Episode 58 : 3 Key Indicators of Productivity Mastery

In this episode we delve into 3 essential indicators of productivity and time management mastery. Discover how to align your system with your unique strengths and goals so that you can thrive both personally and professionally.

3 Key skills of mastery:

• Recognising and Reframing Unhelpful Thoughts and Behaviors:
  • Learn to quickly identify and transform negative thoughts into positive, proactive ones, empowering yourself to maintain a growth-oriented mindset.
• A Personalised Productivity Toolkit:
  • Build a customised set of strategies and techniques tailored to your work style, ensuring a sustainable and balanced approach to managing your time and achieving your goals.
• Mastering Planning and Execution:
  • Develop clear, motivating plans that align with your desires and create momentum, helping you stay focused and consistently progress toward your ideal outcomes.

Explore these concepts to enhance your productivity habits.
For more detailed guidance, check out my new course, "Save An Hour EVERY Day."

NEW Course: Save an Hour EVERY Day

How would it feel to have an extra hour EVERY day?  That's a pretty amazing quick win right?  Follow that with discovering and embedding a new mindset around your precious time and you'll change your life.  Because what you believe to be true about time affects what you believe is possible for you.  It has a ripple affect that determines the quality and experience of your life.
So if you're not content to continue being restricted by your current thoughts and beliefs about your time, then it's time to make change.

My new course 'Save An Hour EVERY Day' will guide you as you create your personalised time management system, based on both your actions and your mindset.

So if you're juggling a service based business with the demands of a busy life, and it feels heavy and smothering, then this is for you.  You can't afford to burn out.  So before it comes to that, take back control of your precious time.
Find out more:
https://libbyknightconsulting.ac-page.com/priority-list-save-an-hour-beta


About Your Host Libby Knight:

Hi, it's lovely to meet you.
I'm Libby, business strategy mentor and mindset coach.
I help ambitious and creative entrepreneurs to grow their service based businesses with confidence, in an environment where they can be seen and heard and feel safe.  My goal is to empower you to create a business on your terms so that you have the tools, skills and knowledge you need to build and grow your business in a way that makes you truly happy.
I teach effective mindset techniques that, together with the right business strategy, will empower you to overcome the limiting beliefs that hold you back.

This is feel-good business development!

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Transcript

Today I'm going to take you through three key indicators  of productivity and time management mastery, that those who have it down to a fine art, all have in common.  So, you'll  be able to see if you're on the right track.  Because achieving mastery and productivity isn't just about getting more done faster, it's about creating a system that aligns with your unique strengths, and your goals, and helps you to thrive both personally and professionally while achieving the success you want. So, let's get stuck in. 

First of all I want to look at some of the objections people come up with  about the concept of productivity and time management, or more accurately about their personal interpretation of what those words mean. For those of us who are fans of more freedom and more intention, and  look for ways to manage our time more easily, it's hard to understand why people would object to productivity,  but it stems from being pushed out of their comfort zone. 

All behaviour has a positive intention behind it, so, even when it feels like people are self-sabotaging, or when we play small, there is in fact a positive intention to that behaviour. So, for example, people who come up with objections to being more time efficient and working on their productivity,  will be trying to keep themselves safe.  Because their mind doesn’t realise that safe and ideal are not always the same thing.

Their mind is just trying to keep them within their comfort zone, because it knows that this is where they can survive, where they're okay, where they're safe.  

And every time they try to push out of their comfort zone and do something different, or tackle something that feels daunting,  then their mind will try to put them back in that safety box.  

The brain doesn't like to spend more energy or challenge itself with something new and different. 

I’ve heard some  quite unbelievable arguments against  productivity. 

I once heard someone ridiculing the phrase, ‘Go slower, to go faster’  because the concept of productivity took them so far out of their comfort zone, and triggered them in such a way that they felt threatened, so they distorted the concept of saving time and working smarter into something negative. They saw it as a threat to them personally, it highlighted something that they felt uncomfortable with. And their reaction was to ridicule it, to put it down, to dismiss it, to say that it was wrong, and there were all sorts of very limiting beliefs that came out of that. 

Now don’t get me wrong,  I do empathize with people who are very threatened by concepts because there’s something deeper going on behind that defensiveness, but it's frustrating because, I know that the only person that they're hurting in this situation is themselves. And unfortunately, if they are influencing other people, they're causing damage to those people too. 

