Are You Staying Busy?
Why that is the wrong question.
I attended a meeting of “angel investors” in Seattle. It turned out to be a group of former Microsoft people who had become millionaires and were looking for the next big thing.
Two men appeared to be friends who had not seen each other for a while. One said, “Are you staying busy?” The other replied, “Wrong question. The question is: are you being productive?”
That is indeed the question. Companies are now allowing work from home. They are trying different ways of determining whether employees are putting in their time. The problem is they don’t have a result to track. Since they don’t have an outcome to assess, they track time.
A story about Ford’s employees went something like this: One employee complained that he made far less than another employee and ended by saying, “All he does is stand around and look out the window.” Ford’s reply was, “Come up with the ideas that he does while looking out the window, and I’ll pay you the same as him.”
We seem programmed to think in terms of money in exchange for time. Our first job at the fast-food restaurant paid minimum wage for our time. The goal became to make more money per hour. That seems to be a good corporate mentality. If our employees are more productive, they are providing more goods and services per hour. We can either lower prices or raise their rate per hour. Making people more productive is a goal of automation.
Apply that to yourself. Are you being productive? Are you just busy? How do you measure productivity?
My experience probably is not too different from many. I would get to work in the morning. Stay busy all day. Leave at the end of the day. I wasn’t tracking my productivity.
Goal setting helps. Sometimes I set goals for the business. Sometimes I achieved them. Often, I did not. I did not set a long-term goal and break it down into tasks for achieving it.
Now I’m retired and looking back on life. I learned many lessons. I’ve written a couple of books and created a course for healthcare professionals. In the course, I provide a system I learned for controlling my mind. That is the most important thing I ever learned. I also provide the basics of accounting, finance, marketing, and negotiation. Then I teach how to earn an additional $20,000 next year.
Key to the process is my model: Your brain is a biocomputer. You (spirit) are the operator/programmer of your brain. Just like you must load programs in your computer to help your business, you must load your brain with programs that help you reach your goals.
Get control of your brain, install programs, set goals and create plans for achieving them. Compare your results to your actions and change as necessary. You will be amazed at the personal and professional growth that you achieve.
You’ll become productive and not just busy.