Wealth is a game of producing something of value which can be exchanged for money. This can be a physical or virtual product. Before money was invented, humans used trade by barter to exchange value and wealth. This means if you produced more tubers of yam for instance, you could exchange for more liters of palm oil. The more you produced, the wealthier you were as your ability to earn other products increased. The person who produces nothing is automatically made poor as he/she has nothing to exchange. This still applies today, the only difference is that the medium of exchange is more convenient and universally accepted… we call it money.
In order to produce wealth, your ability to produce (productivity) has to be in top shape. Let’s take a look at the ways through which we can rev up our productivity.
Backup your life
Never, ever lose work that you have done!! Backup your files, backup your life, don’t do the same work twice and don’t lose the resources and money you have made else you keep going in circles. Making sure you keep your earned work and money gives a foundation to build on, else progress can’t be made.
If you’ve done some work be sure to have it off the internet… some hard drive somewhere that only you can access. You wouldn’t want to lose 6 months of work and start coming back to redo. That is a total waste of time, also you wouldn’t want to make lots of money only to lose it by being busy while trying to make more.
Keeping what we’ve got is very critical to ensuring we stay productive and motivated because once you lose what you have earned it takes a toll on your productivity.
Be aware
Keep learning, keep growing. The moment we stop learning is when we begin to get stuck in a rot.
You have to be in touch with what’s happening around you the impact you have on your environment, others and vice versa…without this you are bound to make the wrong decisions which will impact on your productivity.
Don’t allow things and issues to occupy space on your mind for too long because your mind is the engine room for production where ideas come to life, you don’t want anything tampering with the ability of the mind to produce its full potential. Once your mind is free, good things can come inside. Clogging your mind with unnecessary stuff will ensure that you sit at a table for 8 hours and achieve nothing.
Always your feet on the ground and be in touch with reality. Some life situations make common sense fly out of our head and ‘boom’ we’re making series of wrong decisions which we wouldn’t have made in our right senses.
Life is full of ups and downs and if you constantly go into an ecstatic mood in the ups of life you will lose touch with reality. Conversely if you go with the downs of life you will be at a disadvantaged position to achieve anything worthwhile. What you would want to do is to step out and look at situations from outside to get a clear picture.
Surely the direction of events will affect you but you should gain some control such that it doesn’t push you to the extreme else your productivity goes out of the window.
For instance if you suddenly make or lose a large sum of money you will want to control your excitement/anxiety so you don’t make hasty decisions which would make you lose out in the long-run. You still have to keep your calm and follow your own process.
Also, see things as they are. People are what they are and not what you think they are. Things are what they are and not what you think they are, the better you are at dealing with the true version of people and events the more productive you’ll be.
Learn to affect others with with words
This will save you a lot of time… people often misunderstand communication. It’s not just talking and expressing yourself it’s also about emotional intelligence, listening communicating your ideas effectively . Not every issue needs to be acted upon, some are simply solved with wise words. For instance someone demands you give them some of your expertise which will take your time, don’t force it if you can’t afford the time, you may kindly explain and give them someone to help or explain how they can get it done without being more involved.
What’s the big Picture??
The big picture is important in all you do. What is the end game you want to achieve…
What are you aiming at?? Simply knowing your goals helps you to trim out irrelevant stuff and makes you focus only on what’s important.
If you got the big picture, it’s easy to track your progress, without it you are simply just moving around with your energy being depleted and you achieving nothing at the end of the day.
Kill off all addictions
Addictions will steal your time and resources… this is very obvious because addictions control emotions which in turn controls people affected by it. And once you’re controlled by an emotion it’s bound to have ultimate power over you and what you can achieve. Killing of addictions means you can take back the driver’s seat of your life. If you can’t stop the addiction completely you can do it in stages.
For instance instead of playing an online game you’re addicted to everyday, you can decide to visit the website each time you’re able to increase your net-worth by a particular amount… it takes discipline but it works.
Write things down
Thinking on paper enables you to see and remember clearly. Better analysis, better judgement, more productivity. Yes the brain is a thinking machine but it works in conjunction with the eyes. There’s a reason the eyes are linked to the brain…so you can declutter the brain. There is only so much you can hold in your brain at the same time before it leads to confusion.
