Improve your productivity and you improve your chances of spending quality time away from business, leaving you more time with the ones you love.

How to Improve Productivity

Productivity is fundamental to meeting any business goal. And in challenging economic times, being strong on the fundamentals can be a make or break for a business. But how do you improve and increase your productivity?

This is one of the essential business concepts I tackle during some of my first meetings with clients. We go through many steps and use several different tools to reveal the truth underlying the hours spent at the office. When we do, we almost always discover that too many of the hours we spend at work are virtually “lost hours”, which in turn contribute to long days – and weekends – at work instead of play.

I want to share with you one of the first steps toward discovering these lost hours and the holes in your own productivity:

Know – and understand – what your time is worth. Your productivity will always be tied to how you spend your time, so seriously evaluate how you spend each minute and hour at work.

• What are your high-payoff activities, and how much time do you spend on them?
• How much time are you spending on low-payoff activities?
• How much time is lost to no-payoff activities?

Once you’ve taken this step, you should see some opportunities for increasing your productivity. And when you increase your productivity and begin to see the ripples of effects this can have on your work and home life, I guarantee that the word productivity is going to begin to sound a lot more exciting.