4 Career Sucess Benefits of a Productivity Mindset

Tweet 96 in my latest career success book Success Tweets says, “Good truly is the enemy of great.  Don’t settle for good performance.  Today, good performance is mediocre.  Become a great performer.”

You have to be productive if you want to become a great performer and career success.  My friend Dr. Sharon Melnick has some great career advice on how to measure productivity and how to develop productivity mindset.

She says that perfectionism – a disease with many of us are afflicted – is a mindset that will keep you from becoming productive, and will not facilitate your life and career success.  Sharon shows people “how to get out of their own way.”  She knows what she is talking about.

Check out what Sharon has to say…

Being a perfectionist will keep you from getting work done, getting home earlier and becoming a career success. Why? There is the time you waste agonizing over every word in emails. Then there is the time wasted worrying over whether the finished product will be good enough. Finally, there is energy wasted procrastinating.

How can you keep high standards but not let perfectionism get in your way?

Try these shifts in your mindset to get control of your productivity:

Old mindset: “Perfect is the only way to get it done.”

Productivity Mindset: “Done is better than perfect”

Old mindset: Figure it all out in your head, worry what people will think of your ‘smarts’, and deliver something that is perfect on the first go around.

Productivity Mindset: Put together a well thought out first draft, get feedback from your colleagues, clients and or customers. Then rapidly iterate a next ‘better’ version until your project or offering is highly responsive to its audience and has wide buy-in.

Old mindset (for corporate employees): Your work needs to be 100% perfect all of the time.

Productivity mindset (for corporate employees): Employ the “80-20” rule to get work to the point of ‘good enough’ to be sent out (because you have 5 other projects you have to deliver by the end of the day!) Further, make decisions rather than putting them off, expect that your judgment will be correct 80% of the time (and learn from the 20% it’s not.)

Old mindset (for business owners): Everything I say and write will be scrutinized by prospects and clients to determine whether they want to work with me.

Productivity mindset (for business owners): Leave an impression on prospects and clients through your consistent presence, empathy, and provision of solutions to their problems. There will rarely be one particular memo or meeting that is a referendum on whether a client wants to work with you.

This mindset shift is just 1 of the 29 strategies Sharon has developed to end procrastination. She can also show you how to…

  • Control the never-ending stream of tasks and prioritize when you have multiple competing projects.
  • Eliminate 85% of interruptions and distractions.
  • Overcome confidence blocks that get in the way of your productivity.

Sharon’s career advcie on personal productivity has some great benefits.  If you apply it in your life and career you  will gain: 1) Peace of mind –knowing you are keeping up and won’t let critical items fall through the cracks; 2) Balance — from gaining an extra hour of time with your family each day; 3) Income — expect more income each month or more recognition as a respected contributor to your organization because of your increased productivity; and  4) Control over your life  — rather than being stressed out and consumed by never-ending tasks.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Your personal productivity is very important to your level of performance and your life and career success.  If you want to increase your personal productivity you have to change your mindset.  Think “done is better than perfect.”  Get things done fast – review and revise as necessary.  A productivity mindset will help you put the career advice in tweet 96 in Success Tweets into play. “Good truly is the enemy of great.  Don’t settle for good performance.  Today, good performance is mediocre.  Become a great performer.”  Great performers have a productivity mindset that helps them create the life and career success they want and deserve.

That’s Sharon Melnick’s career advice on developing a productivity mindset.  What is your career advice for developing a productivity mindset?  Please take a few minutes and share it with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my career success musings.

Bud

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