Believe it or not, your personality plays a direct role in productivity. Right now there are probably things that you can think of that you haven’t been able to finish or even get started. Something’s always getting in the way or there just never seems to be enough time. As much as you might wish you had it, you aren’t going to get any additional time. The magic number is 1,440 and that’s all you get each day.
You can’t add to the amount of time that you get each day, but you can shift your approach to how you manage things. If you’re a regular reader or a client you know that I have a totally different approach when in comes to productivity. I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions. They don’t work. My perspective and my approach are that it’s personal. You can try those boxed solutions and maybe even have them work a bit or for an amount of time, but at some point, you’re going to hit a bump in the road, which will leave you right back where you started.
When you shift your approach to managing time, first of all realizing that time isn’t real, so there’s actually no such thing as time management, you gain a new perspective. To increase your productivity, you have to look at your relationship with and to time. How are you relating to time right now? You might find it to be somewhat of a dysfunctional relationship, one that you never really knew you had and you certainly haven’t thought about how you relate to time, right? Your personality should be at the core of how you manage your time.
Once you get past the fact that time doesn’t exist, you have to look at who you are to see what’s going to work for you when it comes to getting things done. Here are a few key points:
- How you relate to time. You can begin to get somewhat of an idea if you look at your challenges with it.
- The things that are revealed from looking at your challenges should be taken into consideration when you look at tools and systems to support you. That helps you personalize them.
- Look at your personal rhythms or what I call your Prime Time. That’s the period of time when you’re at your best mentally and physically.
These key points will get you on the track to personalizing how you get it done. They are each a part of your Productivity Persona. Your Persona indicates who you are when it comes to time. It reveals specific elements of your personality, productivity challenges and lets you know what tools will best suit you. (I’ll be sharing more about my Productivity Personas in the weeks to come.) Once you know how your personality impacts how you deal with time, you have a foundation to build upon. You have a guide to help you set yourself up for success. Having your personality be at the core will take you from struggling, and finding tools and systems difficult to manage to a higher level of productivity, getting you from “to-do” to “done” with ease.