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more understanding and supportive, and they will even encourage you to keep working at the job until it is finished.
Many companies with sale forces use this system of family rewards with great success. They organize their sales contests and quotas in such a way that the top producers go to a resort in Hawaii or the Caribbean if they hit their targets. They send the brochures describing the resorts to the spouses of the salespeople at their homes. The spouse at home, wanting to go to the resort as well, will constantly encourage the salesperson to make the sales necessary to qualify for the trip.
Rewards are wonderful incentives to high performance. You should create as many of them for yourself as you can think of. Even if it is something as simple as going for a walk after finishing a report, the anticipation of the reward will drive you onward and help you to concentrate on the task.
Talk to Yourself Positively
You can improve your ability to concentrate on any task by the use of positive affirmations to program your subconscious mind. Whatever commands you repeat to yourself are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind then motivates and drives you to behave in a way consistent with that command.
When you talk to yourself in a positive way, combined with the emotions of enthusiasm and conviction, you find yourself internally driven toward higher productivity. You can develop a trigger phrase when your attention wanders 149
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and you feel yourself getting distracted from your work. Keep repeating,
“Back to work! Back to work! Back to work!”
Whenever you find yourself getting distracted, or you feel like procrastinating, just sit down in front of your job and say to yourself, “Back to work!” This will jolt you into getting back on task, and keep you working on the job until it is done.
When someone else wants to talk to you or distract you from your work, you can break away by simply saying, “Well, I guess I have to get back to work!” Whenever you say that you have to get back to work, the other person will usually stop talking and leaves you alone.
Each time you repeat these words, you will be surprised at how easy it is for you to return to your work and start concentrating again.
Practice Single Handling
One of the most powerful methods for getting things done is to practice what is called “single handling.” Single handling requires that, once you start a task of any kind, you resolve to stay at that task until it is 100% complete.
If you pick up a letter, or begin a report or proposal, or initiate a sales call or conversation, discipline yourself to stay at it until it is finished. This simple technique can increase your productivity by as much as 50% the first day you start using it. It is one of the most powerful habits of time management you will ever learn.
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Get Onto the Learning Curve
Take advantage of what time and motion experts call the “learning curve.”
When you do a group of similar tasks together, the amount of time it takes you to do each subsequent task declines. If you have to do ten or twenty of the same task, like telephone calls or reports, you can decrease the amount of time necessary for the completion of each of these tasks by as much as 80%
by using the learning curve. Every time you do one of these tasks, you get better at it and it takes you less time to do it even better next time.
The learning curve only works when you do similar tasks one after the other, repeatedly, until they are all done. This is why it is essential to bunch your tasks and do them all at once rather than sporadically through the day.
Personal Productivity Techniques
There are a series of techniques you can practice to increase your productivity and performance, and improve the rate at which you get things done. These are methods used by the highest paid and most productive people in every field.
1. Concentrate Your Powers
Use the principle of “concentration of power.” This requires that you concentrate your talents and abilities where they will yield the highest pay-151
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off to you at the moment. It is the key to personal productivity and is essential to success in personal strategic planning.
In corporate strategy sessions, we focus on the goal of increasing “Return on Equity (ROE).” The purpose of business strategy is to allocate the company’s resources in such a way that they yield the highest possible financial return on the equity invested.
In setting personal strategy for yourself, your goal is to get the highest
“return on energy (ROE).” Your job is to allocate your talents and abilities in such a way that you achieve the highest possible return on the mental, emotional and physical energies that you invest in your work. Your highest return on energy is almost always that task where you combine your unique talents and abilities with the specific needs of the situation. You then focus and concentrate single-mindedly on that one task, which is the key to high productivity.
Whenever you have a new job to do, ask yourself, “Does this job give me my highest return on energy invested?” Discipline yourself to apply your skills where you can achieve the greatest results and rewards for both yourself and your company.
2. Concentrate Where Superior Results Are Possible
Resolve to concentrate on the few areas where superior performance will bring outstanding results. Usually less than 5% of what you do accounts for 152
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most of your results. Continually ask yourself, “What can I and only I do, that if done well, will make a real difference?”
Discipline yourself not to work at those tasks that, no matter how well you do them, they cannot help you or advance you in your career. They do not give you as high a “return on energy” as something else.
3. Do Things You’re Better At
Do things that you are better at. When you do things at which you excel, you get more done, make fewer mistakes and achieve greater personal productivity. Not only that, you enjoy your work more when you are doing things that you do well. What are the few things that you do better than anyone else?
What is it that you do easily that seems to be difficult for others? Focus on your unique talents and concentrate on those few areas where you can achieve superior results. This is the key to peak performance.
4. Focus on Opportunities
Concentrate your strengths and the strengths of others on your major opportunities. Focus on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday. Concentrate your best talents and energies, and those of your best people, on those few areas where major breakthroughs are possible.
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Many companies make the mistake of putting their best people to work to salvage the mistakes of yesterday, rather than deploying them to maximize the opportunities of tomorrow. Keep asking yourself, “What are my biggest opportunities for the future? Where can I make a real breakthrough if I concentrate?”
5. Fish for Whales
Fish for whales, not minnows. Remember that if you catch 1000 minnows, all you have is a bucketful of fish. But if you catch a single whale, you will pay for the whole voyage.
In business, you must look at your marketplace and try to determine who or what the whales might be. You then make a plan to go after them.
Sometimes, landing one big customer, or selling one whale of an order will be enough to make a business or an individual successful.
6. Focus on Key Result Areas
Identify your key result areas and work in them exclusively. The key results you are expected to get are the answers to the question, “Why am I on the payroll?”
Each person has five to seven key result areas where they can make an important contribution to their job, and to the organization. It is only when you concentrate your efforts on your key result areas that you will achieve the most significant results possible for you in the shortest period of time.
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7. Set and Keep Deadlines
Set deadlines for important goals and stick to them. Deadlines act as forcing systems that cause you to work harder and more effectively as the deadline approaches.
A goal or an assignment without a deadline is usually an exercise in futility.
It has no motivational force behind it. It creates no compulsion to closure. It is something that you easily procrastinate on, and put off until the last minute.
Set deadlines for everything you do. Promise other people that you will finish certain jobs by the deadline. When you promise others, you motivate yourself to fulfill the promise. When you place your honor and your ego on the line by promising others, you find yourself internally driven and motivated to get the job done exactly as you said, on schedule.