In June 2006, I started to capturing my thoughts in relation to what has now become TPAssist 2007. Below is the first of three pieces I wrote on the subject:
"Welcome to TPAassist, a project of personal interest to me in that I use the methodology and tools in every aspect of my life from work to play.
In this opening blog, I am going to capture a few ideas and explore the notion of productivity. In time I hope to add insights into my methodology and provide general details of where and how to learn more.
“Productivity” - so what is all the fuss? I guess the term productivity is generally found in the work or business context, where owners, bosses and strategy consultants use it liberally in relation to any new technology, system, solution, tool or process they are trying to adopt. So what does it mean? I like the definition found at the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web site: “Productivity is a measure of economic efficiency which shows how effectively economic inputs are converted into output.” And in plain English, “less in, more out”.
Ok, so what does “less in, more out” translate into for you and I? It could be as easily as saying, “productivity = job and promotion”, because these days, if you can’t manage to do more with less you are likely to be shown the door. Now that is well and good, but of what use is this ramble? I like to think of productivity in terms of your ability to perform. If you are performing well, you are more likely to be able to achieve more with less.
So what is performance? To answer that question, you should look at the work by Timothy Gallwey, called the Inner Game. The Inner Game as developed by Gallwey in 1974 builds on the notion of “Potential” and “Performance”. There is a gap between potential and performance which Gallwey describes as the thoughts which you have when going about an activity. These thoughts can be better described as “Interference”. Interference then is the self doubting thoughts you have that get in the way of your potential and reduce your resulting performance. In his 2003 book on effective coaching, Myles Downey in addition to explaining the Inner Game in more details, expands this notion in order to conclude that performance therefore, is equal to “potential” subtract “interference”.
So if performance is linked to your ability to be productive, and performance is a function of your potential and the interference you create, then perhaps ultimately productivity is about removing the interference. Ok, that was a long winded way to say that in order to be productive, you need to offload all the distractions. In a practical sense, distractions include the volumes of email, phone calls and basically the numerous requests we are subject to every day due to increasingly complexity in working life and often vague job descriptions.
REFERENCES:
Myles Downey, 2003; Effective Coaching, Lessons From the Coach’s Coach, Thomson Texere
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics web site:
http://www.bls.gov/lpc/peoplebox.htm "
