Name: Work Simply
Rating: 3.6 (210 reviews)
Author: Carson Tate

What’s in it for me? Work more productively by being yourself.

Who doesn’t want to manage their time better? Every busy executive at one point or another has been seduced by time-management tricks or tools that promise huge productivity gains.

The problem with these approaches is they’re often one-size-fits-all solutions – which means they’re not much of a solution at all.

Such tools don’t take into account that each person uses her time differently, and therefore needs an individual solution to manage time more effectively.

In the following blinks, you’ll see you can’t manage time as if it was an unruly employee. Once you realize that, you’ll find a better path toward working more effectively; a way that better matches your personality, with the result that you’ll be able to get more done.

After reading these blinks, you’ll learn

which productivity personality you are;
why you just can’t budget time; and
how to pay better attention to how your brain works.

Find your productivity style. Figuring out what type of person you really are will help.

Have you ever been told you’re a “left-brained” or “right-brained” thinker?

If so, you already know what’s wrong with so many time management and productivity theories. These tools think that “one size fits all.” So just make more lists, they say, and you’ll improve.

Yet everyone has their own way of working, and what helps one person be more productive could be counterproductive to another. That’s why the most effective way to start working better is to examine yourself and approach your work in a fashion that fits your personality.

This is where the productivity style assessment can help.

A productivity style assessment is a test that is based on the findings of General Electric’s long-time manager of management education, Ned Herrmann. It examines how the brain perceives, processes, comprehends, manages and communicates information.

In other words, a productivity style assessment explains how people work!

While there are many different personalities, Hermann’s model offers four particular styles as a guide to start your assessment. Which style are you?

The first is the prioritizer. She’s efficient with her time and uses data, thoughtful analysis and logic to approach and solve problems. At work, she prioritizes the most important tasks and is annoyed when colleagues chatter while there’s work to be done.

The second is the planner. He loves making lists, organizing data and doing things in a particular order. When he gets to work, he reviews his schedule and shakes his head at some last-minute project his more unorganized colleagues are scrambling to finish.

The third is the arranger, who relies on his instinct to make decisions. He works well with others, and enjoys presenting information visually, as in a colorful flowchart. His main concern: “How will this decision make people feel?”

And last, there’s the visualizer, who can walk into a heated discussion and find a way to reorganize all the key points that solves everyone’s problems. When making decisions, she hates being dragged down by data, but will gather everyone’s input and synthesize it into something new – even if it’s contrary to “the way it’s always been done.”

You can earn money, but you can’t earn time. Make a master task list to organize your time wisely.

Once you understand that you can control your present and your future, it’s time to act! The best way to do this is to think differently about how you approach time management.

The thing is, time is not actually manageable. We cannot make time bend to our rules. It is, however, our most important resource.

You need willpower to control your own attention. Know your weaknesses and find a balance.

Ever feel as if you can’t make yourself pay proper attention? It’s vital that you harness this skill, as what you pay attention to has a significant impact on your productivity and your happiness.

Attention is a precious resource, and you need willpower to direct and control it.

Each day, you can devote your attention to just a limited number of things, as attention is not infinite. Yet, the better you are able to get a grip on your focus, the more you can achieve. This is because focusing clearly on one task will prevent you from being distracted by other goals.

How you think and how you work is what’s unique to you – embrace it, don’t fight it!

Pause for a moment and consider how your mind works for you, or against you. The truth is, our minds can actually sabotage us! But we have the power to change this.

First, you need to realize that you can only process a certain amount of information at once. This usually means taking in around two to three chunks of information at a time. This is why most of us struggle to recall more than a few names of people we’ve just met.

Key ideas in Work Simply