Systems to find and realize your goals
This post is the introduction to our third category.
Today I want to introduce to you the concept of productivity, what it means, what its implications are, and why this is such an important and huge field, as well as future topics that you can expect under this category.
1. What is productivity?
Coming from the Latin word ‘producere’, which translates as: product – ‘brought forth’, the term ‘productivity’ entered the world. With it associated, the ability to generate, enhance or bring forth goods, services, and changes in oneself.
Another description would be a metaphorical movement in a set direction, with a set goal and a certain continuity, to achieve or bring forth some product, service, or change.
Examples for productivity are: creating a fitness routine, starting a business, working on your relationships, going shopping for food to eat, etc. In general, everything you do towards a goal or multiple goals of yours can be considered productive. But not only this, there is a lot of productivity in other areas, then only the personal one. There is productivity in a business; economical productivity and financial productivity, there is productivity in science, religion, society, and so on. Every activity towards an individual or collective goal, which is done in a continuous and structured manner is productivity.
As you can see, this covers quite a brought field. To not get lost in all of this productivity, we are going to narrow down what we are interested in and what our focus is for this category.
First of all, if we on this blog talk about productivity, we are concerned with the personal aspects of it. Meaning, to understand how are you as an individual productive, and how can you be more active towards your goals. The goals of survival, as well as our own internal goals and plans.
This mentioned ‘individual productivity’ can broadly be split into two fields. Internal- and external Productivity.
Internal Productivity is productivity towards personal development, towards changing and structuring one’s mind and understanding of reality.
External Productivity is productivity concerning material goals. A fitness habit, a business, your cleaning routine, etc. In short, it is to create and build the life you want to have. It is, you could say, what can be seen of your changes from others.
Notice, that even though we made a split here, there are a lot of activities and changes, which require effort in both internal- as well as external productivity.
To make this picture even more clear, let us look for a short moment at what is not productivity.
We listed a lot of productivities here, so is there even anything that can’t be considered productive? In fact, there is. Most humans have a great tendency towards activities that won’t bring them forward. This comes, for example, from a lack of clarity towards their goals, not enough commitment, or just the simple absence of interest to put effort into self-growth, just to name a view. To name an exact example for an unproductive activity is a bit harder already. Because if we are on a personal level the goals can differ very much. So, what is unproductive for one person can be productive for another one. I mean, there are brought examples, but only concerning survival productivity. Like, it is unproductive to smoke or drink in excess because it shortens your life and long-term functionality, or breathing on the exhaust of a running car. Yes, these are unproductive, but the first one can still be considered a goal of an individual if it just wants to have fun and is not concerned in a long-term view. And the second one in without arguing really not productive if you want to live, that’s why barely anyone does it. So, for a little better example we need some context.
Let’s imagine a person together. This person is a bit overweight and is not fully satisfied with his looks and how it feels in his body, thus it decides to set its goal to loosen weight and become healthier. Now a productive activity or habit for this person could be to go workout, go jogging or read a book on health and fitness. This much is easy to say, but the interesting part of this is, that every goal has activities you have to do to reach it, as well as activities you have not to do, to reach it. In our example, if our person comes home from the gym, lays on the couch, and starts eating fast food for the rest of the day, this is counterproductive towards the first set goal, to lose weight. So, overeating while wanting to lose weight is quite unproductive. Like this, it is with every other goal, every activity which works against your goals is unproductive. This is easy to say but hard to see in oneself, because first, you have to be clear of your goals in life, to evaluate correctly whether something is productive for you or not and secondly because we have multiple goals, which can intervene with each other, which makes balancing and sorting them out quite a lot of work.
But for now, we don’t want to go too deep into the specifics of that. Because the more we do, the more explanation and concepts will be needed for one to follow. These concepts and the deeper understanding of this topic are what we will present under this category in the future.