So, let's put our limiting beliefs aside today and look at these three clear indicators that people who have mastered their time management and productivity share. 

The first skill that these people are very good at is recognizing and reframing the unhelpful thoughts and behaviours that pop up for them. 

We've all got limiting beliefs and we're never going to completely eradicate them, because once we master one limiting belief, another one will pop up the next time we're challenged by something new.  It's more about having the ability to recognise them when they come up, and then being able to reframe them and turn these unhelpful limiting beliefs into positive, proactive beliefs and thoughts.  And this is one of those critical skills that productivity masters are able to switch on when they need it. 

And the first step is that they recognise the belief, because beliefs are so automatic that we don’t always notice them. So, masters of productivity get very adept at recognising these thoughts the minute, the second that they show up. 

They don’t berate themselves because they’ve had these limiting beliefs, they know that's part of being human. They see it as an opportunity for self-understanding. 

Blaming ourselves or feeling bad that we are continuing to have limiting beliefs is self-defeating, it’s what we do with them and how we react that really counts.  And when we can use them to make progress and develop as a person, rather than allowing them to stifle us or affect our ability to move forward, then we have a fundamental skill for mastering our productivity.

Knowing that every behaviour has a positive intention, helps us to uncover what this good intention is,  and we can consider whether this is in fact true? Or if it’s just keeping us small to keep us safe from the unknown. Then we can, if we choose to, replace the limiting beliefs with new thoughts and beliefs that create the freedom to achieve our ideal outcomes.

In the long-term you can re-educate your mind about what safe really means. You can create a new normal, that serves you better than your existing beliefs,  based on what does, or doesn’t work for you. A belief system that's going to support you, support your goals, support your ambitions, supports your business, and supports your family life. 

And once you've got this more advantageous intentional belief system, you can then protect that, embed it further, and it's going to be geared towards achieving your personal and professional growth. It's going to help you to realise your potential, because you'll no longer be held back by these limitations.

So why does this matter? 

Limiting beliefs are disempowering. You’re giving away your power to these thoughts and these beliefs, and they are dictating your future.  We want thoughts and beliefs that are going to support our dreams. For ourselves and for others. So, choose more empowering thoughts.

Shifting from a passive  mindset to a much more proactive, positive mindset, will enable you to take action on the things you need to do to realise your dreams.  This is inspired action resulting from empowered thinking. And that in turn, is going to create positive momentum. So, instead of being stuck, or plateauing, this shift in mindset, through the resulting positive action, creates your desired results.

So don’t overlook the power of your mindset. It’s the elephant in the room that many people try to ignore and pretend isn’t important or necessary.  But an effective mindset underpins every success. 

Let’s move on to our second indicator of productivity and mindset mastery.

Your very own personalised productivity toolkit.

So, what will you put in your toolkit? Habits, skills, techniques, tech tools. There will be a whole plethora of different elements to your toolkit.  And importantly it will be very personal to you.

Don’t rely solely on generic advice, like calling on the Pomodoro technique now and again, (and if you don’t know about the Pomodoro technique, please do Google it, it’s very popular with all my clients),  but techniques like these are a bit like putting a plaster on a gaping wound. It's not enough. It's not going to solve all your time management and productivity challenges or train you to be more effective.

It's a quick tool to help get a task complete. And we love something that helps us in the moment.  But it’s just the very, very, tip of the iceberg.  What you want is a personalised and comprehensive toolkit of techniques, strategies  and best practice that aligns with your unique ways of working and thinking and learning, because we all learn in different ways. 

Back in my 30s when I was in further education, preparing to study for my degree in biochemistry, I was at a local college doing my foundation  course. And we did a test to assess our particular learning style. Were we visual, auditory or kinesthetic learners? I discovered that I’m a combination of all of these.  It wasn’t something I’d given much thought to in the past, but it was a good insight into my preferences for learning.  Some people have a strong preference to one style.  They learn better by reading .  Some people reinforce their learning by doing.  Some of us prefer different methods depending on the task.

It's really important that the tools in your toolkit of habits, techniques, skills, and mindset strategies, are geared to you  and how you absorb information,  how you process information.  And how you  take action. Because there’s no point in bending yourself to ways that don’t come naturally.

So, first of all you need to recognise your learning style.  Because when something is easy, you have the mind space to be able to stay focused. You’re not overwhelmed and therefore distracted, it’s less effort. 

And the knock on effect of that, is that you can maintain a balance and positive state of well-being. 

