Opinion: Potentiality Digest: How to Be More Productive

By Sulyman Sodeeq Abdulakeem

There are two things that are so much difficult to separate, and that is “Time and Productivity.” This time around, the world is witnessing an astronomical rise on how people do things to derive significant outputs or results. Ordinarily, most of these results were end products of deliberate efforts of many years, which the people have been working on underground, before their results materialised to what we endear successful people for.

I am sure most people can’t stop asking themselves how Bill Gates, Jeff Bezsos, Serge Brim and Larry Page are earning such mouth-watering income every second; we can’t stop asking ourselves how Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie keeps writing novels, despite the fact that her schedules are hectic. But this is the secret: Successful people have something they always do every day to refill their strength and sense of purpose. You may call it self-serving rituals, but doing those things are of utmost priority to successful people.

In the book “Time Management,” Brian Tracy remarked that the level of happiness we will enjoy in life is based on how we manage our time to add value to our health, family and relationships. These three things are hardly achieved if you don’t have a mastery of your time. Is it not the same twenty four hours that take trailblazers to be productive, is also what takes failed people to be redundant?

The secrets I will be sharing in this piece today are a compilation of what productive people have shared at different events and settings. To be more productive, do the following:

Approach Every Day Anew: Every day comes with its opportunities and obstacles and it will be difficult to tap from the opportunities of every day if you don’t see a new day from the angle of opportunities that come with it. It is obvious that previous successes or failures can be a trap to the future success, but when you approach the day as if you have never succeeded or failed before, you will set yourself free from being complacent by past successes or prisoner of past failures, which in the end will set you up for productivity.

Be Optimistic: One of the major causes of unproductive life is the inability to believe with clarity that things will work out as you want. You can’t be productive if you can’t be anticipating what you want to happen in your life. Doing this charges you towards something you know it can earn you a desired reward and also, it triggers the aspect of the brain that Neuroscientists called Endorphin/Dopamine to rise and flow at a level that drives you to work on closing the gap between you and what you want.

Have an outline of what you have to do: There is a clear difference between what you have/must do and what you want to do. For productive people, the former is their choice. For you to also be productive in life, you must be disciplining yourself to do what increases your self-worth and get it drafted in a simplest form. For example, don’t just say “I want to be rich” – this is too vague. You have to design a template indicating every component of how you will be rich and how those components are interdependent to one another.

Be deliberate: One of the reasons most people live unproductively is because they are not intentional with what they do. This is why it is possible to see people spending a substantial amount of time on a task and the person that spends the least time on a task will be more productive than the other person spending long hours. It is possible to be busy and not productive; when you intentionally get busy, you will be far productive. Oprah Winfrey says, “Find your lane. Make space for the flow to show itself. Follow the natural rhythm of your life, and you will discover a force far greater than your own.”

Cultivate positive habits: Productive people have developed a set of positive actions which they do regularly. Behind the scenes in the lives of every productive individual are positive steps and actions they don’t cease from doing consistently, consciously and continuously. Brian Tracy remarked that “Each person is a creature of habit. Effective people establish good habits and make them their masters. Ineffective people accidentally establish bad habits, and then those bad habits govern their lives.”

Don’t multi-task: The major cause of distraction for every human being is to have many things to do at the same time. This breeds distraction and unsettles the body system. There is no better way to climb the mountain of productivity than to be taking your tasks one step at a time.

Be goal-oriented: Productive people always have a goal or goals attached to everything they do. Whether for themselves or for people around them, their actions are always aimed at achieving a goal or extending their horizons beyond the known reach.

Learn how to say NO to what contradicts your values: As you travel through your path in life, you will encounter different requests or proposals, which if care is not taken, you may be distracted from your own course. You won’t record outputs that elevate you until you learn how to avoid or reject requests and proposals that are not in alignment with what you desire.