BUSY PEOPLE V/S PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE

Some of us feel as if there are just not enough hours in the day. We are constantly rushed and struggle to keep our head above water. People who are always busy may appear to be accomplishing a lot. But are they being productive?

The fact of the matter is BUSY DOES NOT MEANS PRODUCTIVE. Just because someone is constantly performing tasks, does not necessarily mean that they r moving closer to any major goal.

There are many fundamental differences between Busy People and Productive People.

Busy People have many goals but Productive People have priorities. Multitasking may seem to be a valuable skill but if you try to read 4 books at once, do you really think you will retain any of the knowledge? Trying to reach too many goals at the same time is slower than handling each goal, one at a time. Productive People on the other hand set stubborn priorities and can categorize their goals in such a way that the most critical things get handled first and receive the most attention. So, if your top priority is to reduce extra body fats, no matter what you should start your day with 1000 push-ups exercise without any excuses and distractions. Do not let emails, texts or any other lesser tasks interfere with the highest priority. Once the higher priority task has been completed then and only then you can move on to the next priority task.

  

The next major difference is busy people quickly say YES to everything. While productive people will say NO, or will take time to consider and calculate before saying YES. Bruce Lee once said “One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily INCREASE, but daily DECREASE. The height of cultivation always runs on Simplicity.” This basically means having less in your life will lead to more clarity, creation and production. If you say yes to every little request, you are filling your schedules with tasks that are not getting you closer to your ultimate goals, freedom and success. Productive people have learned to shut the door to the distractions and side-tracks.

There is a philosophy in economics called 80-20 Rule which states that clear majority of a profit comes from a small fraction of a client base and 80 % revenue comes from 20% or less customers. Conversely, 80% of your headaches and problems comes from 20% of your difficult clients. So simply saying no to difficult client or stressful tasks will lead to more success and allow you to focus on the greater target.

This 80-20 Law evidences can be also found in many regular chores. The most frequently used 20% of the words account for 80% of the word occurrences in language. The richest 20% of the humans have 80% of worlds income. In the US, 20% of the patients use 80% of the health care resources. In 2002, Microsoft reported that 80% of the errors and crashes in windows and office are caused by 20% of the bugs involved. People wear around 20% of their clothes 80% of the times.

How do you spend your free time when you are not at work? Do you have any hobbies or like certain leisure activities that help you relax and feel better? If watching TV and just lying on the couch accounts for 80% of your precious downtime, it will only bring you 20% of actual enjoyment and happiness. Change this around and find a hobby that will be beneficial to your body and mind.

Busy people get things done just in time but on the other hand productive people set unrealistic deadlines. If you are going to trip in a month, how long will it take you to pack? An hour before your flight you will still be scrambling around trying to finish packing. But let’s say you had a gun to your head and you are told to pack in 10 min. Could you, do it? Of course, you could because work always takes the full amount of time you allow it to. So, if you set a goal with no deadline inside, that goal will just keep getting further away. By settling an unrealistic deadline, you force yourself into immediate action.

The most Productive People have only one to three things on their daily to-do-list whereas, busy people have more than 20. So next time before making to-do-list, ask yourself your highest priorities and what things can you eliminate so that you won’t feel that you are inventing things to feel busy. With such productive mind-set, vision becomes clear and success becomes reality.


Feel free to comment. Thank you.

SECRETS OF CREATIVITY

IBM's 2010 Global CEO Study, consisting of in-person interviews with over 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries, uncovered that in this current world plagued with increasing complexities, CEOs believe that creativity trumps all other leadership qualities, including rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision. Employees feel similarly, as creativity is regarded as one of the top 3 personality traits most important to career success.

      

“A  great artist is but a conduit for an expression that resonates with something that is greater than him or herself” There are people who target by their creative process with such humility as there is sense that something larger than yourself has worked its way through you. Well-known para-phrase of Khalil Gibran’s notion about children “Creative process or creativity comes through but not from you, though it is with you, it belongs not to you.” When we craft beauty, or woke alive or order inspiration, we are not actually creating something that is there but we are merely transcribing. When we go to play some round of idols, we are seeing the reality through different operating system or filters and seeing the world through different lenses. Creativity is seeing the things the way others can’t see and then share it back with others.

The world has been fascinated by the relationship between creativity and madness. As quoted by anonymous profession artist “In order to use your head, you have to go out of your mind”. This also implies to the willingness to go to unknown places, to go to different landscapes, willingness to step out of your comfort zone, to de-condition ones thinking, one’s reflexive responses to stimuli and to go to other realms of the mind.

An artist brings vision and sovereigns from the ecstatic spaces and places in which they amble. At the end of the day, these artists become depleted because they sacrifice the part of themselves to bring back those visions to create the phase change in the consciousness of the society. They leaves their consensus trends and cultural operating systems to show us different reality tunnels that gives us the sense of perspective. We, as a consumer of art, pay money for them as they take us to the spaces where we cannot go by ourselves. So, these artists are heroes, cultural luminary and mad-man who are somehow able to coax and domesticate their madness.

  

Where creativity comes from has mystified us from centuries. Throughout history we have believed that the creativity was rare and seen in a smaller arena - Professional painters, performers and musicians. For a long time, creativity was an enigma and beyond the reach of the science. But today we know that it takes creativity to solve problems and it is the aspect of human intelligence. We find creativity in architecture, science, engineering and even in nature. Creativity is everywhere and in last few decades there have been dozens of studies exploring it using brain imaging technology. Over 40 different brain areas are involved in creativity and so many professional artist suffering from damage to different brain regions continue to produce art with same level of creativity.

Human spend about 30% of the day in mind engaged in wondering, which helps in being creative. Mind-wondering may also promote the brains ability to restructure a way you look at the problem. Perhaps you can sometimes make connections between two seemingly unrelated things and come up with novel creative solution. Every one of us wonders, then why are all not creative geniuses. To answer the above question biology may play a part too. In one study the families who collectively scored high on musical aptitude on creativity test were more likely to have an extra copy Glucose Mutarotase Gene.

Researchers have also found out that some personality traits like risk-taking and openness to new experiences contribute to the creativity of an individual. Some people have little advantage of biology in creativity, but it can be nurture too and anyone can be creative by practicing your craft, letting your mind wonder and practicing problems through unique ways.

       

                            

The word, "Creativity", in our society has mistakenly been limited to artistic endeavors, but it also encompasses essential parts of everyday life -- divergent thinking, problem solving, and innovation.

Tony, an inventor of the revolutionary mind mapping technique, explains how to have better creative thinking. According to him we must dispel the notion that anyone anywhere in the world cannot be creative as we have a million of brain cells that can integrate. The bridge is still seen around us because many do not know how to use it effectively. It has been discovered that left brain deals with the logic and right brain deals with the imagination. So creativity was thought be to be right brained, but it actually needs logic working with imagination to be creative. Speed of thinking, which is also called fluency, measures how can you generate ideas. It can be developed by playing at it, practice thinking faster, work out some puzzles like chess, suduko, crosswords and many more. The speed and the efficiency or the productivity of the work are the hall mark of the creative genius. We can also play a game called “Alternative uses of different things”.