How To Double Your Productive Output

Resources and links mentioned:

Ultimate Time Management for Assistants

Assistants Who Self-Care Facebook Community 

Check out the video transcript:

Have you ever found you worked an entire day, but can't pinpoint what actually got accomplished? Well, stay tuned. I'm about to share with you a sneaky belief that many of us have with regards to productivity, as well as what to do about it. Assistants, if you would like more transformational strategies geared towards you, please subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when my weekly videos go live.

I'm Annie Croner of wholeassistant.com and on this season of the Whole Assistant Show, we're breaking down common myths that we as assistants need to overcome in order to live our best lives and have our best careers. In today's episode, we're investigating the belief that time plus energy equals our productivity. What I'm about to share with you has been completely transformational for me as an assistant, and it has more than doubled my productive output.

Most of us were raised in environments that support this equation of time plus energy equals productivity. If you think about it, going to school between what? 7:30 and three o'clock or 7:30 and 2:30 in the afternoon. That's a time period and there is no real consideration given to what is being learned, how much learning is actually happening. And then we go from our school life to our work-life and working our 9:00 to 5:00 jobs, often more hours than that.

But the whole idea of what is actually being produced is seldom taken into account. As long as people are at their desks and working, things are going well. People consider that them to be being productive. I would venture a guess that many of us have given into this idea without even knowing about it. And so what this leads to is a need to look and be busy with very little regard to what's actually being produced, the quality of work that's being produced, or what is actually getting accomplished and done and off our plates.

And when you think about it, this makes sense, right? Because we filled half of that part of the equation, the time plus energy equals the productivity equation. We've got the time piece down, we're working from 9:00 to 5:00 or whatever our hours maybe, they're probably more than that. That is our time piece, but being more busy does not necessarily mean you are being more productive or producing high-quality work.

Are you stuck in the time plus effort equals productivity trap? Please leave a comment below sharing your experience.

I want us instead to adopt the following equation: amount produced or accomplished equals productivity. I'm going to say that again. The amount produced or accomplished equals our productivity. Productivity does not care much how much time you spent. Productivity does not care how much effort it takes to get there. All productivity cares about is the end results of what it is you're creating.

So there are many benefits of adopting this mindset or this equation and ditching the old one. The first is it's less focused on how much time and energy and effort it's going to take to get there and more focused on the end result. I love this so much because when we're focused on the end result, then our focus can be on the quality of that end result. And how can we make this end result better or how can we get to the end result faster?

Efficiency is not in the other equation because it's time plus energy is the amount of productivity we're getting done. In this equation, the amount produced or accomplished it's so much more laser-focused and it will produce higher quality work because we'll be considering how we can create efficiencies, how we can get there faster, and how we can produce higher quality results, or higher quality end results by focusing on the result itself.

Hopefully, this episode has been helpful, and covering the sneaky belief that time plus energy equals productivity. Did you have any epiphanies while listening to this video? If so, I want to know about it. Please leave a comment below sharing your experience.

If you want to blow your own mind by up-leveling your productivity, please check out my time management system, Ultimate Time Management for Assistants created specifically for assistants, and the challenges we face every single day. Grab your spot now as our doors will be closing soon. The link is below this video.

To continue this discussion and receive support from your fellow assistants, please head on over to facebook.com/groups/wholeassistant to join our assistants only community.

If you liked this episode, please let me know by hitting the like button below. Also, be sure to subscribe and share this video with your fellow assistants and administrative professionals. And last but not least, if this video has helped you in any way, I want to know about it. So please leave a comment below sharing how.

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