Whether you’re a business owner or an employee, chances are you’re interested in improving your productivity. This is how most businesses work: the more you produce, the more you earn. For many employees as well, their pay is based on how much they produce.
Even if you’re a salaried employee, that doesn’t mean that you get to slack off. Increasing your productivity will lead into promotions, raises and generally climbing up the ladder at work, which is what most people want.
Is Overtime the Only Solution?
So how do you go about improving your productivity? This is a question many people ask. After all, the amount of time available to you is limited. You’re not going to be able to stretch it out. Is working hours of overtime the only solution? Or are there some other tips and techniques that will help you to work better and faster?
Hard Work Plus Creativity
The truth is that there is really no substitute for hard work. All great people agree that this is the truth. They work hours and hours on what they do. But often, their secret lies in the fact that they really love what they do. So for them, work is not really work. It’s fun.
So the best way to increase productivity is to think about how you can make something more fun. If you have a choice between two options, do you generally pick the one that appeals to your creative side? If not, you might want to start doing so because this usually helps you work faster.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers
In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell talks about the 10,000 hour rule. According to him, anyone who spends 10,000 hours or more on their chosen profession will achieve greatness. He gives the example of Bill Gates who used to sneak into the computer center of his school and spend all day there. He also talks about the Beatles who played together all around Europe, honing and developing their style.
Still, the one thing that Bill Gates and the Beatles had in common was that they enjoyed what they did. So spending hours doing the same thing didn’t seem like a chore.