Productivity! This word has gained a lot of notoriety as we have moved into the information age. We are presently in a hustle and bustle world were everyone is “grinding” to make a living. To live a full life consisting of time for your family and friends, time for travel activities and time for an engaging social life, you must hone this skill called productivity.
I would equally like to add some fuel to the fire of productivity by introducing a concept that is seldom talked about. It is called self-efficacy. In the words of Albert Bandura, one of the greatest psychologists to walk the face of the earth,
“Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s ability to influence events that effect one’s life and control over the way these events are experienced.”
In other words, Albert Bandura is trying to alert people on the power of belief; a dogma so strong that it could result in a possible control over the way you experience events in your life.
On the other hand, productivity is a word that has been abused and misconstrued by the general public. Amid the endless chatter on social media platforms about “grinding”, and the oftentimes misrepresented symbol of productivity being a complete to-do-list. Productivity does not have so much to do with getting a lot of things done. But has more to do with getting fewer things done and bagging more accolades.
It is important to note that being productive creates room for an outcome. That outcome could be a “pass” or “fail” outcome. Self-efficacy helps you to survive both outcomes to move on to the next productive task.
Let’s get into it.
Social Modeling.
Social modeling is a fancy term that refers to picking a role model that demonstrates self-efficacy. But the big question is, what does that look like? Well… an exemplary figure of self-efficacy is a person who does what you dream about doing despite the adversity. To improve productivity it is important to have a figure that is at the destination you are trying to reach. Having this gives you that extra kick and motivation when dealing with tasks that take you one more step towards the goal. But most importantly, it is essential that you learn from the mistakes of that role model. That way, you do less and bag more accolades.
Be honest With Your Self.
It is really important to differentiate between pretending to be busy and actually making progress. I worked in a company where my assistant manager would always look like shes was working a hundred times harder than the CEO. However, at the end of the day, a lot of tasks would have gone undone. Also, a plethora of social media personnel fabricates how much work they are really doing. With posts like #onmygrind with pictures of stationery arranged across a clean, white table with closed book stacked at about 3ft. This visual representation has nothing to do with productivity. Be honest with your self and work for your self and not for other people.
Stop Multitasking; Focus.
Multitasking is a myth. The word is actually originated in the computer world. computers are so awesome because of their ability to multitask. although this feature is great on computers and they have the capacity to handle that but as humans, unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to handle it. in fact, a study published by Forbes Magazine indicates that multi-tasking reduces efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus one thing at a time. Do not multitask, focus on the individual goals and see where that would take you.
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Previously published on Medium.com.
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Photo credit: By Hello I’m Nik 🎞 on Unsplash