TeachMarket.com

By Henrik Edberg

I’d like to share a few of effective ideas on how to increase your personal productivity. I hope you’ll find some of them helpful.

1. Think about a solution to a problem rather than complaining about it. Try to spend just 20% of your problem solving time on dwelling and complaining about it, and use 80% on finding a solution. Many people do the complete opposite.

2. Focus on the future, don´t dwell on mistakes of the past. Yeah, there mistakes were made and you might have regrets, but it´s over now. This is now. Allow yourself to keep your eyes on the opportunities of today and tomorrow.

3. Read one hour a day. If you can´t find a free hour, find small patches of time. I like to listen to audio books on personal development while riding the bus and doing the dishes. These small patches will quickly add up and increase your knowledge.

4. Communicate clearly. Avoid miscommunications. Be clear on what tasks your boss wants you to do, and in what order. If you´re the boss, communicate what you want to have done clearly. It might be useful to have the people in your team repeat back what´s been said. That way everyone is sure that they have the same interpretation of what is to be done before you get started. Then, while working, get continual feedback so you can readjust your plans if necessary and nip potential problems in the bud.

5. Keep at it until it´s done. When you really get into a task, you will be more efficient and more likely do a better job. If you jump around between a lot of half-finished tasks, you will lose time every time you stop and re-start working at it again. It takes a number of minutes to get into what you’re doing, gathering the information and tools you need for the job and so on. Keeping at it until a task is completed will also boost your sense of self-esteem and, over time, strengthen your self-discipline.

6. Don´t beat yourself up. It´s normal to feel bad sometimes. And it´s useful to take with you lessons learned from your mistakes, so you don´t repeat them over and over. But if you keep beating yourself up after those initial bad feelings, it serves no one. You will keep feeling like crap for no good reason, and the people around you will also be affected in a negative way.

Then, why do we do it? Well, perhaps it´s just an old habit for attempting to strengthen our sense of self. Maybe it´s a way to try and feel important and get the care and attention of others. But in the end, we are just wasting our time and our lives along with it.

7. Create small rewards for yourself. Some examples: Promise yourself ice cream after you’ve made 20 phone calls. Or, after reading three chapters in preparation for your next History exam, take a refreshing walk in the park. This might seem a bit too simple to work, but creating small motivations for yourself can be surprisingly effective. And it will make you better at completing one task at a time, decreasing the urge to constantly switch from one task to another.

8. Take a break. You won´t be effective if you don´t take a relaxing break once in while. If you keep on pushing and pushing through your tasks, you´ll eventually lose your focus, start to underperform, make mistakes and feel stressed out all the time. Just taking a break and then returning can make the work feel a whole lot easier than it did 10 minutes prior.

Check out Henrik Edberg´s personal development site, The Positivity Blog. It covers social skills, productivity, wealth, health and how you can live a happier and more positive life.