Producktivity: Why We Need to Rethink Our Definition of Productivity
Productivity is an ambiguous term, everyone has their definition and perception, but many tend to misunderstand and perceive it in the wrong way. Let’s find a new definition for Productivity in this blog post.
✨ Introduction
Productivity is an ambiguous term and many people have their own perception of it. However, the most common perception is that being productive is having a long list of to-dos, sacrificing sleep and rest, and being busy all the time. This thought may be flawed as there are arguments that rest and efficiency are equally important. Let’s explore why we need to rethink our definition of productivity and the different arguments to try and formulate yet another definition with hopefully lesser flaws.
✨ What Productivity is Not
The first thing before redefining productivity is to understand what it is NOT. Generally, productivity is thought of as “getting more work done in as little time as possible”. But this definition is often used in economic terms and doesn’t really apply to personal productivity. Productivity isn’t all about efficiency, efficiency is just a part of the equation. It’s not about how many tasks you complete or how little free time you have or being busy with work all day. You neither have to sacrifice your sleep nor your well-being to be productive. Get these thoughts out of your mind.
✨ So, What is Productivity?
We’ve seen what productivity is not, now let’s see what it is. Productivity is about achieving your goals and doing the best you can, without sacrificing your well-being and avoiding burning out. In its simplest form, it’s about working smarter, not harder. The general outlook about productivity is quantitative, whereas productivity is qualitative. It’s not about how much you got done, but rather about what you got done. We have to shift our perception from focusing on the output to focusing on the outcomes, and this is how we need to measure productivity. To explain this sentence in a bit more detail, we should not measure how much work we’ve done, rather we have to measure the impact our work has done on the journey towards our goals or to our lives. Output is a measure of quantity, while outcomes are a measure of quality and impact. Although both measures are important, outcomes are considered to be more meaningful and relevant to success towards your goal. Again, quality not quantity. This seemingly insignificant change in your perception will lead you to have a better productive life.
“Productivity is the impact you have towards achieving your goal(s).”
✨ So, What do I do?
The first and obvious step is to have a goal as it provides you with a direction to move towards. Without one, you’ll have no clue what to do and your tasks would ultimately seem meaningless. Talking about tasks, and determining the impact each task has can help you shorten your task list as well as prioritize them based on their outcome.
Take enough rest, rest is important. Rome wasn’t built in one day, and you don’t have to achieve your goal in a day either. Taking a proper amount of rest has several benefits:
- Gives your body and mind time to recover and avoids burning out
- Your mind can explore the problem much more efficiently while on a break, and you can start with a new outlook on the problem
- Gives you the opportunity to reflect and adapt your future actions for better relevancy and impact
Hopefully, you now understand that rest is critical. Remember one thing, rest and laziness are not the same, they are totally different things. Laziness is often the result of burning out and being stuck at any problem.
✨ A Few More Important Things
Not every day will be a productive day, so don’t beat yourself over missing a day or two. Your thought every day should be to at least inch towards your goal. If you keep moving, you’ll get there one day for sure.
I hope you get it from the new definition that productivity techniques don’t make you productive, as they often focus entirely on quantity; but they can certainly help you build a better framework to improve efficiency. Don’t mould your life around these techniques, use them as tools. And using multiple techniques doesn’t guarantee improved efficiency. Sometimes, using just one of the simplest techniques is far better as it’s easy and quick to integrate into your routine.
✨ Footnote
Hey there, hope you liked the blog post. I’m still learning different things about productivity and exploring the different concepts and techniques, trying to understand it better. I’d love to hear your thoughts and views on this.
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