Be More Productive Than Ever

**Note** I originally wrote this entry at the end of June and intended to publish it the first week of July.  Then my wife went and had a baby, and the last few weeks have been a blur of diaper changes and midnight feedings.  That said, none of what I wrote is any less relevant in August than it was in July.  Enjoy. -AB

If only it were this easy!

I’ve had one of the most productive years of my life so far in 2012, and the year is only half-over. During the first six months of this year, I have accomplished nearly every goal I set for myself at the beginning of the year. Those include personal and family goals like teaching my son or preparing my family for the birth of our daughter (any day now, seriously). Spiritual goals like daily prayer and volunteering at our church. Financial goals like getting that promotion I’ve been working towards. Giving speeches. Writing blog posts. Reading books. Of the 34 specific, measurable, attainable goals I set in January, I have achieved 27 of them in one form or another and failed at 7 of them. Goal-setting and regular evaluation of goals is an important part of my productivity.

1.) Set achievable goals, and then review them regularly.
Look back at the goals you set in January.  How many of them were specific, measurable, achievable goals? “Lose weight” is not specific. Lose how much weight? By when? “Lose ten pounds by June 1st” is specific, measurable and achievable.

2.) Do more in the same amount of time as everyone else.  
We all have 24 hours in a day. What you do with those 24 hours determines how successful you will be.  I read a great New York Times article about what CEO’s do that everyone else does not.  One of the things that popped out at me was that they get more done in the same amount of time than everyone else does. They find tiny ways to be more productive. For me, that has been eye-opening. I used to waste a lot of time on things that weren’t adding value to my life. TV, messing around on the internet, classic time-wasters. I’ve cut a lot of that out of my life and replaced it with things that I feel are more productive uses of my time.  In the mornings, when I’m getting ready in a quiet house with my wife and son sleeping, I will throw on my headphones and listen to a book.  This has helped me read/listen to more than twenty books so far this year.  They run the gamut, from fiction to business to biographies,  but each one has engrossed me and taught me something.  I write speeches for my Toastmasters group and then turn around and edit those speeches into a blog post. Twice the work in half the time.  But lest you think my productivity is limited to my personal life, I’ve also found ways to increase productivity at work, through consolidating a dozen reports into one simple easy to read report or getting a subject matter expert to explain to me a topic I am not familiar with before I dive headlong into a new project.

Find the places you are wasting time and figure out a way to use that time more effectively.  Sitting in line at the post office? Don’t check your email/Twitter/Facebook, rattle off some words you were trying to learn in German.  Playing blocks with the kid? Just kidding, when it’s play time, my son gets 100% of my attention.

3.) Find someone to keep you accountable. About once a month, a good friend and I talk by phone about our goals. We discuss the things we’ve been working on, detail our failures, and offer advice to each other. These conversations are great because they allow me the chance to see what someone else is doing (and sometimes shamelessly steal his goals as my own) and they keep me accountable because I know that I’m going to have to talk about what I accomplished and I don’t want to say “nothing.”

Sure, there are literally hundreds of other ways to increase your productivity, but these are three things that I started doing this year that have turned 2012 into one of the most productive years of my life. Wouldn’t you like to look back on 2012 in six months and be able to say the same thing?