The 3 Most Important Career Skills

 

 

Being adept at politics can go a long way toward helping you rise in the workplace, but, ultimately, if a workplace is emotionally functional, the person who works über efficiently will eventually be identified and rewarded.

People are paid for their productivity.

Sounds obvious, yes? But you might be surprised to learn how many people within today’s workforce don’t yet fully grasp this fundamental reality.

A majority of people in today’s workworld still mistakingly believe that they’re paid for for their time — for showing up, looking presentable, and for applying effort on behalf of their employer.

This isn’t 1953! Though qualities like “punctuality” and “seniority” still have value, they pale when compared next to this quality: “extremely productive.”

The best way to get respected in your career is to impact your company’s bottom line. When your consistent efforts increase profits for your employer, your star will shine brightly.

Productivity is the effectiveness of productive effort. Improving personal productivity is both an art and a science. A truly productive person can create a higher rate of output than input, which makes them very valuable to their organizations — and, respected by their families). And here’s the good news: anyone can cultivate and improve their personal productivity skills!

How You Can Become a Highly Productive Person

Many make the mistake of thinking that just because they feel busy, enjoy their work — and see themselves as being good at it — that they are being productive. But true productivity is your ability to produce quality work within a certain timeframe. This is where productivity shortcuts can be a real career-saver!

So far, you’re already ahead of the game. Now that you understand that it all ultimately comes down to personal productivity, you are poised to thrive in your career (and you’ve already set yourself apart from the pack, because the majority of people still — shockingly — do not realize this). So, congratulations!

And the next part is completely do-able, too: you’ve simply have to gradually improve in 3 fundamental skills. Before you get started, however, it’s probably a good idea for you to choose a productivity system.

Choose a Productivity System that Fits Your Unique Way of Working

Often times, we create our own productivity roadblocks.

While we can be our own worst enemies, we can just as easily be our own productivity advocates.

If the idea of increasing your own personal productivity intrigues you, it’s important that you first begin to look objectively at your own inner resistance to changing how you work and how you organize your day. With that increased awareness, you’ll be in a better position to choose a new productivity system that best fits your unique way of working.

Our research has found that people interested in improving their personal productivity in order to increase their success have been getting great results using The Dane Technique: How to Get Outrageously Organized! The testimonials and emails keep coming in. Example results in this book image (see right); click to learn more. But no matter what productivity system you decide to use, please use one! Doesn’t matter if you’re a solo entrepreneur, a state-of-the-art homemaker, or if you work in an office cubicle. In today’s chaotic world, you must have a system in order to cut through the noise and distraction so that you can simplify and prioritize you daily life while still moving toward your larger goals.

3 Personal Productivity Skills to Help You Thrive in Your Career

When we develop these three essential productivity skills, our lives can improve dramatically!

1. Complete Capturing
 
2. Complete Follow-Through
 
3. Speed!

As if often the case, talking about these skills is more easy than demonstrating them. Many believe themselves to be already good with these skills, but the only way to really know if you’re good at them is to track your work (this is yet another reason that successful people use productivity systems — to track their own output.)

Also, if we’re being honest, to be good at personal productivity is possibly not enough in today’s competitive environment — you need to be great at it. And you can be! Just about anyone can learn how to be über-productive! It just requires a firm commitment on your part, and a playful sense of adventure!

“…many people will start to lose interest
and move onto a new project before
the existing project is fully, unquestionably, complete.
Resist this temptation at all costs!”

Create more free time! Learn the secrets of using checklists to get organized by subscribing to the FREE Longevity e-Newsletter below this article.

Productivity Skill #1: Art of The Capture

Perhaps the biggest myth about the to-do list is that you shouldn’t make one unless you can finish it.

Not so!

Have your list ready and rarin’ to go, if and when you need it. The very act of creating the list organizes and quiets your thoughts.

In productivity, this is called capturing.

Capturing happens to be one of the two most underdeveloped productivity skills in the modern human (and also happens to be one of the most important).

When we acquire and develop the habit of consistently capturing our ideas into a system-of-capturing, the odds of making the idea an actual reality increase exponentially. This is just a fancy way of saying, “write it down when you first think of it!”

To this day, I still sit in meetings where someone who is charged with a responsibility — a “next action step” — doesn’t it write it down. It’s not only mind-boggling, it’s absolutely tragic! Also what I see often are people who scribble something down onto a pad of paper or into a spiral notebook, but that next-action step doesn’t ever get transferred into a prioritized to-do list (but instead ends up in a pile on their desk). Unfathomable!

Whatever system that you use to capture ideas and tasks as they occur to you, the point here is to have a system — high-tech or low-tech; whatever, just have one!

 

Productivity Skill #2: Art of the Full-Finish

For most people, a project seems sexiest in the early stages. The first 75 to 85% of a project will chug along with some momentum, and as it approaches the end, many people will start to lose interest and move onto a new project before the existing project is complete! Resist this temptation at all costs!

 
When you can cultivate the ability to circle back and look at your own work, to make sure that there are no more little loose ends dangling, then you will truly be a get-it-done person who can then be depended upon by others as well as by your self.

Productivity Skill #3: Science of Speed!

As you develop your skills of capturing and full-finish, eventually you will find that your speed increases.

Though no one likes to feel rushed, the simple truth is that speed is always a factor. Because of today’s extremely high monthly operating cost of doing business, a simple 15-minute task cannot take two weeks to complete. Moving at that pace can run your company into the ground. That is not an exaggeration. That is reality.
 
Capturing your moments of inspiration, and sustaining your drive to “fully execute” while maintaining a brisk pace, will lead to a super increase in your productivity! This will impact your career in the most positive of ways.