Productivity Through Measurement

Fight to link everything to your goals. Productivity is the deliberate, strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources, and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. You cannot be productive without goals, in fact, without linkage with goals. It says you cannot be productive without measurement. This gives you a very simple standard for determining, minute by minute, task by task, choice by choice, whether you are being productive or unproductive.

Is what I am doing, this minute, moving me measurably closer to my goals?
 

Now, to be reasonable, and to be human, let's cheerfully acknowledge that nobody can -- or should -- be able to say "yes" to that question all of the time. We need, want, and deserve time for casual conversation, for baseball scores, for political arguments, for reading the comics, for just plain goofing off. But you want to do those things knowingly, consciously, by choice, not by random accident or others' direction.

I'd say that anything beyond a 50% "yes rate" qualifies as peak personal productivity. Incidentally, measurement alone will enhance your productivity. Just asking the questions will enhance your productivity. Any athlete will tell you that measurement alone improves performance.

- Dan Kennedy

No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs

(Photo from Microsoft Free Images)