All of us want to achieve peak performance in both our personal and professional lives. We want to have more time to enjoy pursuits that bring us joy. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has two definitions for the word “productivity:”
1. The quality or state of being productive.
2. The rate per unit or area per unit volume at which biomass consumable
as food by other organisms is made by producers.
No one wants the measurement of biomass consumable as food
as their ideal state of productivity. Let’s set aside the funnier version and
focus on the first definition of productivity.
Being highly productive as an executive requires you to possess a set of
qualities or a state of mind that help you produce more output. The good news
is that you can put in the work to achieve those qualities and also that state
of mind. Many of us were likely told as children that we needed to work hard to
get ahead in life. In an industrial or even an agricultural era, that mindset
was appropriate.
There was a time when farm laborers had to struggle and work hard to till the
land and produce crops. It was no different during the industrial revolution. A
factory worker had to work hard every hour to achieve the required outputs.
However, in my opinion, this ingrained concept of hard work is irrelevant in
the post-2000 knowledge era.
In today’s day and age, most executives are not tilling the land or working in a factory. In this era of high-tech gadgets and unlimited access to knowledge, an executive has to develop new qualities and an agile state of mind to harness resources.