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This modern society in which business happens almost instantly with all this new technology is putting us up in extreme pressure.

We are trying to compete with our own technology which makes sales for ourselves, which does not need to sleep and it is always focused. This means automatically that we are always the in the rush to be

1. Productive
2. Extremely focused
3. Be Always there (time)

Time, Focus, Productivity are the 3 of the most important factors that determine our quality as a business person or as an employee and for that reason they work very closely together. You need all of them to coexist in order to have a positive outcome.

We have always been told that the more you put pressure on you the more productive you will be, if you feel stressed you are being productive, if you feel that you are doing something then you are productive. If you do it faster than the others then you are productive.

If you are trying to compete against the very same technology that we as men created in order to increase our productivity then your problem is your point of view, you will never be able to be 24 hours a day 7 days a week the very same person with a Top Performance on whatever you do.

For that very same reason the first thing you need to do is slow down. If you want to achieve greater rates of productivity you need to slow down, let’s do a case scenario on blogging (which for sure all you bloggers will be able identify with this) in order to build up on this topic:

Let’s say that you are blogger, you find out that you are able to write average articles and that you can make some money out of it. You then find out many great social bookmarking sites in which you are getting votes and thus generating traffic for your blog which also equals to make some money.

You start to get “smart” and you start to do some calculations: “ If I make 1 article EACH DAY and submit to the social bookmarks then I will get this and this result and so much and much money “ . Yayyyy you say GREAT! … let’s work on it now and get rich! (I bet the whole majority of people who read this have made that calculation above ) .

So what you have done here is having the false belief that :

1. You will be able to write one great article each day for the rest of your life.
2. You will be able to compete with Social Internet in order to have the most of it.
3. You will always ever have the time to do that
4. You will never feel stressed or pressured
5. You will be always able to repeat the results on a consistent basis

END RESULT: you will bail out and give up blogging in no time, completely exhausted and traumatized from the experience.

Lesson #1: Be Realistic, Know Yourself so you do not burn yourself out.

After a couple of weeks (if not days) you will start to notice it, you will feel down, out of ideas and stressed which all translates to the core issue: ” YOU ARE NOT PRODUCTIVE ANYMORE ” , you will feel the need to take a break if not the need to bail out.

What happened? Where is my productivity gone?
Quite easy, your desire to compete to achieve your goal made you loose it.

Against whom was I competing with?
You were competing against Technology and more importantly AGAINST YOURSELF

How many times have you heard from many personal growth oriented material, Law of Attraction, Abraham teachings, that competing for something is not the way to go but on the contrary BEING CREATIVE!

Lesson #2: Creativity will make you more Productive

Aha!!!! We are jumping here to the core of Success again, CREATIVITY!

The creative process is what distinguishes us from everything else including you.

Now let’s look at what is needed in order to let the CREATIVE juices flow:

For that you will need to read
1. The creative power, it defines our species and make us stand out of the crowd
2. Learn how to Meditate (Easy)

Now that you understand what creativity is and how to untap it let’s continue through our Productivity journey. In order to continue and in order to keep working under the same case scenario I will ask you the following:

Can you spot WHEN do you get the best IDEAS for your blog?

Is it when you are in front of your computer trying to force yourself to find out something to write about?

Or Is it when you are still laying in your bed after a great night of sleep?

In my case it is when I am laying down on my bed, I am totally relaxed and happy and my mind is still wandering between the dream state and the wake state, I just let it wander, I am not even trying to look into what is going on or asking for an article for my blog (be aware that your subconscious knows exactly what you need) and all of sudden WHAM!!!! there I have a new Idea for an article, just like this very same article that I am writing right now, it just came to me….

What you need to do next to that great Idea is to write it down at least the title and a couple of lines in order to be able to remind yourself what was all about and then construct it in a useful post for someone else. Be aware that such ideas if not written will be forgotten and you do not want that. I have to admit that my most popular articles did came from this state of mind and the reason for that will need another big article in order to explain.

