Effective Productivity Instead of Plain Old Productivity
I have done a lot of entrepreneurial things throughout the years and very much of what needed to be accomplished involved a great deal of productive effort on my part. Some efforts on my part yielded great results and others, well, not so much. So it's really not always so much the amount of time you would spend working on something, it's more about what you accomplish with the time being spent.
It is important to really analyze what exactly you are getting from your efforts, in the area of results. Then you can either modify your procedures or approach or try something completely new. After all, there are just so many hours in a day and it would obviously be to your benefit not to waste time. Like they say, time is the kind of thing that life is made up of.
As someone who has done things entrepreneurial in nature, I have often had nobody else to rely upon for a number of tasks. I was always a one-man operation. I do websites, 3D artwork, music performance, recording and composition, a comic strip and a few other things here and there. There is even this article writing thing I engage in.
I also do my own online marketing and promotion. I promote my brands, my various creative works, my various products and whatever else I want to plug. In fact, very much of my time is spent doing online marketing. Therefore, I know from experience that there are some efforts I make in the area of marketing that yield effective results and that some of my efforts do not.
The thing is that you have to have some means of measuring your results. For example, when I make efforts to promote my websites or blogs online, I can measure the results by looking at the analytics from the various sites. If I send out a tweet on Twitter with a link to one of my sites, I can see what the results are. The same is true regarding my Facebook posts. So, I can measure the results. That means that the first thing you need to be able to do is to measure the results of your efforts. Otherwise you just won't know if you are being effective.
After you put in place or discover a means of measuring your effectiveness, you can compare the results of your various approaches to see which ones are effective and which ones are not. Then you can spend more time working on the things that yield the best results. This means that you will be using your time more effectively and efficiently.
Time management can be an important matter of consideration n the area of efficiency and effectiveness as well. Sometimes it is best to devote more time to a specific task just to get it over with and then move on to the next task, rather than doing a little of this and a little of that, just barely scratching the surface on each task. When fully devoting yourself to a specific task, you often get into a certain momentum that will allow you to expedite your progress. Dropping what you are doing to quickly get to another task all of the time can be very inefficient.
Every person is different. We each have our own preferred way of doing things. I find that I often get more accomplished when I have a set schedule. At such and such day and time, I will do a certain task. I find if I don't stick to a schedule, I often put things off or procrastinate in some way. So it is better for me to work by a schedule and to have the discipline to adhere to it. I find that I get a lot more done that way.
I have experience working in a manufacturing environment and have done assembly line type of work. It was a good experience for me because I will often use an assembly line approach to my work. I concentrate on one task, get into a certain momentum and then do the next task and get into a certain momentum there. It is similar to the approach they use at an automobile manufacturing plant. The vehicle gets to one station and someone screws or bolts on a part, Then it moves on to the next station where someone else puts on another part. It keeps moving down the line until it is finished. The reason it is done that way is that it saves the most time and makes the most efficient use of time because each person already has the tools they need to perform that task already in their hand and don't have to waste time picking up the tool and putting it down.
So give some thought to the various approaches I have outlined and see if it helps you to be more effectively productive. Remember, you have to have some way of measuring your results first. Then you can try a few different approaches to doing things and compare the results. After that, you make the necessary adjustments needed to maximize productivity. Then there's no telling what you might achieve.