What do you do to maximize productivity and get things done?

DAVID ALLEN'S FOOD FOR THOUGHT - THERE ARE ONLY TWO PROBLEMS IN LIFE

Years ago, a friend added to my understanding of the fundamental duality of our universe by sharing this observation: "There are only two problems in life: you know what you want and you don't know how to get it; or you don't know what you want." This proposes only two solutions: (1) focus, then (2) organize and allocate your resources. Intend and execute. Create and complete. Make it up, and make it happen.

Most of the techniques and tools about productivity have focused on the responsive side: how do I best deal with all the things I have to manage, or the tasks I need to handle that have been generated prior to this moment? This focus on organizing tools makes sense, because how we can handle the results of our inspirations encompasses many more concrete options than how we engage in the creative process to begin with. There are always better computer programs to support architectural design, better paint for a specific technique on the canvas, and better smart phones and software for tracking our appointments and tasks.

But what about producing the inspiration for a building? Or the artistic expression that seeks a medium? Or the choice of this or that profession that generates my appointments and tasks? On this "make it up" side, a plethora of leadership, creativity and life-management treatises continues to flood bookstores.

In truth, you cannot be maximally productive without ensuring your focus is optimal, as well as your procedures and tools for manifesting it. Being productive means you have to produce something, and that means achieving closure on some commitment. But this comes in many forms. There's your commitment to pick up bread on the way home from work, and the one that says you need to fulfill your destiny on the planet. And a whole bunch in between.

And though the investments of our focus are multitudinous and wide-ranging, being productive with our energy requires that they somehow tie together. If you stop to buy bread on the way home and that activity is not in alignment with what you're here to do as a human consciousness, then you're not being productive at the highest rate. If it is the best thing for you to be doing, given all the possibilities, then you are. But if buying bread makes absolutely no difference to how well you manifest your life purpose, you'll need to ensure you don't unproductively wrap yourself around some inappropriate concern.

All of which is to say that if you think being more productive is simply about getting more organized, or setting priorities or goals, or working harder, you've likely missed the whole picture. Each of those activities could, at any moment, be the thing that will make most difference for you in moving along the continuum from feeling a victim of life to being more in charge. So if you know clearly what you're doing, then efficiency is your only improvement opportunity. But do you really know what you're doing? Perhaps that frontier holds the key to your greatest progression. And perhaps it's both. I don't know many who have each of these two aspects of the life experience totally nailed down. Some people have a neat, organized life, but a gnawing frustration that something better awaits them beyond their tidy universe. Many others allow themselves to engage in commitments they are woefully negligent in managing day-to-day. The savviest admit to openness to a new level of both: how much clearer can I be about what I need to do, and how much better can I get at doing it?
If this informs your overall approach, a marvelous synergy appears. As you get more efficient, you'll get more inspired. And as you get more turned on by what you're doing, you'll automatically have more juice to put it in motion quickly and easily.

Any functional solution to managing yourself, time, a corporation or a country, comes down to a combination of both sides of this equation. Both aspects—outcome focus and action engagement—are essential. The reason there seems to be an unending stream of time/business management and leadership "principles" is because few account for the whole picture. Most of the proffered keys to productivity emphasize either the "know what you want" or "know how to get it" component. But if you don't give appropriate weight to each, no problem: you get to remain deeply involved in the duality of our universe.
(This article originally appeared in Wired U.K.)

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I highly recommend David Allen's Getting Things Done program. Warmly, Ariana