Stress-free productivity does exist

I have to say that I am finding extremely interesting the reading of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, by Daniel Goleman. In my opinion, knowing how to pay attention where we need to do it at every moment is, probably, one of the most valuable skills today, and also, one of the most difficult to achieve. This book addresses the issue from a perspective based entirely in science, which gives the material exhibited a special relevance, well above most of the common posts and guru-tips you can find on the internet.

One of the main bad habits in the field of personal productivity is the assignation of subjective priorities to our daily tasks and projects; a problem that stretches back to the traditional management systems.

I am not a fan of the tradition of making New Year’s resolutions. For two reasons. Firstly, because resolutions do not work. They are actually just wishes or dreams with no target date. They are usually defined in such a generic way (“enjoy life more”, “learn something new”) that do not involve any specific action you should take to achieve them. It is like trying to win the lottery without purchasing any ticket. You know it’s not going to happen.

Here I leave you something to think about this holidays…

The smartest way to improve any aspect of a business (sales, costs, customer satisfaction, etc.) is to measure the current results related to that aspect, use the data to infer a strategy that may improve performance, implement that strategy and measure again to determine whether we were right or not. Surely we will fail occasionally before finding the correct clue, but having actual data on which support our decision is critical. Build, measure and learn. This is the mantra of The Lean Startup entrepreneurship method, so fashionable lately.