Think about all the people with whom you collaborate in a given week. People are trying to connect with you continually. You also seek to get things done with many others as well.
How many of them do you owe a response to?
How many of them are waiting on you?
Sure, you may be buried by emails or can’t seem to keep your projects or relationships organized. But can you continually hide behind these excuses? How many years have gone by like this?
Think about how work gets done. A series of communications and actions take place. A lot of times, it is between you and another person. More often though, you collaborate with multiple parties to get to a result.
The hard part is that you can only work on one thing at a time, in sequence. And people can easily create work for you. All they have to do is email you, text you, ping you or connect in some way.
You have to give attention, make sense of what they are wanting and act in some way. It can get exhausting.
But if you are responsive and efficient, then you build a reputation with people as someone that gets things done. And that is becoming scarce. Most people are drowning in information and unable to execute fluidly. They settle for being unproductive or are drowning in the sea of messages coming at them.
This is not hopeless, however. There are too many ways to solve the problem. There are many examples of people that get things done because they made it a priority.
The question comes down to whether you will apply yourself and solve the problem. Be responsive and productive. It clears the decks so you can be ready for any opportunity that comes your way. You will be able to see them and not get distracted by the noise.
And your opportunities increase because you keep work moving and get it done.
So what can you do? Here are a few strategies:
- Learn good email habits and have a ZeroInbox
- Have great relationships. Cut out difficult ones. They slow you down.
- Always have great ideas to share
- Do the big thing first every day
- Keep lists organized and knock them out in context and in bulk
- Focus
- Minimize
Productivity is a habit and a desire. It’s something you get a shot at every day and the new economy is becoming more about this issue than any other for your livelihood and value. We want to work with people that can make ideas happen and move the ball. Everyone else gets marginalized over time.
So how important is productivity to you?
