Personal Productivity and Effective Living

By Craig Erhorn

Almost everyone I meet these days says they have too much to do and not enough time to get it all done. In addition to the volume of work waiting for us, new tasks are constantly surfacing and causing re-prioritization. Most folks do not have an effective system in place to manage the volume, changing priorities, and the uncertainty associated with the unpredictable events that often force us to change direction. We need to be efficient and effective while we are doing what we must do, complete tasks without leaving behind any loose ends, effectively prioritize the tasks at hand, and be confident in our ability to handle whatever comes our way. To put it very simply, if we feel confident that we are working on what we should be doing and we have a reliable method for handling everything else, we will have achieved a sustainable level of productivity and effective living. If we can achieve that state, the anxiety we normally feel from all those conflicting demands will mostly go away. We will know we have it “handled”.

Productivity

Increasing productivity means generating the same (or more) output with less input. Many people will naturally look for ways to do their routine tasks “better” – as a way to be more efficient and productive. They should instead be questioning whether they need to do certain things at all. Most processes are full of waste – activities or things that add no value to the output and are not necessary to accomplish the task. Doing non-value-adding things better will not eliminate waste and is unlikely to lead to real productivity improvement. Elimination of waste should be the primary focus. Types of waste that could be targeted may include:

Excess processing – doing more than needed to get the job done. “Best is the enemy of better.” Do enough to achieve the purpose, skip the stuff that may look pretty but won’t materially affect the outcome.
Motion – poor work layout requiring excess motion. If you have to walk down the hall or back and forth across the room to accomplish part of a task, you are adding unnecessary time to the process. If you are doing a task that requires multiple repetitions, the time wasted can be significant.
Transportation – doing things in person requires transportation. This is a huge waste of time, unless you can be doing something productive while you’re traveling. Anything that can be accomplished with an email versus a phone call, or a phone call versus a visit in person will save large amounts of time.
Poor Resource Utilization – look for unused resources that could be applied to the process – if you can delegate tasks to others, do it. You do NOT have to do everything yourself.
Waiting – time waiting for someone or something else to finish. Do not put yourself in situations where you must “hang out” waiting for another process to finish before you can get on with your work. Make sure prerequisites are ready before starting a job.
Overproduction – unnecessary use of time and/or material to produce more than needed.
Defects – make sure you do it right the first time, and have the tools, material, knowledge, instructions, etc. to ensure the desired outcome. Going back to re-do work because it wasn’t done right is another big time waster.
Approval/Sign Off – eliminate the need for approvals or sign-offs wherever possible. These are just “quality inspections” that should not be necessary if the process always produces a reliable and acceptable outcome. They waste time waiting for someone else to sign-off. This goes along with the previous topic – eliminate defects and sign-offs should not be necessary.

Getting Organized

Ok, you’ve taken steps to eliminate waste and improve your productivity. What about your process for managing and prioritizing all that stuff you need to do? You’re probably using a “to-do” list. Unfortunately, these don’t really work. New input and changing priorities make it almost impossible to maintain a valid list that you can work from, and the exhaustive nature of the list tends to draw your attention away from focusing on the most important tasks. What is needed is a way to continuously collect and organize everything that comes to you for action. I recommend getting a copy of David Allen’s book – “Getting Things Done”. He illustrates a fairly simple system that helps you get all of your tasks captured, organized, and prioritized. Without re-writing the book for you, the concepts can be summarized quickly:

Have an in-basket for everything (this can be electronic)
Immediately categorize the request – trash, actionable, reference, or possible future task. Dump the trash, store reference material and future “maybe someday” tasks in appropriate buckets.
If the task is actionable, can it be done in 2 minutes? Do it now. Otherwise – categorize and prioritize.
- Can you delegate it? Then assign it to someone and get it off your list.
- Does it need to be done as soon as possible? Put it on your priority list for action as soon as time is available. I recommend reviewing this list daily.
- Does it require waiting for someone or something? Put it in a reminder file, reviewed weekly to see if it’s ready to go.
- Can it be scheduled? Put it on your calendar. Have an electronic calendar, and use automated reminders for upcoming tasks.

If you can eliminate waste in the process of performing tasks, you will be far more efficient and productive. If you implement a comprehensive and flexible process to capture, organize, prioritize, and execute tasks you will be in control of your commitments. Improving productivity and organization will give you a level of control you probably haven’t experienced before, and in the process decrease anxiety and frustration. That is more effective living!

Read Craig Erhorn’s bio here.