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A Guide to Increasing Your Productivity

By Eugene Onyibo
08 April 2016   |   1:12 am
Every human being naturally desires success. In the strict sense, success is the accomplishment of a set goal. Hence, the more goals you accomplish the more successful you become.

businessHow To Increase Your Productivity
Every human being naturally desires success. In the strict sense, success is the accomplishment of a set goal. Hence, the more goals you accomplish the more successful you become. By inference, being more successful (i.e. being able to accomplish more goals) also means being more productive. Increased productivity necessarily leads to increased happiness. This is why a successful person is very productive and happy. Such a person is fulfilled in life. Experience lends credence to the fact that most people’s productivity is far less than their ability. While most people are less productive, there are some people who have attained the age of reasoning who are, by all standards, unproductive. It is imperative to remark that being less productive does not necessarily imply being lazy. Most unproductive and less productive people work very hard. This, contrary to conventional belief, implies that hardworking does not guarantee success. Observation shows that there are more hardworking poor people than successful hardworking people. Being less productive also does not imply that no effort is put in the pursuit of excellence.

Prioritising has to do with doing things in their order of importance. It has to do with the ability to concentrate on the tasks that produce greater results and delegate the tasks that produce fewer results. Prioritising also has to do with being committed to high rewarding tasks while neglecting the tasks that produce no result. Prioritising is justified by the fact that there are always unlimited things to do within a limited time. There are some implications of the claim that there are always unlimited things to do within a limited time. One of such implications is that no one will ever be able to do all he ought to do, no matter how hard he tries. However, a closer look at the multiple tasks that stare at us reveals that some of them are more important than others. As a matter of fact, some tasks are important while other tasks are unimportant. As a result, the impact of performing some tasks is incomparable with the impacts of performing other tasks.

The impact of performing a task could outweigh the impact of performing all other tasks that demand your time. This idea is clearly captured in the Pareto’s Principle of Optimality (a.k.a The Pareto Principlie). This principle holds that 20% of your tasks produce 80% of the results you get, while 80% of your tasks produce 20% of the results you get. Sometimes, however, 5% of your tasks could account for 95% of your results. What this means is that if you concentrate on the 5% of the tasks that produce the highest results and neglect the 95% of the tasks that produce low results, you will work less but achieve more, even in a shorter time.

But can you guess what most people do? Since they are ignorant of the principle of prioritising, they focus on the 95% tasks that produce 5% of their results but procrastinate on the 5% tasks that produce 95% of their results. This single factor accounts for why most people perform below their abilities and expectation. It also explains why most people work very hard but having little (or nothing) to show for their efforts. Prioritising is one of the most significant factors that separate successful people from failures and the middle class. It is a habit of successful people. Consequently, it is impossible to succeed if you do not prioritise.

If you learn to concentrate on the tasks that produce the greatest positive results on your life and neglect less productive tasks, you will be amazed with how productive you will become, even without working harder. You would also be amazed with how soon you will accomplish great goals. If you also learn to consider unproductive tasks as no task, the more productive the rest of your life will be. The important thing about your life is not how hard you work, but on what tasks do you work. Working very hard hard on less productive tasks cannot make you a success. Worse still, working very hard on unproductive tasks would guarantee your faster than you think. Prioritising helps you to work smart rather than work hard. It is one of the most reliable keys to improving your productivity.

Eugene C. Onyibo is the Director of Skyheight Success Consult.

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