The Psychology of Greater Productivity
We are a nation ever seeking greater productivity. You will rarely pick up a leadership publication that does not speak to the topic. Unfortunately, though many bemoan the low productivity few offer you help for increasing your own productivity.
Here are a few mental nudges that you may incorporate to improve your own personal productivity.
1. Procedure Streamlining: Procedures (you may be more familiar with the term Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP) tend to evolve without focus on efficiency or effectiveness. Bottlenecks develop that interrupt work pace and slow down work turn out, thus increasing costs. Procedure Streamlining reduces lost time costs, improves efficiency and optimizes quality.
2. Focus Workshops: Few of us enjoy workshops but if we provide ourselves and staff members with the proper training productivity will improve. Focus workshops and success coaching help us to reach and maintain goals. Such programs are also known as in-service training or continuing education programs. They are especially prevalent in professional fields.
Focus trainings also provide:
- Quality control measures
- Uniformity of procedure implementation
- A comfort reference source to rely on
3. Productivity Quotas: Quotas need not be evil or arbitrary. In fact creating realistic productivity quotas involves measuring work time requirement and using those times to project completion rates.
- improves the sense of ownership on your program
- creates a “bar” for measurable improvement
- provides an opportunity to calculate productivity for other functions
4. Operation Productivity Report: This report is based on the collecting data from each component within the process. This provides data for effectively planning personal productivity goals.
This data is usually, presented by:
-Time of day
-Location
-Equipment
-Specific task
Embracing and implementing these four nudges will improve your productivity and free time for other pursuits.