Category: “Personal Productivity”

Virtually, all the projects you want to perform in your life will require the utilization of time and money. Both resources are often limited and usually shared by all your projects, so it’s necessary to manage them with good judgement to make the most of them.

In 1953 a group of students from Yale University was surveyed about many questions, included the following: Have you set goals? Have you written them down? Do you have a plan to accomplish them? 84% of the students had no defined goal, 13% had set goals but had not written them down, and 3% had written their goals down and also had a plan of action.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a psychology professor known worldwide as a researcher on positive psychology, defined the concept of flow as being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.

Are you being productive or just active? They’re not the same thing, but we often use—unconsciously—the concept of activity to deceive ourselves (or consciously, to fool our boss). Sometimes we need to feel busy to not have to do other important tasks that make us uncomfortable for any reason. “I keep doing things all day. So cool!”. No doubt you’re working hard; you show dedication, but dedication sometimes masks a meaningless work. Are you inventing things to avoid doing what’s important? Think carefully about it and be honest with yourself.

Productivity. A concept so simple to be defined and so difficult to be analyzed. Personally, I rather the shorter definition: doing more with less. Put that way, maybe it doesn’t look a big thing, but don’t be fooled. This powerful concept is the key to measuring the efficiency and evolution of economies and societies, and determines companies profitability and people quality of life.