Most businesses and business owners emphasize productivity and how much each employee can accomplish in an hour, a day, a week, etc. Numerous articles are written about improving our productivity: doing more and completing more in less time than before.
Productivity:
1. The quality of being productive.
2. Economics The rate at which goods or services are produced especially output per unit of labor.
3. Ecology The rate at which radiant energy is used by producers to form organic substances as food for consumers.
We are a nation of consumers and spenders; always accumulating, making lists, multi-tasking, managing to fit in just one more activity. We are also a nation of the very stressed, forever dwelling on media driven fears and our worries that we may be the next to lose our jobs, that the relatively stable economy will drop out from under us as we sleep and we’ll be left juggling even more tasks than we already are juggling.
We have somehow failed to make a routine or ritual out of our work days. We push ourselves, afraid we’ll miss out on our “passion”, our “purpose”; afraid to appear undriven, unmotivated or unambitious, while at the same time we are unable to relax. That’s a lot of “uns”, all in the name of productivity.
In some countries, the word productivity will give you a blank look or a shake of the head with a pitying smile as they look upon us, thinking we are rather naive and wondering why we are unable to understand that doing your job and doing it well is only one part of our lives, not the whole thing. Your job or business is something you do or have so you can live your life.
The ability to put your work day into perspective is something well worth learning, not only to avoid stress but also so we realize that in order to give something our full attention, each part of our day and all parts of our lives need to be separate and focused upon, given our full attention. At the back of our minds, it shouldn’t always be about our job or our business. Our job or business is not who we are.
This is how the whole myth of productivity was born, due to our inability to concentrate or focus on one thing at a time and to take on our professions as our meaning in life. We think that if we spend all of our time working or talking about working that we are somehow busier than others and spending our time more wisely.
We have learned to value quantity over quality, instead of expecting the best. Experience should have taught us that we can’t do everything. Looking at productivity from its outcome, backwards to where it all begins, you can see where it all falls apart. The push to do more and in a lesser amount of time has actually cut down on our effectiveness, instead of increasing it.
Learning to do things differently will mean taking responsibility for only our own tasks and letting others take care of theirs. This is where a smart business owner looks around and decides that there are some things they just don’t want to do. Letting go of having to take care of everything causes fear in a lot of us. We are so used to being in control that allowing others to take over some of the work raises worries of failure.
Looking at the benefits, to both your business and your health, can help you finally make the decision that the productivity in your business is not all about you. It’s about learning to loosen the reins, enjoy working on what you really like to spend your time on and hiring the best to do the rest.
Changing the way you think from always having to be in control to taking care of just your part of things can actually improve the success of your business and allow you to look at it in a fresh, new way. There are no definite rules in business. Take a risk and invent your own.
© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2013
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