2. Your Goals
Now, that you have a more defined idea of productivity, let’s talk about goals. I mentioned goals quite a lot in the previous section. That is because goals are the starting point for productivity. You won’t be productive if you don’t have a goal.
This is because without a goal you just run around without aim. You would do a little bit of this and of that, but you will never move in a straight direction. It’s more like walking in circles or being on a ship in the ocean without any steering wheel.
Because there is no image in your mind of where you want to be in the future, you will mainly stick in your comfort zone, doing what you already know. Furthermore, you will seek short-term pleasure, because you are missing the motivation for a long-term view, to make ongoing changes in a straight direction.
You also won’t be productive if you aren’t clear enough about your goal(s).
To understand, why this is, let us think about our example from before. The person that sets his goal to be healthier. While ‘to be healthier’ is more in a straight direction than no goal, it is still not narrow enough to give you a good view for the future and also not narrow enough to give enough instruction on which way to go. To find a more precise goal, for our example, we have to ask in which way the person wants to be healthier, what it means for the person to be healthier. Does he want to feel more comfortable in his body, or does she want to reach a fixed weight? Or is this person fine with this aspect, but it feels like eating more natural food or just less sugar and fat?
Can you see that if we answer these questions, we get more information about this goal?
And it is because of this additional information, that we can approach our goal better and with more precision. And while our goal is getting clearer, our motivation rises, because now we have a better image in mind of where we want to be in the future. What’s more, is that we can recall this image more easily if we stand in front of a decision, a decision which may influence our goal or not.
As you should understand by now, goals are a very important thing, that is why one aspect of this category is to understand goals deeper and more fundamental, this includes goal-finding, traps and distractions, concepts around goals, and many more.
3. Methods & Structures for productivity
After we have a defined goal, we need a plan of action. Because simply having a goal won’t get you there. We need to know which action to do and how to do it. We need to make a habit out of a new action if we want to sustain it long-term. So, we need to know what kind of skill or knowledge we need, what materials we need, we have to make an order in which we take action, and then, we finally have to take action.
Contrary to society’s view that action is the most important thing, I would like to point out, that the planning and structuring of your goals, is at least as important as the implementation itself. Because starting to go to the gym and then stopping after a while because you have no routine and only go if you feel like it, won’t make you healthy or fit. Only a structure supporting and directing your effort to go to the gym will get you to be healthier and fitter.
Or take someone, which goal it is, to become an amazing painter. If all this person does, is painting now and then if he feels like it, his chance of reaching this goal goes to zero. On the other hand, if he made a schedule to structure when he paints, when he reads about painting when he learns the history and philosophy about it and sticks to it, there is no way around reaching this goal. Can you see this? – Only with structured action you can reach a goal.
So, don’t fool yourself by skipping the planning and structuring of your goals, because society tells you to take action directly. Already, to plan and structure your goals is an action. But, as for the topics above, we will go into this in detail later. Because there are many aspects about this topic that we can talk about. Some of these, are tips and information on how to structure your goals, understand structuring, understand habits and how to build new ones, delete obsolete ones, as well as traps and tricks to escape and evade them.
4. Future Topics
All that’s left after the steps above, is to be patient and to stick to your goal. And that’s basically all there is to productivity in a general sense. The challenge, however, is to apply this to oneself. As it turns out, this is not the easiest thing to do. If it would be that easy, there would be a lot more truly productive people.
There are not, because a lot of people fail to be productive. Or more productive than just basic survival. Productive towards their own personal goals.
That is why under this category we will gather everything concerning ‘productivity’.
This includes for example:
– Ego survival
– Resistance
– Defense mechanisms
– Discipline
– Short vs long-term growth
– Neurosis
– Habits
– Fear
– Comfort zone
– Struggle
– Time blocking
– Planning
– Goal finding
– Traps & obstacles
– Motivation
– Journaling and other tools
– And many more
Our understanding is, that with enough information, structure, and actual work, towards your goal, you will eventually succeed. For this, we want to gather everything needed under this category.