What would you do if you tripled your productivity?
We’ve asked this question to dozens of professional women, always expecting to hear them respond with excitement, enthusiasm, and even a few big dreams.
Do you know what we got instead?
“Why in the world would I want to do more?! I have enough on my plate. If you tell me I’m going to have three times more things on my plate, I’ll have a full blown panic attack.”
Sometimes the push back is a little more gentle: “No thank you. I’m good.” But almost always, we get a variation of the same: Productivity simply means doing more.
What if productivity had nothing to do with the number of tasks that you complete every day? What if it actually meant less on your plate, and a happier, more accomplished you?
Most people define productivity as checking the most boxes on the task list. I get that; it feels so good to get those boxes checked! But adding boxes to check will result in a plate that is overflowing with tasks that may or may not need to be completed by us!
I’d like to propose a different definition:
Productivity is the ability to figure out and accomplish those tasks that will yield the highest return on investment.
Consider this: Think about how you spend your time as if it were the stock market. When it comes to the stock market, we do two things: choose a stock to invest in and check in on its return.
What would change if we treated our time the way we treat our stocks?
What if we chose, with care, the tasks we wanted to invest in (stock) and frequently checked in on their return? We’d probably start to notice that our days are filled with small tasks that yield little to no return. Now if our stocks yielded no return, our instinct might be to make a change. Yet, when our investments of time yield little to no ROI, we hardly take notice and are even slower to make a change.
Effective leaders know how to maximize their investment of time by choosing tasks that yield a high return so that their task list has room for the things that mean most for the long term goals of the organization.
This week, challenge yourself to raise your awareness. Before diving into the day’s tasks, ask yourself:
- What is this task going to allow me to do?
- Is this task sucking my soul?
- Is this the task that’s going to give me the highest return?
Notice which tasks are the ones you do really well. Working from your strengths will often yield a high ROI, not only because you are executing from a place of expertise, but also because doing so naturally gives you a boost of energy that can be spent on your next task, project, or activity.
Imagine being three times more intentional about the way you tackle your task list. What gives you the highest return?
With love,
Mari Carmen
