What is Productivity? 🤔

"It is not that we have a short time to live, but we tend to waste a lot of it" – makes sense right? Okay some might agree and some might not 😃 and this is not the time for creating an argument! this one line made me think a lot about time-management and productivity which then turns out to be this blog😁

When we look into general definition of productivity –  it goes like "ratio of the output volume and the volume of inputs" – Hmm.. seems little vague and more generic than the productivity we search for – right?

When it comes to personal productivity, most of the time it is mis-interpreted, Darius Foroux  wonderfully defines personal productivity as "The relevant output of an individual in a certain period", He also adds , "By relevant output, I mean working on the right things. You can be highly productive and have a lot of output, but the results you achieve might be useless. When you focus on relevant output, you get the right things done. Things that improve your career, business, organization."

Seems simple isn't it?💭 Productivity is just about doing the right things that rewards us with the right results – as always the way for us to get things right every time comes eventually through lots and lots of practice and experience – agreed?

But there are some techniques which we can follow which makes us more focused on the work we are currently doing which eventually makes us do the right things –  Some of them are summarized as –

• Do not complicate things - just sit down and do it in a simple and elegant way. Generally we tend to overcomplicate 🎈 things where it shouldn't have which breaks the whole doing the right thing leaves us with less productivity.
• Be prepared and trained – one of the reasons for not being productive in our work is just because we are not well equipped with the skills or knowledge we require to get the job done – in that case, you know what you have to do! 😁
• Productivity is not only getting things done 🤔 – we should understand that working 10-12 hours does not make you more productive – in fact, it just makes you less productive eventually as we will have less time with all other personal demands like family, relationship, personal times, paying bills and more.
• Understand what is holding us behind 🧑🏻‍💻 – It’s important to be aware of what’s standing in your way to becoming your most productive self. We need to commit to overcoming them and strive to reach our full potential. Avoid distractions when you focus on something.🎯
• There can be many tools that can promise you to make you more productive – in many cases, they actually can make you productive – They help you to save time, improve focus, and improve the overall quality of our work. However, every time I talk about productivity tools, I also talk about the downside. Too much technology often decreases our productivity.
• You can achieve almost anything in life…  🤑 As long as you focus on achieving one thing at a time 🕐. It’s a time-tested strategy that’s been shared by many successful people.

After going through several books about productivity and multiple articles about the same – my idea towards this productivity seems to be very simple – it is about maximizing every waking second of my life ⚡⚡ – sounds good right?

Right now in this current point of my life, it is a GO TIME for me!! I know that time⌚ always moves forward⏩ (unless, of course someone invents a time machine 😁) and I am not going to be any younger but right now I'm healthy and full of energy🌩️ and who knows how long this is going to last! So, whatever I want to do – I wanna do it right now!!

So, I always tend to have some goals🎯 and work🏃🏻‍♂️ towards achieving these goals – and the progress I make towards achieving my goals gives me a sense that I am moving forward and give me motivation to move closer towards my dream – so, every time, I feel bored, or feel stagnant or have nothing to do – I feel upset or unhappy about myself as I am no longer progressing towards my goals🎯.

Let me explain – you can take a look at my typical 24 hours a day

You can see some overlaps between different times – this is to have some flexibility between different thing I do in the day – during weekends - you could replace the work with family time and learning time - that's where blogs like these are made!

You also can note that I have not scheduled any specific time of the day that I will be doing something – like I sleep from 1:00 am - 6:00 am ⏳ or something – this also gives me some more flexibility to get things done! This allows me to steal some of my sleep time and put it into work, or my learning time – and all other possible combinations. Initially, it was hard for me get this right with my family, eventually everything came together😉

I do not agree that everyone has same 24 hours⏳ no matter if they are rich, poor, healthy or what not! This perspective can be broken by a simple example, say, I have to travel from Bangalore to Delhi – if you travel through road/ rail – it takes days to get there, if you could afford to fly – its just a couple of hours, saving you a huge amount of time –  it works even better if you own a private jet – you need not wait for the plane, avoid big queues and paper works – so, everyone does have 24 hours but – the value differs

I feel people get bored when they have free time and then get into other distractions to get them out of boredom –  with all these collective times, I feel we could build an entire civilization from scratch😁! Yes!! FREE TIME is the ENEMY of PROGRESS!!

I emphasize this because I think life is substantiated by the contributions and impact we make when we are alive. The finish line is same for everyone. We all end up in same place, but when we are here together, what contributions you can make to work and build things, making things, spending time with your family defines the progress and contribution – so, why shouldn't we spend this time as efficiently as possible – that's why I say free time is the enemy of progress.

This is my perspective towards productivity. These are very basic things that I could summarize and can be taken as baby steps towards us being more productive – Of course this is not even the tip of the ice-berg, there are multiple books written over this topic – and there is only so much that can be discussed in a 1000 word blog ☹️

I leave it to you readers to find out what your definition of productivity is!! Please feel free to write to me if you have any contradictions to discuss or to express your definition of productivity! If you like what you read here, consider subscribing which would mean a lot to me💗