Writing things down makes it easier to set your priorities straight and get things done more effectively.
I could sit all day working but the moment I wrote things down and crossed them out as I tackle them, I found out I only spent half a day for what would have otherwise taken the whole day.
One thing at a time .
Going to two different destinations at the same time gets you nowhere…one thing at a time ensures all your energy is focused on achieving the task more efficiently. If you are focusing on two things at the same time you are bound to be less efficient or make errors and waste more time correcting those.
Take care of you
Without your body and soul working in synchronization you would produce nothing. Where there’s no life, health and other things necessary for production, nothing gets done so the most important thing is taking care of yourself. Many people neglect this important factor and put it in the background until it’s late. Being well-rested relaxed and in good health will make you able to produce far more than otherwise.
Use speech to text typing
You can decide to write, type or use speech to text typing. Speech to text typing seems to be the most effective of all these three… not without drawbacks but still effective anyway. Saves a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent typing.
Keep a journal, Document yourself
Document yourself for lessons learnt.
Most of the time we have to learn and relearn things over and over again. Sometimes gives us a lesson, we learn and forget then come back to learn the same lesson again after some years. This is surely a waste of time. To avoid repeating same mistakes, you have to keep a journal to record ideas, experiences and lessons learnt this will make you a better and more effective person. Also it’s not enough to just write them down if you don’t read through regularly you’ll forget the lesson. You have to read it over and over again and renew your mind using your own ideas.
Sometimes I thought I could never forget something but guess what?? after some years the experience is not as strong in my head and I forget and even end up making the same mistake so I learned I have to keep reminding myself and keep me informed.
Plan ahead
If you don’t plan ahead you surely plan to fail. The major thing we should be doing is thinking ahead one day, one week, one month one year and so on ahead. This makes things easier. If you don’t plan you will be attending to things as they occur and surely not prepared this will lead to not achieving anything worthwhile and you’ll be attending to things as they occur. Planning ahead puts you one step ahead of the game.
Deal with like minds
Whether you are ordering food, repairing your car, employing people etc., you should deal with like minds. People who think in ways not far from yours, else you’ll be surprised that a gap in thinking can cause a lot of friction and misunderstanding and zap up all your energy. You will argue more! explain more to people who are not on your frequency.
You will experience smoother deal with people who already know where you’re going before you even ask. If you employ people who don’t share your values you will have a hard time controlling and monitoring them, forcing them to conform to your own ways. A better way will be to employ people who share same values with you and save time and energy.
Stay positive and enthusiastic
You need positive energy to achieve stuff… you need to do all you can to ensure you are mostly in the positive state of mind. If you find it difficult controlling your state of mind, control the things you listen to and situations you put your self into. Using actions and thoughts to control your behaviour is a time tested system.
You may think something can be done or can’t be done and what you think will eventually drive you to the outcome you choose since thinking is all in the mind. You have control, why don’t you just choose the better option, believe it and run with it as the only way to predict the future is to create it.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
If something has been done a thousand times and works don’t try to create it afresh. You will only end up wasting time and precious resources. The best you can do is to always check for previous solutions and leverage on that. Trying to reinvent the wheel make you realize solutions exist to many issues you knew nothing about…unless you are inventing something novel.
Move to a less busy City
Moving to a less busy city at some point in my career helped me achieve much more then I would have in a busy city. If you commute to work 3 hours everyday at the end of the year you’ve used over 700 hours which could be put into something more productive.
Being in the a quieter city makes you more relaxed and your brain is capable of easily attracting ideas from the ether.
Busy cities makes you spend more time on moving around and performing various activities that do not count towards productivity. Busy cities makes you feel like a hard worker but you are only being less productive.
Mention your price early on/ ask questions
When taking on a service, mention your price (or at least an idea if you’re not fully sure of the scope of works) upfront and early in a negotiation before going into too long discussions so you don’t end up in a situation where you have been in talks for days or weeks only to realise the user is not willing to pay your price. You also need to ask questions generally and assume less because assumptions isn’t reality. Asking questions will give you some idea or insight before you commit too much time or resources to something.