4 Steps To Boost Your Productivity

Intangible inner personal pleasures

• A sense of growth in my awareness and understanding of the laws, mysteries, and principles of life.
• Happiness
• Feeling of uniqueness, and specialness

I usually experience the above listed thrills from a variety of activities like:- reading books, magazines, and other like materials; watching movies, news, and documentaries; browsing the internet, and personal interaction with interesting and intelligent minds; toying with computers and electronic gadgets, playing electronic games, and listening to worship instrumentals and jazz music.

These are important activities in my life.  Never underestimate the impact of intangible inner personal pleasures even if there are no accompanying tangible and visible results.  This is because the energy and sense of well-being derived from one area of activity (even when there are no physical results) can drive efforts and results in other areas.

As someone commented on my blog, “…that FEELING AWESOME will do more for us than any To-Do list on the planet!

Positive impact on others

• I’m thrilled each time any individual experiences positive results – such as improved business productivity, or more personal success – as a result (particularly) of my personal teaching and counselling.
• The smile, happiness, shock, surprise (and any other positive expressions and experiences) that I see on someone’s face when I give them a material gift.
• Quality attention from people to my teachings, writings, and information products.
• Healing and miraculous answers for others as a result of my prayers.

The things I listed in the two categories above lie at the core of my personal success indices.  It doesn’t matter what else happens, if I do not experience any of these intangible and tangible results, I feel unfulfilled.

So what do you want?  what are the tangible and intangible results that you desire to see in your life from your various efforts?  What are your personal success indices?

#2. Where Are You Already Getting Desired Results?
Identify current productivity areas

A common mistake people make is to focus on what’s not working in their lives.  This is a negative focus and is not effective at all.  If you want to boost your personal productivity, you must learn to overcome this negative pull and focus rather on areas where you are already getting desired results.

There are areas of your life where you already have one or more of your desired results.  What are they?

Recently, for instance, I experienced one of my positive success indices – a young man that I’d known since he was 16 just bought a very expensive laptop PC for me.  He has experienced tremendous business growth as a result of my personal spiritual counselling and coaching.  About a year ago, this young man was just starting out in business and had no resources at all except his raw talents, and dreams.  Today his business transactions has moved into the realm of millions in just a little over a year!

That’s thrilling!

Of course, there are several areas of my life where I don’t see any of my desired results in spite of all my efforts, yet as in the instance I cited above, there are others where I’m already getting desired results.

Listen, I don’t think there’s anyone on the face of this planet who is experiencing zero productivity in all areas of their lives.  The problem is that people tend to be negative in their orientation and so it’s easier to see what’s not working.  If you want to boost your productivity, you must identify your current productivity areas where you are already getting desired results.

#3. What Are You Already Doing Well?
Identify past and present effective actions

Of course, all activities do not create the desired results.
Some, however do.

Which of your actions are already producing the kind of results that you desire to see in your life?

In reflecting over the experience I shared above, I kept thinking, “What specific actions of mine could possibly have been responsible for that result?” In the end, I could think of at least five:

1. I’ve had several multi-houred counselling and discussion sessions with him.
2. During those sessions, I gained a deep understanding of his dreams, aspirations, passions, and specific talents.
3. I also discerned his potentials clearly and the heights he could possibly reach with those abilities.
4. After a thorough analysis of all these about a year ago, I understood his specific challenges and knew the most critical resource he needed to take off in his business.
5. I had that stuff at home at the time and gave it to him as a gift with this word, “the only way I want you to say thank-you is to succeed.”

In my case, this sequence of 5 actions shows represents what I refer to as ‘effective actions’.

The effort you make to identify your past and present effective actions is a very rewarding exercise because it forces you to think in terms of what you want and what is working, rather than in terms of all the things that are not working in your life.  In order to boost your productivity, you really need to carry out this exercise – find out what you are already doing well.

#4. Do More of What You Are Already Doing Well 
Improve the quality and volume of your effective actions

The moment I outlined the specific actions that I could connect with the impact I had on my young friend, I realized that I’d probably stumbled upon another ‘working formula.’ By the way, I have accumulated several of these over the years .

I knew that in order to multiply the kind of results I had with this young man, I needed to focus on improving the quality and volume of the very set of actions that produced those results.

So, rather than focus on my problems and all the things that aren’t working out as I would want, I identified the ones that were already working, understood why they were working, and developed strategies and plans to improve the quality and volume of effective actions.  That’s the way to boost your productivity!  I call it the ‘champion’s focus’ or the ‘winning focus’.

When you follow these steps, you’ll be able to:

• Experience a greater sense of fulfillment, relevance, and personal success.
• Experience greater motivation to achieve more.
• Leverage success from more to less successful areas.

Ultimately, when you follow these four simple and practical steps, you’ll actually be able to boost your productivity and expand your sphere of personal success.