One of the biggest obstacles to the productivity of most people is their resistance when it comes to acquire a productivity system. Some read many books on websites such as productivity and life hack and think they need to do is take a little from this and a little of it and then call it a day can. Others hate the idea that someone like Stephen Covey and David Allen could know their own needs better than themselves, and therefore reject the idea, the system of "another person" to use.
Can not we just create our own productivity system?
Well, the short answer is: Yes we can! Or we could. Maybe ... If we could! But we can not ... So, no. The long answer is this text.
what you are good?
Imagine an entrepreneur before. Let's call it "Vita Siddiqi. Vita beautiful silk fabrics imported from Bangladesh for their sewing in the United States. She knows not only all the characteristics that make a bolt of cloth an excellent bolt of cloth, but she also knows where and how they can get the materials for the best possible price, as the shipping is arrange to reduce the additional costs, and how they market and distribute their material needs, so they come with competitive prices to people who want to wear their clothes. should create
Do you think that write their own contracts Vita put together their corporate taxes, the letter head of their companies and their brochures and catalogs by hand print? Should they also harvest the silk, weave the cloth, they loaded on a ship, the ship control in the United States, delete it and personally deliver the materials to their customers?
If you are a rational person, you will surely agree that they should not do all this. Vita should stick to the things that they can be good to other people we should leave the work for which they are qualified. Anyone with any aspect of its business in its own hands would take, as I have just described would have to be crazy - and would not be too long in the business.
The fact is that each of us has defined certain things as its core competencies and it learned to do these things very well, and they trust other people with other skills to do the tasks he does not control yourself.
productivity is a skill
productivity is one of the things that are seldom taught. It is usually learned only by those who like to deal with this issue. Productivity includes skills and habits required to effectively manage our time, our tasks and our attention is helpful. It turned out that the mind is quite complex when it comes to the issue of productivity is, and that few of us have the leisure, the background or the desire have to look into the complexity of the mind to develop a system to test it implement and improve.
Fortunately, there are some people who have chosen this path. As David Allen probably should not take over your job, you should also do his job is not: he has a set of principles and best practices on what makes us productive, created and summarized. These can be learned by anyone. systems are methodically
Because people like Stephen Covey for years or decades immersed in the world of productivity, they have learned to reduce conflicts in their systems. While Covey's "7 Habits" may find that you have approval or not, they are at least internally consistent. Covey took no part here, not a piece from there, all with their own famous style blends and distributes the whole thing.
As I mentioned, the mind is something very sensitive and the slightest deviation can create a wave of cognitive dissonance, which put our productive lives through each other quickly can. We minimize these dissonances at least - through the acquisition of a tested and improved system - even if it is not the perfect system for us.
systems generate habits
If we accept a system that we begin to learn new habits. The commitment to new principles and practices led us to start things "by the book" to do and if we keep it, we automatically after a relatively short time to follow the rules.
With our "own" systems does not, because they are already our existing - and usually unexamined - build habits around are. They challenge us not, the real meaning behind things to do, we discover, or to strive for improvements.
systems limit possibilities
It is true: taking over a system by someone else is not very creative. It is not an expression of your own deepest self.
Thankfully.
systems are a bit autocratic. Yes, even authoritarian. They say: "Either you do what I say or you fly out" and leave little room for creative experimentation (and they dissolve very quickly when people start to mess with them).
There is a good reason. If you do things want to do, it's bad when it's your choice. Research has repeatedly shown that if we are given two choices, we are very good at maximizing our self-interest. However, we are more than two options given, we make a "decision paralysis" through and we often reluctant to act at all. Of course this is not the way to higher productivity or a greater sense of happiness.
systems are conscious decisions
If we assume a system, we make a conscious decision to us to learn the habits and skills that fit into their system. This differs substantially from the way we usually strive for higher productivity.
For example, you have probably at one point or another ever felt the urge to "get organized". Perhaps you have come to the office on a Saturday and spent the whole day trying to arrange everything and clean up, bring your tray up to date and to free your desk of clutter.
But you never wonder why you organize your files in a certain way or why you put your office supplies now rather than in another. Most likely, you have cleared your desk, by having created a space for all the little fiddly things that never fit in. so exactly, without wondering about it, why are you at all Didgeridoos things in your way.
In short, you have admitted that the same habits and thought patterns that led to your confusion determine first the process of creating order. What you have not asked is why the disorder has ever been possible. Perhaps these books were lying on your desk, instead of there, "where they belong actually" because the place to which they belong, do not feel natural for you. It makes too much work, the books recover when you need them.
Adopting a system forces you to take up this development and all the things you do after the "why" question. And if the system is well designed, it will provide a good argument to answer the question "Why?"
Learning a productivity system teaches productivity
While implementing your chosen system - what ever it - you learn how to use the implement the system and can put together.
This seems to be obvious, right? But think about it more precisely. Do you really know how to create a productive system and implemented? If you knew, you would then seek the advice on how you can be more productive?
This is not against you. Vita as you do not know how to make silk, or a ship controlled or created a productivity system. The latter, however, you can learn - through the implementation of a productivity system. Through conscious inclusion of new, seemingly unnatural and unintuitive ways. And as you can see how it all works together well-designed system.
In fact, you probably get enough, once you've established a system - whether it Allen's Getting Things Done or Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Successful people , or less familiar systems such as Leo Babautas Zen to Done or Nick Cernis Todoodlist or any other - and if you have lived for a while so be you will probably develop a sense of what you need is a system to create and implement the work for you even better.
And that's the real benefit of these systems - they teach us to not only be more productive, but also, what are our specific needs, so that we can be more productive and can carry us.
Göran Askeljung
immediate productivity coach
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