Tips to Maximize Your Productivity

Productivity is getting the desired results by focusing on your high payoff activities
and spending little or no time on your low payoff activities. It is not rocket
science…just a commitment to excellence.

Here are some tips to help you maximize your productivity:

- Keep track and analyze your daily productivity so that you can improve right out of the gate.

- Stop wasting the first hour of your workday. Having the chat and first cup of
coffee, reading the paper, and socializing are the three costliest opening exercises
that lower productivity.

- Do one thing well at a time. It takes more time to start and stop work on each
activity. Stay with the task until it is completed.


- Don’t open unimportant mail. More than a fourth of the mail you receive can be
tossed before you open or read it, and that included e-mail.

- Write down in one place all the important contacts you have and all of your goals
and priorities. Make a backup copy, preferably on CD, DVD, or Zip disc. Write
down every commitment you make at the time you make it.

- Handle each piece of paper only once and never more than twice. Don’t set aside
anything without taking action. Carry work, reading material, audiotapes, and
your laptop computer with you everywhere you go. Convert down time into
uplink time.

- Spend twenty minutes at the beginning of each week and ten minutes at the
beginning of each day planning your to do list.

- Set aside personal relaxation time during the day. Don’t work during lunch. It’s
neither noble nor nutritional to skip important energy input and stress-relieving
time. Throughout the day, ask yourself, “what’s the best use of my time right
now?” As the day grows short, focus on projects you can least afford to leave
undone.

- Take vacations often, mini vacations of two of three days, and leave your work
at home. The harder you work, the more you need to balance your exercise and
leisure time.

Adapted from Denis Waitley’s Ezine, July 4, 2007