Can you see that the less you do and force yourself up the better you will be? Can you understand why you are always being told in personal growth material, that you need to relax, experience life and let creativity flow?

Lesson #3: Be more Productive by relaxing you and enjoying the experience of life.

I know it sounds illogical, that the less you do the better you will be at least for the eyes of those people who do not understand that in order to do more and really bring the bacon home you need to be relaxed…

Let me tell you about a personal experience:

Once upon a time, I was working as a freelancer and got this huge contract for a company, those days I was on the same channel as everyone that I just needed to push myself to the limit in order to make the most money and achieve whatever I wanted to achieve, at that moment I would have at least 4 years without taking a single week of vacation and If I had free time (a.k.a vacation) I would do more work on other personal projects.

This contract, got me under a lot of pressure and stress, and nonetheless all of sudden my body just claimed for a STOP, I got very sick, I had at least 4 different sicknesses at once and I was at least a full month in bed without being able to do anything but just sleep and take pills.

After I got better, I commented what happened to me to a friend and he told me: “In the end you took forced vacations, I would have rather take my vacations and enjoy instead of taking a vacation of suffering and pain” …

After that experience and learning my lesson, I moved forward and made a very important change in my life…

Lesson #4: Be more Productive by taking a lot of Breaks, whether short or long, the more you are able to take short breaks the better you will be able to keep your productivity up.

For some reason God said once in the Bible that the Seventh day is Sabbath. No matter how Superman you believe you are, you need lots of breaks and lots of relaxation in order to get the most out of you.

The problem (at least for our society) is that when we are in a day job and your boss or other people see you like you are daydreaming (because you are relaxed and letting creativity flow in order to be more productive) they will think that you are lazy and that you are not efficient enough for your job and you might even get fired, thank god you cannot fire yourself up when writing your own blog, but I do know that many people who will read this article will say “I cannot do such thing even If I want to because in my day job the more I compete the more I get” …

Efficiency another interesting point for this big mix, the trick here is to find out a way to let other people not know what you are doing. I think another personal experience will help to make the point here:

At this moment, I am writing this extensive article in my day job, in other words I am doing something else out of my other tasks time without affecting my efficiency in my day job not even a little bit, I will be honest with you I am even more efficient than other people here, not because I look efficient to other people’s eyes but because the numbers do not lie. We divide our work in projects and every end of the month these projects will be posted in a big board, this is all statistical information about how is the performance of each project doing and so on. The reality is that my numbers look slightly better than from the other people around me, the BIG DIFFERENCE lies in that I am working much more EFFICIENTLY.

Why do I work efficiently?

1. Because I am always relaxed
2. I take a lot of “water breaks” (I do not drink coffee) in order to let my creativity flow
3. I become a lot of ideas that then I am able to implement at once with a lot of less TRIAL AND ERROR
4. I am even able to save some money of the budget because of my efficiency.

In fact, at the moment that I do need to solve another problem for someone else I just go ahead and write articles for my blog that way I look to others like I am doing something important about my projects, (so to the eye of the beholder I look like everyone else) but what I am doing is in fact letting my creative mind wander and give me the solutions I need.

Lesson #5: Productivity and Efficiency is increased by working Smarter not Harder…

And back to our Blog Writing Case Scenario, what would you rather prefer? To write one or two amazing articles per week, which will bring you lot of traffic because of its quality thanks to your creativity and gained experience or work hard (but not smart) trying to spit out 5 or 7 articles per week with no follow up?

I promise you that you will get the same results or even better but you will be working a lot less. You might be impatient and thinking that you are loosing your time by doing less, but the fact is that you are not doing less in fact you are doing more because you are doing a lot of work inside you and your, this work will translate in amazing things that will overcome your obstacles very easily.

Lesson #6: Being Patient makes you more Productive and Efficient.

This article got a little extensive, LOL what would my work colleagues think of me by spending so much time typing and typing, well that is our little secret… a secret that if it is working wonders for me it will for sure work for you…

Lesson #7 (Homework) : Notice how Good can you implement what you learn from personal growth, laws of the universe and common sense in order to make your life more productive.