WHY Productivity Is So Important To Your Success

WHY Productivity Is So Important To Your Success
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How do you personally define productivity?

For most people, productivity is about getting as much as you can done in the least amount of time. That sounds exhausting… and unfortunate for people trying to be “productive.” I have met very few people in my life who wake up excited about improving their productivity and there’s a good reason. As it is defined my most people, productivity sounds like a lot of work and who has time for more work? Most entrepreneurs can’t find the time to manage their own businesses sufficiently on a day to day business, let alone add on the homework of improving their personal productivity.

But, what if I told you productivity isn’t about getting more done; it’s just about getting the right things done? That’s right. Productivity does not have to mean more work, just more focused work. As I have come to realize, true productivity is simply investing your best time into your best activities. Additionally, being more productive is how you can effectively and efficiently accomplish your goals and vision of success. Now that’s a more exciting wagon to jump on than additional work!

No More Excuses

Are the activities you engage in that typically consume most of your time each day aligned with your goals and vision of success? Or are you just busied by your work? Do your daily, weekly, and monthly activities drive you closer to achieving what you want most out of life? Or do they keep you constantly pacing across a plateau of paperwork, phone calls, emails, and meetings with no growth?

The fact of the matter is most people are not successful in their own eyes and it’s due largely in part to the fact that they’re not investing their best time into their best activities. They’re investing the times when they’re the most alert, energized, and focused into unimportant appointments, needless events, administrative tasks, and even social media when they should be spending that time working on high-priority tasks that grow their business.

As a productivity coach, I’ve heard many people offer excuses why they’re not achieving their goals. Their reasons include they don’t have enough time, don’t have enough staff, too much to do, too many meetings, the emails won’t stop, and the list goes on and on. These are all just excuses! The real reason you let your days, weeks, and months waste by without gaining any traction on achieving your goals is you’re not being productive. And you’re not being productive, in part, because you have not clarified your definition of success. Therefore, success seems incredibly intangible and far from your grasp. Without knowing where you’re headed, you can’t possibly know which activities are the best ones to take you there.

Success On Your Terms

Do you have a clue what you want in life or why you work so hard? Is it to retire early, take lots of vacations to exotic places, buy a beach house, attain more clients, spend more time with family, or simply to make a sh!t ton of money? Whatever you desire, are you close?

Unfortunately, success seems like a vague, distant dream to many entrepreneurs who are sacrificing a great deal in order to pursue their dreams. That vague, distant dream may only be so, however, because those entrepreneurs don’t have a solid understanding of what success for them really means. Having a well-honed vision of success, not just a generic one such as buy a beach house, is necessary to galvanize you into taking action and help you stay on course. To figure out what success for you actually looks like, you must define success on your terms, in precise detail, and make it your vision! To elucidate your definition of success, be specific. Instead of your vision of success being buying a beach house then, for example, it should be buy a single-story, Mediterranean style house on Hermosa Beach… with cash… to live in with your wife… by age 65… with your kids’ college tuition paid for… $100,000 in your savings… $1,000,000 in your retirement accounts, etc. By being so explicit about your goals, you are establishing your why which IS your vision of success. By figuring out your why, you can identify what it is that you aim to accomplish by improving your productivity which will fuel your effort and help you build momentum. Whenever you lose your drive, suffer a burnout, or feel too overwhelmed to continue, you can turn to your BIG why for motivation to help you over the bump in the road. Your why should be as unique as you.

Once you have defined your detailed vision of success, construct specific, short-term goals and action steps that will help you attain it. Those action steps are your best activities that you will want to invest your best time in. So, by investing your best time (blocks of focused, energized, distraction-free time) into your best activities (the actions necessary to achieve your goals), you will improve your productivity and enable yourself to accomplish what matters most to you. Use that excitement and intensity to keep you on track toward ultimately accomplishing your vision of success!

Whether your why is a more detailed version of a beach house, awesome vacations, early retirement, more clients, more quality time with family, or simply more money, creating it is not enough. You must never lose sight of it! Write down your why and post it where you will see it every day as a reminder to invest your best time into your best activities. Then, don’t just be a passenger on the ride toward success or you’ll risk straying off course. Grab the wheel and improve your productivity by spending focused work time executing on those actions that will lead you to the brighter future you desire. As Thomas Edison said, "Vision without execution is hallucination.” Make your dream your reality. Start by taking action to improve your productivity.

DISCOVER YOUR BIG WHY!Download this free guide to help you explore what is most important to you and define what will guide you to success.

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