are get-it-done people!
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.
2 Most Important Personal Productivity Skills
For example, 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 develop these two essential productivity skills, our lives can improve dramatically!
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1. Complete Capturing
2. Complete Follow-Through
As if often the case, talking about these skills is more easy than demonstrating them.
Productivity Skill #1: Art of The Capture
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!”
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, low-tech, web-based, paper-and-pen, 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 be depended upon by others as well as your self.
“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!”
Capturing your moments of inspiration, and sustaining your drive to “fully execute,” will lead to a super increase in your productivity!
Create more free time!
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@magnus Hahah! I know the feeling! However, I do believe there is value in beginning a productivity system (even if you “fall off the wagon”) because it helps clarify where your weak spots are, and, what’s most important to you (which tasks you’ve been procrastinating, which tasks are revenue-producing, etc.)
Yes, I just dust myself off and get right back up — I am stubborn like hell.
@magnus, you mean stubborn like Hellberg! @dane, for me, follow-through comes pretty naturally, but I have to work on improving my capture, as I generally have some of my best ideas late, or in the middle of the night!
If I had a dollar for each time I have started a system like this only to forget and start again, i would be a rich man.
Since I made the video, I switched my web-based task lists to a service called Backpack (which is amazing) by 37signals, and I switched from Blackberry to iPhone. Somewhere along the way, I became a Mac “fanboy” and now there’s no looking back!