Extreme Productivity summary

Introduction

Extreme Productivity by Robert C. Posen True productivity boosts results and reduces your working hours. Do you often feel that being productive means endless work? Many believe that achieving ambitions requires working constantly.

They think it means operating at full capacity all the time. But what if the opposite were true for you? Imagine finishing your work faster and having more free time. This extra time could be spent on things that truly matter.

You would feel happier and more refreshed as a result. This positive cycle would make you even more productive. The secret to entering this cycle is simplicity. Productivity is about a Zen sense of business.

It means expending minimal effort for maximum results.

Prioritizing and Organizing Tasks

Prioritizing and Organizing Tasks. Prioritize your tasks and invest your time accordingly. Planning ahead can be a daunting task. This is true whether it is for next year, next month, or next week.

Especially when you are drowning in work. But looking down the line will pay off big time. It will benefit you greatly in the long term. To think more long term, begin organizing your work.

Split up tasks into aims, objectives, and targets. This way, you can begin to prioritize effectively. A good strategy is to divide tasks. Do this according to how long they take to accomplish.

For instance, career aims take five years or more. These include expanding your business network. Or landing an executive level promotion. Objectives take between 3 and 24 months.

For example, if you work for a shoe company, an objective might be to rebrand a sneaker line. Finally, targets are anything that will take 3 months or less. Such as writing progress reports. Or finishing part of a major project.

Objectives and targets are both essential. After all, if you do not focus on these baseline endeavors, you will never reach your larger career aims. But it is also important to prioritize aims. Prioritize objectives and targets that both you and your employer agree on.

You should first focus on what both you and your boss want to achieve. Once that is done, you can address tasks that concern only you. For example, say you want to meet more people in your industry. You also want to rebrand your firm's sneaker line to boost profits.

Since your employer also wants the second thing to happen, you would do best to focus on the rebranding first. Then, once you have parsed out your tasks, it is time to set some top priorities. These are the projects on which you will spend most of your time. To ensure you are doing this effectively, you should track your work days.

Monitor how you allocate your time. You might discover you spend lots of time on activities. These activities do not have much to do with your objectives or targets. Maybe you are going to too many internal meetings, and failing to prioritize the important ones.

How you allocate your time is crucial to your productivity. This leads us to another issue, procrastination.