CONTENTS:
PRODUCTIVITY OVERALL - Get this perspective by reading these pieces.
LEVERAGING - A vital skill and principle to use to make life easier and better.
RESOURCES
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS - Tools to make your life easier and/or more automatic
without you doing the work.
PRODUCTIVITY OVERALL
Productivity comes from a number of factors we will work with, but it must first start in formulating, in written form, specific goals and specific actions. Without that, no one can be powerfully effective in life. (See The Planning Notebook System materials.) Your productivity will be dramatically increased through following the practices and perspectives in the Life Management section.
Read the full size version of the piece on the right side: Productivity Is.
Read in this order:
THE 80/20 PRINCIPLE - One of the most valuable principles of all time. Use it to manage your life and your life will be several 100%'s better!
Creating the Desired Results - The Process That Must Be Engaged In - You must go through these steps to be productive, which means actually produce results. Those who don't, do not succeed. ("The Secret" doesn't work without these pieces being included!!!)
The Power Of Concentrated Focus - A booster rocket for forward progress.
Payoffs, Diminishing And Increasing Returns, When To Quit - A vital principle to be aware of. The productive person also knows when to stop putting time into something - and to go to what is more productive.
The Law Of Enough Dots - Enough but not too much. Enough so you can proceed properly from this vital principle.
And a little secret weapon: Theme Days - Rejuvenating, fulfilling, results producing,
seems to expand time and make life easier.
Stress-Free Living. Exceptionally excellent and effective booklet, now available at no cost as an e-book (as I have purchased the copyrights) at BarksdaleAboutLife.Com.
THE STRATEGIC COACH: "Delegate everything except genius."
Focus on:
1. Eliminating all the "stuff" and "messes"
2. Focusing on just the money-making activities
3. Improving the quality of personal life
4. Building a total support team" and systems
Order the following from The Strategic Coach :
The Greatest Teacher You'll Ever Have, The Negativity Transformer Workbook - A "transformative" exercise that has one let go of what didn't work and create more workability, in business and in life.
The 21 Day Gratitude Focus - Tends to refocus one's thinking and eliminate
"barriers" being on the mind.
The 21 Day Positive Focus Workbook - work on habits and key daily achievements.
THE 21 DAY TIME BREAKTHROUGH Workbook - Implement the "entrepreneurial" time system, though it can apply to anyone. Explains the use of Buffer Days and Focus Days and how you create more and utilize Free (rejuvenation, fun) Days.
LEVERAGING ONE'S EFFORTS - Leverage is one of the greatest life enhancers, if used properly.
RESOURCES - To increase results and make it easier.
Resource Evaluation Sheet - Part of the planning process.
Support Groups/Communities - One of the major sources of
personal power and/or emotional maintenance
PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS
Computer Usage
Back up your computer on internet, so the back up is remote. www.carbonite.com
Free 3 month trial, then about $50 or so per year - this assures the back up will get done and be stored offsite! Another one recommended and set up by a computer consultant is at www.mozy.com.
Organize Your Computer Files Easily: www.org-matters.com .This relatively inexpensive software sets up all the files you need and makes it easy to drop other files in and to track all major items and lots of details.
PRODUCTIVITY
MULTIPLYING RESULTS, REDUCING EFFORT
MAXIMIZING LIFE
See www.live8020.com, which uses productivity principles to live life much more effectively and easily, using the 80/20 Principle.
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Read this in full size version
PRODUCTIVITY IS:
THE ABILITY TO
PRODUCE RESULTS
OF VALUE
Regardless of whether it is of "intangible" value or monetary value (whatever the goal), the same basic ingredients are needed. If you don't include those ingredients, you will not be productive (or as productive as you can be).
See what our main goal is ultimately, I think: Life Value Productivity - Producing The Maximum LIfe In Your Life.
And, do not be misled: it is easier to be productive in life than to live life in a less productive manner - and the effort to learn to be more productive has many times the benefit, plus it gives one many more hours where one is free to do whatever one wants to do. It is the road to freedom and happiness, not at all the "hard road" (only people who aren't smart about productivity make it hard).
The Ingredients
The ingredients for productivity are:
- Finding, defining what is needed.
- Organization (of what to do , learn, systems needed, coordinating people)
In order to do this, must plan
- Learning what needs to be known about it, sufficient to get the desired results.
- Using resources effectively
- Identifying incentives and implementing them so the team people are productive.
In a sense the process essentially is problem solving, so you need to learn that skill. And a part (or at least a necessary augmenter) of this is figuring out how to implement what is necessary to get the result. We have not solved a problem by writing down the solution or a plan, but only by doing the right actions.
Why do some people make alot of money?
Why do some people (a few) make $30 million per year, while others (many) make $30,000 a year?
Is it because they rape and pillage the land, cheat, take advantage of the people?
No, there are very few people that go that far - but that is what laws are for.
Is it because of collusion with the Board Of Directors of the company, who want to overpay some guy they like and are not concerned with screwing the shareholders?
No, that would be the explanation by an unknowledgeable person who does not know how economics works. There is a natural drive to limit the compensation of an executive, so it is unlikely to be excessive. But they must pay enough to get the services of the "value producer", so they bid up the price until they can get him/her. Of course, they will stop at the amount of benefit they think the person can provide. If they pay him/her $30,000,000, they probably expect that he/she will add to the profits of the company more than $300,000,000 (or something like that).
We generally pay for value.
The people who make the huge amount are simply those who have the ability to produce results of value in the money world.
Why do we have so many people being underpaid?
The question has in it the assumption that there is somehow a means to put a lid on people's wages by some mythical power over them - such as in slavery.
But in an open, free market, the market determines the price.
If a product can be manufactured in another country for a lower price (including shipping), then we must be able to lower our prices in order to compete. All other things being equal, if they can hire someone to do a job for $3 an hour and someone else to do it in our country for $15 an hour, any economically rational person would hire the $3 an hour person. But what if that person were only half as efficient as the $15 an hour person. Well, then you'd have to pay for two hours at $3/hr or an equivalent of $6 to get the same production as the $15/hour person.
If we thenimport these goods, we are benefiting our public by providing goods cheaper to them.
But what about the unemployed $15 an hour person? Well, he would, if he were sticking to that one product's manufacturing, not be worth hiring, for his worth is only equivalent to $6/hour. He must, therefore, find something he can do that is worth $15 an hour (or more).
Yes, it could be dictated, by law or decree, that the person should be paid $15 an hour for a $6 job, but dictating such can be a slippery slope. There may be some midpoint that is optional, but every time any country has gone too far in this type of thing, they have always failed.
Yes, there is a moral argument, but we are talking here of producing economic value. In a free market, to get paid $15/hour or $30 million/year, you must produce the equivalent value or higher.
You must therefore do what is necessary to acquire the skills and abilities to do what is required.
That's reality. And generally it is not a good idea to try to defy reality (note that it is similar, but harder to see, to defying gravity).
You've just gotta learn whatever it takes for you to produce the value that would have you be paid what you want, whether it is in economic terms or in life!
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Since there are a number of "made-ups" and considerable prejudice from people who do not understand the workings of the world nor how to use the workings of the world to get more of what they morally value, I've also written this piece:
