How to Increase Productivity

Becoming successful is predicated on your ability to learn how to increase productivity. Success, after all, is achieved through consistent disciplined action. But it’s important to understand that there’s a difference between being busy and being productive. Failing to recognize this distinction has held many back from achieving success.

The problem is it’s easy to be so busy that you fool yourself into thinking you’re being productive when you’re actually not. Let’s establish some steps, then, that can help you better understand how to increase productivity and help ensure you avoid this all too common mistake.

Step 1: Establish your Priorities

The first step you have to take is to get clear on what’s important to you. By taking the time to acknowledge where you are and where you want to go, you can then establish a clear set of priorities, and it’s these priorities that you then need to operate from.

This may be simple in concept but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy in application, which is why steps two and three are so important.

Step 2: Devise a Plan of Action

Recognizing what’s important to you is not enough. With all the responsibilities and distractions in the world today, staying focused on your priorities is no easy task. One of my students once asked me a question that goes to the heart of the problem that many people face on a day to day basis, “How do you make sure that the things that matter in your life aren’t getting left behind because you’re doing so much?” My answer, make sure that the things you’re doing are the things that matter.

Remember, success doesn’t happen by accident. If you want to achieve your goals you’re going to have to make sure that the actions you’re taking are consistently in line with your priorities. And if you’re going to do that, you’re going to need a plan. As Stephen Covey said, “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.”

So make a schedule, and when you do reflect on what the most important things are that you should be doing in the immediate future in order to start moving towards your goals. Then build your schedule around those things.

Step 3: Do What you Can with What you Have

Life isn’t perfect. You’ll never have everything you wish you had or think you need in order to achieve success. To make matters worse, you can do all the planning in the world but as Robert Burns said in his poem To a Mouse, “Even the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”

How does one remain productive then, in such moments when things don’t go as planned? By remembering that plans have to be continually adjusted along the way, and recognizing that the key to remaining productive in any given moment is by doing what you can with what you have. Only then will you continue to make incremental progress towards what you want.