Better Productivity is about Locking and Rocking

“I’m sorry I didn’t have time to get to your order today“. There is not a person on the face of the earth that has not heard that from someone in their lifetime. It’s a classic excuse. Unfortunately it’s absolutely false. The person who just told you they did not have your order ready when it should have been because they did they did not have time to get to it was making the excuse we all make. At the end of the day, this poor clerk had probably worked his butt off, had gotten 12 other orders done but because your order was not important enough, it was left off the production line today. Let’s help this poor guy out.

First, increasing your productivity is not about getting more done, it’s about getting the important things done. Despite what we might think, increasing our production starts with getting the things that should get done first and ensuring that other less important tasks do not crowd them out. If you had a choice of accomplishing two priorities everyday or getting 4 tasks done with no relationship to importance, which one would you choose? The answer is pretty clear; we would want to get the priorities done each day. Getting key priorities done on a consistent regular basis has a tremendous positive impact on how we view what we accomplish on a daily basis. It not only helps us out daily, it helps us keep our eye on the mid and long range goals.

Getting the important things done deals with locking those key tasks into your Day Planner and Time Activating a specific time to get the job done. It sounds so easy, but it isn’t. I wish I could say it was but I would be kidding myself as well as you. From the time you decide what is important and what gets locked in, there is an onslaught on you and your time. Everyone and everything wants a piece of you and your time, it’s up to you to follow the systems, policies and procedures that are laid out for you and coupled with your determination and commitment, you are giving yourself the best possible chance to succeed.

If you know going in that it will be a battle, you are just that much more prepared when the fighting starts. The fighting that I’m‘ referring to is the fight over that time slot you have locked in for a specific task that you have deemed important and one that you want to accomplish today. That’s why we use the term "locked in". Locked in as iron clad, as in etched in stone, as in not to be messed with under any circumstances. It is here, in the trenches of your day that the battle for increasing your productivity is won or lost. Remember that poor clerk that had to tell you he did not have your order done because he did not have the time to get to it? This is where he lost that battle. He could have had every intention of getting your order done but was not organized, disciplined enough and did not have any system in place to ensure that he was in a position to get your order done. He had plenty of time to get your order done, he just allowed himself to be moved off doing your order by some other activity. He allowed someone or something to set the agenda and dictate to him what would be done, and he went with the flow, pure and simple.

Let’s not be too hard on our guy, remember, that is probably you and I on more days than we would like to think. The difference between this guy and myself, as an example, is that when I wake up I’m ready to do battle. I know what is out there and I know how to protect what I want to get done that day. My head is already in the space it has to be in, in order that I have any chance of succeeding at all. This is the locking phase of locking and rocking. The harder you lock something in, the greater chance you have of getting it accomplished. If your attitude is less aggressive, more of an "I will get to it when I can" attitude, your chances of getting to it get worse and worse as the day rolls on. As the competition for you time heats up, the activities that are not protected and locked into specific time slots will just get swept aside and replaced by more focused and disciplined agendas.

The rocking phase is probably the easier of the two. Clearing the decks so we can actually perform the functions we want to do is usually harder to accomplish than actually doing the work. You are going to see a noticeable improvement in the amount of work you will be accomplishing not because you are doing more work, you will just be doing more of the right jobs.