Boost Your Productivity – Lesson 4

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Lesson 4

Start Laying A Productive Foundation

In the last chapter, you learned exactly what productivity is and how to measure it. You learned how you can increase the productivity of yourself and your business via increasing the number of products and/or services rendered within a specific time span. In this chapter, you will learn how to begin laying a productive foundation to increase your productivity and your success.

In order to form a productive foundation for yourself, you need to eliminate all distractions from your work area and clear your mind of any doubts and/or worries you may have. You need to be totally focused and invested in the working process in order to produce the maximum number of products/content and/or render the most services within a specific time span.

Additionally, you should have a clear plan of what needs to be done in terms of tasks and projects and how to go about best doing them. You can’t afford to waste time with small details that you should be familiar with, such as formatting ebooks and paragraphs, or knowing what sites to look up information on- you should have that already planned out and ready to go as soon as you begin work.

This is where time management and preparation are key; if you prepare ahead of time on what you need to do and what resources to access, you can deliver high-quality work much more quickly than trying to determine what sites you need to go to, how to format ebooks and paragraphs, etc.

The same holds true if you manage a business and have employees and/or outsourcers. You need to have an agenda of tasks and projects to complete and a time table on which you can expect them to complete them. You need to lay down the ground rules on what needs to be done and how quickly they should be done. Any questions or concerns, they should know exactly who to contact.

However, when it comes to the basics of most projects, they should know exactly how to do them, especially if they have worked for you for a while. This means they should know how things should be formatted, what resources to access, where to send completed projects, etc. You should not have to inform them of these basic elements, as this will just slow down their productivity and yours, hampering your business and reputation because you won’t provide as many quality products, services, and/or content if you have to go over the basics each time.

Therefore, to set up a productive foundation, you need to have a work area that is free of distractions. You also need to have a clear plan of what needs to be accomplished and how soon you expect it to be done. You should also have the basics set up so that you can dive right into the work; you don’t want to be messing around with indents, fonts, formatting, etc.; that will only slow down your productivity. You want to have that all set up and ready to go as soon as you begin work.

It’s similar with employees and/or outsourcers. They need to know what tasks are to be completed and how quickly they should be done. If they have any questions or concerns, they should know who to contact and how to contact him/her/them, but it should only be for specific details about a specific project. If they have worked with you before, they should know what formatting, fonts, and other usual details to include in ebooks, paragraphs, content, etc.- they should not have to be informed of those on each project they do for you. Going over trivial details that should be known will only slow down their productivity and yours, as you’ll have to take time away from other things you should be doing. The result will be that your business will be less productive and less profitable, harming the reputation of you and your business as a result.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to implement simple time management techniques for maximum productivity.

Exercises:

Exercise 4: Productive Foundations

Lessons