Triple Your Personal Productivity
Have you ever had the experience of looking back on your week with the
sinking feeling that you didn't get as much done as you'd hoped? When
building a successful career or a business of your own, your time is
perhaps your most valuable asset, and your income is a direct result
of how you spend your time. You cannot buy any more time than you're
given, and the clock is always ticking. A few years ago, I discovered
a simple system that allowed me to nearly triple my productivity, and
in this article I'll share some very practical ideas you can apply
right away to increase your effectiveness without working any harder
than you do now.
Keep a detailed time log.
The first step to better managing your time is to find out how you're
currently spending your time. Keeping a time log is a very effective
way to do this, and after trying it for just one day, you'll
immediately gain tremendous insight into where your time is actually
going. The very act of measuring is often enough to raise your
unconscious habits into your consciousness, where you then have a
chance to scrutinize and change them.
Here's how to keep a time log. Throughout your day record the time
whenever you start or stop any activity. Consider using a stopwatch to
just record time intervals for each activity. You can do this during
only your working time or throughout your entire day. At the end of
the day, sort all the time chunks into general categories, and find
out what percentage of your time is being spent on each type of
activity. If you want to be thorough, do this for a week, and
calculate the percentage of your total time that you spent on each
type of activity. Be as detailed as possible. Note how much time you
spend on email, reading newsgroups, web surfing, phone calls, eating,
going to the bathroom, etc. If you get up out of your chair, it
probably means you need to make an entry in your time log. I typically
end up with 50-100 log entries per day.
You may be surprised to discover you're spending only a small fraction
of your working time doing what you'd consider to be actual work.
Studies have shown that the average office worker does only 1.5 hours
of actual work per day. The rest of the time is spent socializing,
taking coffee breaks, eating, engaging in non-business communication,
shuffling papers, and doing lots of other non-work tasks. The average
full-time office worker doesn't even start doing real work until
11:00am and begins to wind down around 3:30pm.
Analyze your results.
The first time I kept a time log, I only finished 15 hours worth of
real work in a week where I spent about 60 hours in my office. Even
though I was technically about twice as productive as the average
office worker, I was still disturbed by the results. Where did those
other 45 hours go? My time log laid it all out for me, showing me all
the time drains I wasn't consciously aware of -- checking email too
often, excessive perfectionism doing tasks that didn't need to be
done, over-reading the news, taking too much time for meals,
succumbing to preventable interruptions, etc.
Calculate your personal efficiency ratio.
When I realized that I spent 60 hours at the office but only completed
15 hours of actual work within that time, I started asking myself some
interesting questions. My income and my sense of accomplishment
depended only on those 15 hours, not on the total amount of time I
spent at the office. So I decided to begin recording my daily
efficiency ratio as the amount of time I spent on actual work divided
by the total amount of time I spent in my office. While it certainly
bothered me that I was only working 25% of the time initially, I also
realized it would be extremely foolish to simply work longer hours.
Efficiency Ratio = (Time Doing "Real Work") / (Time Spent "At Work")
Cut back on total hours to force an increase in efficiency.
If you've ever tried to discipline yourself to do something you
weren't really motivated to do, you most likely failed. That was
naturally the result I experienced when I tried to discipline myself
to work harder. In fact, trying harder actually de-motivated me and
drove my efficiency ratio even lower. So I reluctantly decided to try
the opposite approach. The next day I would only allow myself to put
in five hours total at the office, and the rest of the day I wouldn't
allow myself to work at all. Well, an interesting thing happened, as
I'm sure you can imagine. My brain must have gotten the idea that
working time was a scarce commodity because I worked almost the entire
five hours straight and got an efficiency ratio of over 90%. I
continued this experiment for the rest of the week and ended up
getting about 25 hours of work done with only 30 hours total spent in
my office, for an efficiency ratio of over 80%. So I was able to
reduce my weekly working time by 30 hours while also getting 10 more
hours of real work done. If your time log shows your efficiency ratio
to be on the low side, try severely limiting your total amount of
working time for a day, and see what happens. Once your brain realizes
that working time is scarce, you suddenly become a lot more efficient
because you have to be. When you have tight time constraints, you will
usually find a way to get your work done. But when you have all the
time in the world, it's too easy to be inefficient.
Gradually increase total hours while maintaining peak efficiency.
Over a period of a few weeks, I was able to keep my efficiency ratio
above 80% while gradually increasing my total weekly office time. I've
been able to maintain this for many years now, and I commonly get
about 40 hours of real work done every week, while only spending about
45 total hours in my office. I've learned that this is ideal for me.
If I try to put in more time at the office, then my productivity drops
off rapidly. The interesting thing is that the system that allowed me
to optimize my effectiveness at work also created a tremendous amount
of balance in all other areas of my life. Even though I was able to
use this approach to triple my business productivity, I still gained
plenty of time to pursue personal interests.
Time logging is the intelligent choice to ensure optimal productivity
without increasing your hours. But time logging need only be done
periodically to provide these benefits. I do it for one week every 3-6
months, and over the years it has made a huge difference for me,
always providing me with new distinctions. If I go too many months
without time logging, my productivity gradually drops as I fall back
into unconscious time-wasting habits. You'll probably find as I do
that your gut feelings about your productivity are closely related to
how much real work you actually get done. When you feel your
productivity is lower than you'd like, raise your awareness via time
logging, measure your efficiency ratio, and then optimize your
efficiency to boost your productivity back up where it belongs. Time
logging is a high leverage activity that takes very little time and
effort to implement, but the long-term payoff is tremendous.
