Are you being productive or just busy being busy?

We live in a culture where every talks about being busy, and we’re all guilty of saying it at so e point (or all the time, depending on how honest you want to be!). Rarely do we stop to ask whether we’re working hard on the right things for the right reasons.

Imagine this: you’ve been applying for jobs for weeks, months even, when you are called for an interview. You can barely sleep the night before, and when the time comes, you’re burning with energy. You hop the bus to get there and rush into the building, only to find the lift that will take you to the 12th floor is broken.

But you don’t let that stop you. You rush up the stairs, and by the time you make it to the top, you’re completely out of breath. That’s when you look at the sign hanging above the receptionist and realise that you were in the wrong building!

Now you’ve both late and worn out. You might have been busy running up those stairs, but you didn’t achieve anything.

If you feel like you’re permanently climbing a skyscraper building worth of stairs in the wrong building, then there’s a good chance that you’re not working very effectively. Here are some tips to turn that around:

Take a couple of days off
Yes, you say you’re busy, but honestly you need some time to clear your head, analyse what you’re doing and make a plan. Yu can’t do that juggling work and the family, so take a couple of days off where it will just be you on your own.

This time will also help you give yourself a little time to emotionally and physically reboot, even if it’s only for a weekend. You’ll be amazed at how much better you feel.

Time for a self audit
Take a look at the time you used for the day – rate their activities on a scale of 1-10, with a 10 being very helpful to your business, and a 1 being something very counterproductive. What were the reasons for doing the low-rated tasks? Can you get rid of them?

Are you being a perfectionist?
Too many people try to do everything perfectly because they’re afraid of looking bad. So e say they have hi standards that they feel they have to live up to on everything they do. Taking the bin out just won’t do unless the top is sealed with a perfect bow, for instance.

Drop the idea that all your work needs to be flawless, because it will explode the amount of work you need to do. Chances are that you need volume, more traffic, more customers, and more buyers. They won’t care that the postage stamp is not sitting at a perfect right angle on the edge of the envelope…they will care that because of this fussiness, you missed the last post and their order arrived late, however!

Remember, your goal isn’t to be busy, it’s to accomplish more. Work less and spend more time thinking about how to improve your efficiency, and you’ll love the results you get.