Productivity: In today’s every day life we are constantly bombarded with information. Our smartphones, tablets, laptops, blogs, news feeds and many others are ways of keeping us constantly busy and engaged. But does being active and busy mean being productive? Probably not…..

Productivity is the way of doing things in a smart manner in an optimized time manner; many tools and apps can support us in that. Productivity is also about choosing what’s important and has to be done and what is rather a distraction. I was recently at a conference where someone approached me and said “I really like what you said about getting things done”. In my little speech I was indeed talking about doing things and getting things done as two different pairs of shoes. I am sure many of you have met people who are so seemingly busy but don’t seem to get a lot done. You have also probably met people who seem at ease but are very productive. Those see the core of productivity as getting things done and delivering results.

Let me give you a concrete example. You have signed up for an online course and as part of your graduation you have to pass an assignment. Now, to pass that successfully you need the technical knowledge, some research and critical thinking in that area to be able to produce your assignment. A productive person has a clear study plan in which he identifies the study schedule, the individual topics, the relevant readings leading to mind-maps of each study session. He will then schedule a review of the past mind-map during the next session to utilize the memory curve and memorize the contents of the previous sessions. He will then review the previous week’s mind maps, ideally from his memory since he will have memorized them by now. Now, let’s look at someone with low productivity. The person will sit down at random time, do some readings and maybe take some notes and repeat that over the course of a couple of weeks. The unproductive person will go back to the notes from the first session at some point and find that he doesn’t remember much. There we have it….productivity and getting results don’t come without one another.

Spending time on things is just spending time whereas structuring your approach, finding the most productive way around will safe your time and boost your productivity. How do you boost your productivity?