Tag: Productivity

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To Improve Productivity Improve Efficiency And Effectiveness

Efficiency is “doing things right”. Effectiveness is “doing the right things”. Productivity entails both – doing the right thing in the right way. Excelerated Productivity comes when you improve both efficiency and effectiveness.

improve efficiency and effectiveness

The Lioness And The Vixen

“A Lioness and a Vixen were talking together about their young, as mothers will, and saying how healthy and well-grown they were, and what beautiful coats they had, and how they were the image of their parents.

‘My litter of cubs is a joy to see,’ said the Fox; and then she added, rather maliciously, ‘But I notice you never have more than one.’

‘No,’ said the Lioness grimly, ‘but that one’s a lion.'” (1)

Becoming Effective And Efficient

This Aesop fable comes with the moral “quality over quantity”. (I leave it to you to decide if one lion has more “quality” than a litter of foxes.) But we can also read it in terms of efficiency – the lioness had only one baby – and effectiveness – that baby was a lion!

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To Do More, Do Less

Many of us have more to do than we can get done. To improve personal productivity, the solution isn’t to find better ways to do more but to find ways to do less . . . of the unimportant things.

Choosing The Right Thing To Do

“As Jesus and his disciples went on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed him in her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat down at the feet of the Lord and listened to his teaching. Martha was upset over all the work she had to do, so she came and said, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to come and help me!’

The Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha! You are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one is needed. Mary has chosen the right thing, and it will not be taken away from her.’” ~ Luke 10:38-42 Good News Translation (GNT) [Bible Gateway]

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The 4 Rules of Time

“The purpose of time management and getting more done in less time is to enable you to spend more face time with the people you care about and doing the things that give you the greatest amount of joy in life.” ~ Brian Tracy

From Brian Tracy, motivational speaker, author, and expert in human potential and achievement, we learn that there are 4 rules of time [Tracy]:

  1. Time is perishable.
  2. Time is indispensable.
  3. Time is irreplaceable.
  4. Time is essential for accomplishment.
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Castaway

To reach any BIG goal, you must grow to the person who can achieve it. You grow by taking one small action after another. In this way you prepare for the opportunity when it appears.

Do you remember the movie, Cast Away, where Tom Hanks is stranded for several years on an island in the South Pacific? In the movie, Hanks is a time-obsessed trouble shooter for FedEx. At a Christmas dinner with family, he is called to resolve a problem in one of their foreign offices and leaves the dinner to catch a flight on a FedEx plane.

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Make Productivity A Habit

To achieve any worthy goal, you must decide what is vital to the project, then structure your days so you can devote large chunks of time to those vital activities.

A Tale Of Two Workers

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” ~ Charles Dickens, A Tale Of Two Cities

Andrew and Angela worked for the same company. They were hired at about the same time to join the company’s sales team. And there the similarities end.

Angela developed a habit of coming in to work at 7:00 AM, about an hour before most of the sales team arrived. She always had a list of tasks which she had prepared the night before. She came in, sat down, and went to work on the first task on her list.

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Sharpen Your Focus

In a world of growing distractions, it becomes increasingly important to be able to “go deep”, to ignore the “shiny objects” and focus on the things that are truly important to you.

Get The Big Rocks In First

A professor brought a wide-mouthed glass jar to class and set it on a table. From under the table, he brought out a bucket of large rocks. He began placing rocks into the glass jar until no more would fit.

He asked the class, “Is the jar full?”

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Do It Now!

“’Someday’, you said you’d do it yesterday; Yesterday, you said you’ll do it today. Today, if you push it to tomorrow, it’s likely tomorrow, you’ll shift it to ‘Someday’! Do it now!” ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Filling The Backpack

A mountain climber was ascending a high peak, where he had been told the views were amazing. He began his climb in high anticipation of reaching the top.

The climber hadn’t gone far when he came upon an unusual rock that attracted his attention. He decided he wanted to study the rock more later, so he picked it up and put it in his backpack. He climbed a bit higher and saw another rock, even more interesting than the first. So he picked that one up too and put it in his backpack to examine later. This same thing happened again and again. The climber found more and more rocks and other objects he wanted to inspect later and stuffed them in his backpack. Continue reading “Do It Now!”

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Productivity Matters

“In the end, putting together a life of extraordinary results simply comes down to getting the most out of what you do, when what you do matters. Living for productivity produces extraordinary results.” ~ Gary Keller, The ONE Thing

Living for productivity produces extraordinary results. What sort of results have you been achieving? Would you call them “extraordinary”? If I am honest with myself, most of my days are not extraordinarily productive — although I am having more productive days lately, thanks to the information I am sharing with you in this post. In his book, The ONE Thing: The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results, Gary Keller contends that “the most successful people are the most productive people.” [Keller 158] And the most productive people are those people who spend the maximum amount of their time on their top priority – their “ONE Thing”. Continue reading “Productivity Matters”

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Effective or Efficient?

It has been said that efficiency is doing things right while effectiveness is doing the right things. Getting many things done quickly (efficiency) may seem desirable, but if they are not the important things, you haven’t really made much progress. You can be very efficient in following directions on a map, but if the map is for Atlanta and you’re in Greenville . . . you just get lost faster.

TheExceleratedLife.com
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