Work Simply to Live Fully: Exploring 4 Productivity Styles
Why can’t you stop procrastinating?
Why can’t you get more done?
Why isn’t your inbox under control?
Carson Tate, expert on workplace productivity and founder of Working Simply, believes that the problem is not you. It is how you are trying to overcome your busyness that is the problem.
You cannot outwork your busyness using one-size-fits-all time management solutions. The latest app, prioritization tip, or email management strategy will not work if it is not personalized for you, and aligned with the way you think and process information. Instead it will only create even more frustration, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness.
It is time to let go of the traditional approach to overcoming busyness—time management— and instead embrace the power of your unique cognitive style to guide and inform the choices you make about planning and executing on your daily work. It is time to get personal about your own productivity.
Personalize Your Productivity
To personalize your productivity you need to first identify your Productivity Style. There are four Productivity Styles: Prioritizer, Planner, Arranger, and Visualizer. We have all four styles within us, but similar to whether you’re left- or right-handed, you have a strong preference for one style.
A word of caution: do not pigeonhole yourself. Having seen so many working men and women frustrated and confused by productivity systems designed for other people and imposed on them arbitrarily, the last thing I want to do is to create yet another arbitrary set of rules to serve as a straightjacket for you! The goal is to create a personalized productivity toolkit that is in alignment with the way you think and fully supports you.
Embrace Your Productivity Style
Busyness is the noise that gets in your way. Turn down the noise. Embrace your Productivity Style. Instead of fighting against your natural wiring, work with it. Use your understanding to guide the choices you make to manage your attention, invest your time, get work done, tame your inbox, and design your work space in ways that are customized for you—not for someone else.
Change the ways you work and live so that you can be the best you—creative, productive, energized, and happy. Work simply to live fully.
>> Read more about the four Productivity Styles here.