So, what are these components of an effective toolkit? 

You've got your strategies to stay focused. For example, the techniques that are going to keep you aligned to your primary revenue generating activities, so that you can make more money in your business. Or focused on the things that are important to you and your family, or that help you to achieve your personal goals. 

You're going to have methods to manage your time so that you have a schedule that works for you. Perhaps you’re somebody who  spends a lot of time with clients or you have babies at home, or if you're like me, you're looking after a parent full time, then you need a time management schedule that includes time for all of your responsibilities, plus some me-time so that you can maintain a positive life-work balance.

So that life feels calm, controlled, and adaptable, and you can avoid burnout.  

Choose tools that are aligned with you and your learning style,  with your information processing style, and how you take action. And then you can customise them even more so that they fit your purpose.

It's about creating a personalised, bespoke set of tools, because it needs to work for YOU in all areas of your life – your professional life and your home life, and for you as an individual.  And it needs to be sustainable. So a customised approach ensures that your productivity strategies are sustainable.

And enjoyable, so they feel easier the more you use them, which is going to help you to use them more often.  It's going to feel natural. It's going to feel aligned. It's going to feel personal. 

The most important thing is that you WANT to call on them when you need them. They become new, useful, helpful habits that support you to achieve your goals. 

So what is the third indicator of mastery?  This is all about mastering your planning - and the execution of your plan. This is something that time management and productivity masters can do very, well. And it’s something that you too can learn to do well.  None of this is out of your reach when you understand yourself first – how your mind works, your learning style, what motivates and excites you.

So, effective planning and execution. These are the cornerstone of productivity mastery.  Experts not only create a plan with the right level of detail for how they work, but they are motivated by those plans. They're excited by them. They get up knowing what they're going to do every day, why they're doing it, ready to get it done. It feels fresh and inspiring.

This alignment between planning and execution will create momentum, so you constantly move forward in the straightest line towards your goals. So that you can achieve your ideal outcomes, utilising your toolkit to keep moving forward in a way that feels so good. 

A clear well-thought out plan means not having to reinvent the wheel or guessing what you should be doing next. You want to know exactly what you're doing, why you're doing it, and plan it out so that it works for you, your business and your family.  In other words, your plan is led by your priorities.

It needs to be logical. It needs to have steps.  And it needs to be moving constantly towards that end goal, in a straight line. This is done by keeping that end goal top of mind at all times.  But how often do we get distracted and start zigging and zagging.  Veering off course.  Making progress slow and hard work.  

Your plans, if you’re going to complete them, need to be motivating.  Your plans need to be exciting. They need to draw you forward, to get you  up in the morning, ready to take action. This is going to help you to stick to your plan.  

This is not doing what you see other people doing. Yes, use that as inspiration. But ultimately, it's about doing things your way.  It’s personal and purposeful.

So why does planning and execution matter to those who want to be an effective business owner?  Your plan contains the answers to decisions that need to be made if you want to succeed in business, if you want balance, and if you want to create special quality moments with your loved ones. You now know how you're going to get there.  And when you know that, you're far less likely to be distracted by other things. You can focus on the desired outcomes that you want for your business, life and family.  Because when you have the right plan, why on earth would you get distracted and drawn off track.  Why would you want to slow you down?  Motivation and purpose mean that you’re so much more likely to execute your plan, and, it's so much more likely to be successful. 

I'm an advocate of the simple route, because it's much quicker and easier to execute a simple straight forward plan and you're more likely to see progress, which in, itself is motivating.  And when you're motivated,  you make more progress.  So, it's this sort of beautiful feedback loop that helps you to reach your goals. 

So, how close are you to embodying these three indicators of productivity  mastery?  Have a look at your current habits and strategies against these benchmarks  to see if you can see any useful insights that could help you  to improve.  Notice the limiting beliefs that pop up.

First, we talked about how to recognise and reframe your unhelpful negative beliefs about time and what’s possibility.  Then we discussed the importance of your personal toolkit of time management and productivity techniques and strategies that align with how you work and learn, and lastly we looked at the importance of creating a plan that’s exciting and easy to execute, based on your goals and ideal outcome. 

So, explore these concepts with curiosity and optimism, and if you would like guidance on how to achieve mastery in these areas, my NEW course ‘ Save An Hour EVERY Day is perfect for you.  The link to find out more is in the show notes. See you soon for more small business strategy and mindset on the ELEVATE Your Small Business Podcast.