Get Better Production by Following Theses Two Maximizers

I specialize in Time Management and Productivity Maximization. It would only be fair to say that dealing with Time management issues is easier than production issues. The main reason is that when you are dealing with time, the concerns are the same for everyone. When you develop a way for someone to deal with a time issue, the same solution will help the next person. When it comes to production issues; the individual person's own work habits, planning processes and general deportment play a larger role.

It is harder to deal with production management than time management for a number of other factors as well. Time Management is about what and when; Productivity Maximization is about how. Without doing in-depth analysis, we can all agree it is a lot simpler to decide “What“ to do and “When“ to do something than the “How“ part of the process. I have two Maximizers that will help close the gap between the complexity of the what, and simplify the how part of the production process.

Set a Daily Reinforcer Goal

When your day starts, you want to get on top of what you have identified as a problem area in the day. You want to get on top of this area before it gets ahead of you. I realize that activities can go astray for no apparent reason, without warning and without notice. Some days things go well and then out of the blue you hit a disaster. These events are unavoidable and for now, we will let them slide under our radar. I’m not talking about these out of the blue problems, I’m talking about problem areas that occur on a regular basis, problems we know about and have not been able to rein them in. These reoccurring problems are the mainstay of unproductive people, companies and businesses. Recognize that if you get control of the daily problems, you will free up valuable time, resources and energy to deal with the really tough problems when they do crop up.

That is why using a daily Reinforcer goal will help you get control of the daily production wasters and free up your time for the management issues. You have full freedom to pick out any area of your day and pin-point what you know you are not doing well and have room to improve in. The secret to this process is that you do not pick a large unmanageable task like over-hauling the entire audit system; you pick a single aspect of that whole process, and perhaps how one person inputs certain figures into the computer. This single step can be looked at, analyzed and can, with a minimum of time and effort, be improved upon.

What you are doing is bringing to bear more time, energy, and resources on a small single task that will almost immediately become more productive and efficient. It won’t be a miracle; it will only happen because you took the time to identify this task as in need of improvement and then spent the required time to make that happen. For the daily Reinforcer goal to be effective, it must be identified as such and must be separate from the regular flow of the day. Trying to piggy-back on the regular activity and grabbing a few minutes on the fly will not make this process effective as it can and will be. These Maximizer minutes, time spent on building better ways and means to do things, are always returned to many times over, do not scrimp on them. If you do, all you are doing is shortchanging your own future.

Do an Acid Test on Yesterdays' Priorities List

Production is about getting things done, about getting things accomplished, finished and off your plate. You have to be brutally honest with your own assessment and how you judge your own performance. This judgment should come daily and it should center on how well you performed using your Priority List as the measuring stick. Each day you should be creating a Priority List in conjunction with your To Do List. It is this Priority List that will dictate to you, based on what you decide to accomplish each day, how well you did or didn’t do. You must start to turn your To Do List into your Done List if you want to increase your end results. Accountability, especially when it’s self-imposed, is the cornerstone of reaching your goals and achieving maximum results.

Your greatest gains in getting better, more consistent results will be found in getting your Priority List completed on a daily basis. If you are not getting these crucial tasks and jobs done, you are simply not going to get the end results you want. Not accomplishing your Priority List is like trying to fill a bucket with a huge hole in the side; it does not matter how hard you work on pouring water into the bucket, you will never get ahead unless you plug the hole.