The Forgotten Monk

“…in order to not waste any time I wasn’t hanging up the phone in-between calls. I realized that by not hanging up the phone I gained about eight minutes a day. I also wasn’t drinking any water so I didn’t waste time having to go to the bathroom…” - Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness

What gets in the way of being productive? Increasing productivity is something each of us wants to do, something that is expected of us and something that we are judged on. It is obviously important to increase our own productivity and to do that we must avoid productivity time wasters.

In the movie ‘The Pursuit of Happyness‘, Chris Gardner put off time wasters such as not hanging up the phone, water break and going to the bathroom. He had to do in six hours what his competitors did in nine.

We hopefully won’t have to go to Chris Gardner’s extent. As I surfed the net I came across a productivity post on Goals to Action. On it he listed five common productivity killers. Listed below is a basic summary of the post.

Productivity Killer #1 - Wasting Time
Wasting time with unnecessary activities

Productivity Killer #2 - Over-Committing Your Time
Saying Yes to too many projects

Productivity Killer #3 - An Open Door
Being too available to your co-workers

Productivity Killer #4 - Avoiding The Hard Things
Pushing off a tougher parts of a project because they are difficult.

Productivity Killer #5 – Lack Of Sleep
Being too tired to work or not getting enough rest

I would only add, Working Hard versus Working Smart as a productivity killer. Sometimes people will keep doing the same thing over and over because that’s the only way they know how to do it. We have to be constantly learning how to do things better, smarter, and more efficiently.

You can read the complete article here.

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