Following on the previous post on how to measure personal productivity, one aspect of Seth Godin’s ‘Business/busyness‘ post has retained my attention. “Our productivity varies wildly. It depends on the project, on the connections, on where we are in the process. ”
I would bring it one notch further: depending on how we measure it, our personal productivity varies greatly during a day or over any given time period, and that’s needed. The extreme example is to take a power nap (productivity zero) before a productive moment. We can’t be hyper-productive at any time – that’s an energy issue.
Even at the scale of the week or month, we might spend a lot of time researching or reading books on the subject (low productivity) before producing something that the world will greatly value (high productivity). We take leave days off to be refreshed for work. As a consultant, if client fees are used as a measurement of value created (for the client), periods of Business Development and proposal production periods would be categorised improductive, but they end up generating substantial value for a new client.
Therefore, even if our average productivity or value creation is important, we need to accept that it varies wildly during our day, week, month or year – and that low productivity moment are needed to prepare for high productivity periods. It looks like a paradox, but it is in fact complementary.
