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Talking about productivity, yesterday was what I felt one of the most productive day that I had for some time. I can feel that I am totally focus into doing the final work on the project presentation boards with my teammate . Plus, the pushing motivation is that yesterday was the last day to submit the proposal. The deadline is indeed the driver for us to complete work.
Thinking back of my own progress, the priority of things comes with the urgency of the work which brings me back to how well I set my deadline and how well I follow it. Without deadline, I would say there is nothing that I will complete as I will always take for granted having the unlimited time to do something. In fact, I do think that there is a big part of me facing such weakness in putting out good deadline system that I will follow strictly and get myself in a very productive manner. I have such mindset like it is ok if it is not done, let’s try it tomorrow that kind of mindset. Knowing well that my tomorrow comes in days or sometime months to finish something. The sense of urgency is not there and it had caused a lot of inconvenience throughout my life.
In most cases, I do set deadline for myself and my team to work on. However, the sense of urgency is not there whereby I always think that it is ok to work it out the next day as I can’t expect everyone to perfectly produce the outcome on time. However, such convenient mind will destroy the whole team productivity. It will give everyone in the team including myself that the tasks assigned are not urgent and can be leave aside while we can prioritize other things. In the end, the tasks are not done and there is no one to be blamed but myself. To be generous in terms of timing is not a good thing, but I personally do not like to be too pushy on people. I want to respect others time management and believe that others would have such mindset that they will complete their tasks in the given timeline. However, in reality that is not possible (only some times happen when team mates are those with high accountability). If not, there is a lot of follow ups required to get things done as most of us need reminders and pusher to get things done.
To be honest, I am reluctant to keep pushing these kind of thing. On the other hand, if I put myself as the employer, then it is another story. Without production, I would have to bear the loss, and I am the one that will take full responsibility on the loss including reputation and financially. Therefore, it is up to me to push the production and ensure that things are able to realize by the end of the deadline. Without such urgency for matters that are important like tasks that pays, tasks that could increase productivity, tasks that could bring long term beneficial impacts in our own life and more should be the focus. If not, we will never reach the height that we dreamed of.
For 2019, it is my aim to improve my sense of urgency and also to improve the skill to focus on things that I want to do. Make sure things are completed and reducing the careless mistakes are also part of the plan which needs solid action plan to realize. All of them seem to be small matter as segregated problems, but when put it together, it may poised as a threat to me in my future career building and also family. I do not want to cause inconvenience for my future self and thus it is wise for me to start improving now.