The Pitch Hub Ghana

HAVE YOU BEEN PRODUCTIVE OR JUST BUSY THIS WEEK?

More often than not, you get stressed after a day of work and by mid-week, you’re popping analgesics or sleeping beyond waking time. Stress catches up with you quicker than expected, and funny enough, you keep crossing activities off your checklist for later dates, while work done is barely worth the excuse for justifying your ‘busy schedule.’ Merely being busy is a wrong narrative to come off as serious or to appeal to superiors. Most essentially, every rational person will most appreciate your effort for the substance and utility it’s worth as opposed to always sympathizing with you for chronic headaches and sleepy eyes- it gets boring to keep up with.

What then is actual productivity? It really boils down to the value of input. After hours or days of work; combining time, mental and physical energies, monetary and logistic resources, etc., does the quality of output obtained corroborate the magnitude of input that was needed? Or is there an imbalance of effort over output, where you realize a reduction in the input could still result in the same required results or negligible difference to scale? If in post-assessment, you realize can objectively obtain requisite results even after reducing a portion of the burden of input, then you really have skewed productivity.

A few pointers are worth watching out for.

‘Trojan’ distraction. Loads of distractions permeate our working environments under facades of actual work. Gratuitous offers to work in the stead of another just to make a statement (especially at the expense of work expected from oneself), personal distractions that creep in intermittently and eat away at available time, and a whole lot of things that we think may be beneficial but do not have direct stakes on what makes the engines turn at the end of the day. Perhaps what you’d want to do is work per a schedule of activities that tally with time frames and cross off as you work. Perhaps that periodic check will prompt you on the bits of distraction that time may have robbed you off on the blind side of your realization.

Prioritization really does go to keep us sorted as regards when to get what done. Sometimes we seem to be overwhelmed by so much to do and the want to meet looming deadlines, that we allow the pressure of these factors to mar rational thinking. In effect what happens is we try rushing through the muddle, hoping our efforts at multi-tasking would somewhat aid us reach the end of the maze. Interestingly though, the execution of some activities in themselves solve the challenges of others, while after working through to achieve others, we may realize that our successes in them were futile since their feasibility was actually dependent on some other activity that perhaps, you may have neglected. Focus first on activities that will form the basis for gaining utility out of others (i.e., the foundation on which other activities may be contingent).

Have the will to cut things out of your schedule if they do not maximize gain. Diligence does not end at working hard, you have to work smart.

By,

Solomon Omani-Mensah

(The Pitch Hub Team)

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