**Guest post by Logan Crowell, Founder & President of HOME, Helping Our Music Evolve.

"SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE THIS FEELING THAT THEY COULD BE DOING MORE… THAT THEY ARE JUST SEEING THE ‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’ IN TERMS OF WHAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF.

Before we dive into specifics about how one can become more productive, let’s first understand what it means to be productive.

PRO·DUC·TIV·I·TY (NOUN):

- THE STATE OR QUALITY OF PRODUCING SOMETHING.

- the effectiveness of productive effort, especially in industry, as measured in terms of the rate of output per unit of input.

BY THIS DEFINITION, IT STANDS TO REASON THAT THE VERY FIRST STEP IS TO DEFINE WHAT IT IS THAT WE SHALL PRODUCE.

+Use Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to Kill Your Thursday, Friday, and Saturday

This is an often overlooked part of developing true productivity - NOT just ‘busyness’. We don’t want to just go around working on things that won’t really matter in the long run or things that aren’t taking us where we want to go.

Once we get clear on what we are committed to producing, we can begin working through the second part of the definition; the part dealing with output and input.

For most people, their main input is time and their output is what they produce. And, in my experience, most people actually need to focus more on how they input their time before they analyze their level of output.

IN OTHER WORDS, IF THE TIME YOU SPEND TRYING TO BE PRODUCTIVE DOESN’T YIELD THE RESULTS YOU WANT, YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT APPROACHING YOUR WORK WITH A HIGH LEVEL OF FOCUS IN THE FIRST PLACE. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEN IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE ACTUALLY MOTIVATED AND EXCITED BY WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

+3 Productivity Hacks

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO SPEND IT ALL WORKING ON THINGS THAT DON’T LIGHT US UP ?

The problem is that most people are not extremely clear on what they want to accomplish and how their goals are aligned with their core values enough to make the things they are working on exciting and engaging.

BUT ASSUMING YOU ARE CLEAR ON YOUR MISSION, AND YOU ARE ATTACKING YOUR WORK WITH PASSION AND PURPOSE, HOW DO YOU LEARN TO CONSISTENTLY ACCOMPLISH MORE?

I won’t dive into too great of detail because each of these tips could easily be a full essay, however, I have personally seen massive and consistent gains in productivity by focusing on these 3 areas:

1. We learn to work smarter not harder through techniques like the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule states that for many outcomes roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes), time blocking/task batching, and also through systems like Getting Things Done (GTD) and Agile Project Management.
2. We learn to leverage automation technologies through our CRMs and Task Management Systems using tools like Zapier that can eliminate many repetitive tasks from our business workflow.
3. We learn to become more. In other words, we increase our capacity to produce, thereby increasing our productivity. This is my favorite method because I love the journey of personal growth and development. It continues to enrich my life in every way and reveal new dimensions of what is possible.

IN CLOSING, MAKE SURE YOU ARE CLEAR ON WHAT YOU WANT TO PRODUCE. MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE TRULY EXCITED AND PASSIONATE ABOUT IT SO THAT YOUR TIME SPENT IS SUPER FOCUSED. THEN USE THE 3 WAYS MENTIONED ABOVE TO GET MORE OUTPUT WITHOUT HAVING TO PUT IN MORE TIME :)"

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