Smooth The Path

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February 11, 2020 By Amanda Kaiser

When Productivity and Effectiveness Leave You to Go Out to Lunch

Some days Productivity leaves me to help someone else. Often The Muse leaves with Productivity because they like partying together. Seeing an empty office Effectiveness takes a half day so he can go home and eat chips and binge watch Netflix. With those three gone, Procrastination moves in and trash talks To-Do List.

Have you ever noticed that some days are a fight? Flow is nowhere to be found, attention is scattered, and the to-do list grows, not shrinks.

I have traced back some low productivity days to a few factors like not getting enough sleep, the day after coming back from a long vacation, or not taking enough time off. But sometimes there’s no reason for it. I’m am just going to have a down day no matter what other intentions I have. No regime of 11 hours of sleep a night, combined with high-intensity exercise, combined with a low-fat, low-carb, low-fun diet, can help me.

Some days I work steadily at 100%, others at 80% or today I’m logging in at a whopping 33%. I never celebrate the 100% days, but I do beat myself up about 33% days. Why? I’ll blame it on my New England work ethic, but no matter why. I’ve got to stop doing that.

It is okay to have a down day here and there. The 100% days make up for it. When I start beating myself up, I need to remember that productivity for our kind of work shouldn’t be measured in days. Instead, look at what we’ve done over months, years, and decades. Looking at our contribution over a significant duration of time, we see what a lot of good work we have done!

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Filed Under: Association Leadership Tagged With: association staff, changing over time, forward-leaning staff, productive, staff culture, staff time, time consuming

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