Focus on what’s important
If you’re busy, you should be getting more done. You should be more productive, right? Not necessarily. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the tasks that you have in front of you. You can lose focus on what’s important – the tasks that move you closer to your goals. In the words of HBR’s article The Remedy for Unproductive Business – “Being busy, can be counterproductive.”
If you want to be productive, rather than just busy, you need to become a master of your own destiny. You must have absolute clarity on what it is you’re trying to achieve from the outset.
What are you actually trying to achieve?
It might sound like an obvious question but it’s one that some people forget to ask themselves. Taking the time to reflect can help you use your time more efficiently. Being efficient is one of the simplest ways to improve business performance; but you can only be truly efficient if you understand the value of everything you do.
Don’t confuse being busy with being productive
You can actively avoid being buried under “the gravel” – the “small” tasks and interruptions that we are faced with on a daily basis – if you ask yourself your own version of our question, before you start investing your time into anything – “Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?” This is a big paradigm shift, particularly for entrepreneurs.
How do you perform at your best?
One of the best ways to improve productivity is to have your question defined before you begin any task – a question that helps you to decide whether it’s important or not. For Ben and the team that won the Olympic gold medal in 2000, that question was “Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?”.
To achieve clarity around your question, you will need to have set a memorable and stretching goal that is meaningful to you, and everybody in your team. Here at Will it Make The Boat Go Faster? we call that a Crazy goal. Nobody does it alone, so the goal must be a shared objective that your entire team is motivated to work towards. It needs to be an objective that engages everyone who is working towards it.
When you pass your colleague in the hallway and they say “How did your day go?” try avoiding using the word “busy”. Turn around and say “You know what, I got these 3 key things done today, which are helping us move closer to our Crazy goal.”
Performance insights from an Olympic Gold Medalist
Our regular Performance Insights updates for entrepreneurial business leaders are full of resources and ideas to help you work effectively and to improve productivity. We also feature inspiring stories of people who achieve their Crazy goals. We hope you find it useful – sign up here for free.
