What is Productivity

Being productive is often related to work, which in reality, it refer to anything that produce certain values.

Productivity is different from one person to another. For instance, an entrepreneur spending hours in a local coffee shop to watch the pattern of customers coming and going might be considered as unproductive, but not to the entrepreneur. Another example, a musician seeking inspiration on a scenic bridge is viewed by the artist as productive, but not to the others.

A knol by Leon Ho, the founder of Hongkong-based Lifehack.org, explains the essence of productivity.

The elements of productivity

According to the knol, there are 5 elements of productivity:

1. Organization: Most people require a sense of order to be productive. There are two main types of organizing, task-organizing and environmental-organizing. Although not always a prerequisite, both forms of organization smooth the ability to work productively.
2. Time-management: The principle behind time management is that productivity is a function of how you allocate your time. If you waste your time doing tasks that don’t have any direct value, that time is wasted. A couple strategies of time management include compressing, scheduling and efficiency.
3. Energy-management: Energy management is the process of building energy to use at work. Energy management began to gain considerable popularity after it was thoroughly covered in the book, The Power of Full Engagement by Tony Schwartz and Jim Loehr. The basic idea of energy management is that you should be building energy along with operating in cycles of energy.
4. Goal setting: Goal setting is the process of setting measurable, realistic and objective deadlines for your work. Goal setting creates clarity in helping to establish a context for what work is considered productive.
5. Prioritization: Productivity requires distinguishing low-value from high-value tasks. Sometimes this distinction is clear: writing is more valuable than watching television if you want to finish a novel. Other times the dividing line is blurred. Choosing which job to take in similar environments or whether to make client calls or finish work on a report may be difficult to distinguish.

For more details, please visit Leon’s knol.