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让你的个人效率翻三倍Triple Your Personal Productivity
你是否曾有过这种感觉：当你回顾自己度过的一周时感到消沉，因为你未能完成自身所期望的那么多工作。当你在打造一个成功的职业生涯或你自己的事业时，时间或许是你最宝贵的财富，如何支配你的时间直接决定了你的收入。你无法购买你自有之外的时间，而时钟却永不停息地滴答作响。
几年前，我发现了一个能让我把效率提高近三倍的简单方法，在本文中我将分享一些你可以马上着手进行的非常实用的观念，并且你不必为之付出比现在更多的努力。
使用一个详细的日程表
更好地管理你的时间的首要任务是找出你现在支配时间的方式。使用一个日程表是完成此步骤最有效的方法。仅需尝试一天，你会立即对你的时间到底去了哪里有了不可思议的洞察。该测量的举动通常足以把你的无意识习惯提升到意识层面，如此你才有机会仔细检视并改变它们。
此处是使用日程表的方法。一整天当你开始或完成某个活动时都把时间记录下来，可考虑使用秒表来记录每个活动的时间间隔。你可以仅在工作时间使用这个方法，或是一整天都用。一天结束时，把这些时间段分类记录到综合类别中，然后找出你在每类活动中耗费时间的百分比。假如想把这事做彻底，可以持续做上一周，再计算你在每类活动中耗费的时间占总时间的百分比。要尽可能地详尽：记下你在收发电子邮件、阅读新闻组、网上冲浪、打电话、就餐、洗澡等等事情上分别花费了多少时间。当你从椅子上站起来的时候，可能就表示你该在日程表里添上一笔了。我通常每天结束时会有50――100个日程记录。
你可能会惊讶地发现，你花在那些自认为是实质性工作的活动上只占了工作总时间的一小部分。有研究发现上班族每天在实质性工作上平均花费的时间为1.5小时。其余时间都耗在了社交、工间休息、就餐、与工作无关的交流、把文件挪来挪去，及其它许多与工作无关的事情上。全职上班族平均开始工作的时间是上午11
点，而下午3点半左右就开始懈怠了。
分析你的结果
我第一次使用日程表时，我一周在办公室花费了约60个小时，却只完成了15个小时的实质性工作。即使在技术上看来我的效率已是上班族均值的两倍，我仍为这个结果懊恼。另外45小时到哪去了？我的日程表清楚地显示出时间在我无意识的状态中流失――过分频繁地检查邮件、在那些实际上没有必要的事情上苛求完美、通读新闻、就餐时间过长、被其实可预防的干扰打断等等。
计算你的个人效率比
当我察觉自己在办公室里耗了60个小时，却只完成了15个小时的实质性工作时，我开始自问一些有趣的问题。我的收入和成就感仅仅来自那15个小时，而不是我在办公室耗费的所有时间。因此我决定开始记录我的每日效率比，也即我在实质性工作上耗费的时间除以我在办公室耗费的总时间。当我发现自己仅利用了25％的时间时这确实令我感觉糟透了。我同时认识到，仅仅延长工作时间是极其愚蠢的。
效率比＝实际工作时间/总的"工作时间"
用减少总时间推动效率提升
假如你曾经尝试过约束自己去做那些你并不真正有动力去做的事情，你失败的机率很大。这是当我试着约束自己去更努力地工作时的自然而然的结果。事实上，试图更努力只会降低我的动力并让我的效率比更低。因此我很不情愿地决定尝试相反的方法。第二天我只允许自己在办公室待上5个小时，而那天剩下的时间我不准自己再工作。哈，有趣的事情发生了，我肯定你能想象得到。我的大脑把工作时间当成了稀罕物，因为我持续工作了几乎整整5个小时且效率比超过了90％。我在一周接下来的几天里继续这个实验，于是这周在办公室度过的30个小时当中，我完成了25小时的工作，效率比超过80％。因此我在把每周工作时间减少到30小时的同时还多出了10小时来做实质性工作。假如你的日程表显示你的效率比十分低下，那就试着在一天中严格限制你的工作总时间，看看成果如何。一旦你的大脑认识到工作时间很紧迫，你突然间就会变得极有效率，因为你必须如此。当你有紧迫的时间限制时，你通常总能找出完成工作的办法。而当你有充裕时间时，很容易就变得效率低下。
保持最高效率的同时逐渐增加工作总时间
在几周的时间里，我能在保持自己的效率超过80％的同时逐渐增加我的每周工作时间。迄今为止我保持这个习惯已有多年，一般每周约有40小时用来干实质性工作，同时只需在办公室待上45小时。我觉得这对我来说太棒了。假如我试图在办公室待上更长时间，我的生产率就会飞速下降。最妙的是这个方法能让我在最优化自己的工作效率的同时也让我在生活的其它领域得到极大的平衡。我使用这个方法使事业成效提升了三倍，并且仍有大量时间来追求个人爱好。
使用日程表是确保生产率最佳而不必增加工作时间的明智选择。不过，日程表必须定期使用，才能产生这些优势。我每3――6个月用一次日程表，多年来它让我有了巨大的改变，总是让我有新的杰出表现。假如太长时间不用日程表，我的生产率就会逐渐下降――因为我又恢复了那些无意识的浪费时间的习惯。你将如我一般，发觉你对生产率的感受与你完成了多少实质性工作密切相关。当你感到自己的生产率比想达到的要低时，就利用日程表来提升你的意识和测量你的效率比，而后优化你的效率，直至生产率恢复如初。
记录日程是一种高效且无需什么努力就能做到的方法，而它的长期回报是惊人的。
鸣 谢：
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