Are you always looking for a way to stay sharp, gain an edge and boost your personal productivity? If so you are in the good company of a large percentage of the rest of the population of the planet earth. With so much to do and the list seemingly growing every day we are all looking to increase our personal performance if for nothing more than to just make it to tomorrow.

Increasing productivity starts with getting the most out of what skill sets you already have. With that said here are 5 ways to find the productivity improvement you are looking for by ‘fine tuning’ what you already have.

Start Early

The saying ‘early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ is something many of us are familiar with and it holds much truth. Starting your day early gives you the opportunity to take advantage of your energy level while at it highest. Both the mind and body tend to wear down throughout the course of a day so it only makes sense to be sure to get the most out of both while they are at their optimal levels.

Develop a Fitness a Routine

Along the lines of increasing personal performance a fit body will possess more stamina and ‘staying’ power allowing you to stay ‘sharper for a longer period of time. It is also a well known fact that exercise supplies more oxygen to the brain allowing it to function more effectively. So here is what you get for exercising, sharper brains on a more fit body, what more could you ask for?

Also adopting a regular exercise routine will help you fall asleep quicker at night so that you can wake up early the next morning

‘List Out’ Your Day

Developing a daily list of priorities will help you maintain your focus on completing those tasks you judge as important. Generally just simply listing out your ‘day in advance’ will automatically help you prioritize the tasks on your list. As your ‘to do’ list is being developed you can make any necessary adjustments as to scheduling or changes in your priorities. This is a great way of ‘scheduling goals’ on a daily basis!

Strengthen Your Strengths

Any strength you may have can almost ALWAYS be improved upon! One of the best ways of increasing productivity is to simply get better at what you are already good at. Besides if you are good at something you usually also enjoy doing it therefore you will not mind spending more time on it to make improvements.

Work on Your Weaknesses

To get better we sometimes need to venture outside our ‘comfort zone’ which means taking on something we are not good at. By dedicating just a small amount of time each day to work on some of our weaknesses we will begin to see improvements in these areas over a short period of time. After a while we will get better and more comfortable with these ‘former weaknesses’ which will make it even easier to spend more time working on them.

If you are driven it is only natural and quite commendable to want to boost your current personal productivity. With an ever growing list of demands, finding ways to increase our personal performance is the best way to tackle these new challenges. Developing new talents and skills is one way to find the productivity improvement necessary to meet these challenges. Another more practical approach to increasing productivity however and possibly even easier is to further develop the skill sets we already have. The 5 ways to do this as discussed above focuses more on ways to strengthen or better utilize any current assets we have. In this way we can build upon that which we already know thereby making us better at that which we already do.

How do we improve personal productivity at work? Recall that personal productivity is an equation of Me, You and Situation? We want to work on the Me factor. Personal productivity starts from the individual’s awareness or as we term it Personal Awareness. Personal Awareness is based on how our mental model works. Your mental model setups mental boundaries, predict the outcome or process of work. Our personal awareness (surrounding the Me) can be characterized into four quadrants.

“I know what I can do” – The most preferred quadrant. Individuals of this quadrant know what they are doing. Know who, what, where, when and how they can do to achieve their objectives. Usually they are confident individuals that are able to predict the outcome.

“I know what I cannot do” – Usually paired together with individuals of “I know what I can do”; Individuals are conscious of their limit of their abilities. This is important as they can identify which type of work is suitable for them and which are above their abilities.

“I do not know what I can do” – Individuals fail to recognize their fullest potential. Their superiors may have identified their untapped potentials but always stumble with the unwillingness of the individual to unleash them. Usually these individuals are resistance to change.

“I do not know what I cannot do” – Ignorance is not a blessing here. Individuals that fall into this quadrant are usually ignorant and over-confident. They fail to see what they can’t perform and usually get themselves into trouble.

Personal productivity starts from understanding your personal awareness. In the four quadrants, by knowing where you are, you can estimate your effort in a task, the time frame committed, the boundaries you are working in, or even further improve personal productivity. Personal productivity is not merely the personal aspect but it can also be achieved at the situational aspect where for example, you are aware of how much effort is required in performing a certain task in a particular situation.

Of course, there is no one straight cut to a specific quadrant. There can be combinations of quadrant and they can deviate in different situations. Now look back the past events that happened at work. Which of the quadrants do you feel you best relate to in how you are aware of yourself and the situation? Were you able to identify that you were able to optimize personal productivity if you were being more aware of yourself or the situation? Have a thought about it! 😉

Because we live and work in a dynamic market situation, managers must accept as the normal state of affairs that all products have a limited life. This fact is commonly expressed in the form of the product life-cycle curve. Products during their existence go through the phases indicated on the curve, as follows:

1. Starting before, sometimes long before, a product reaches the marketplace, there is a development phase. Market research must be undertaken, the product designed, prototypes built, plants laid down. While costs can be very high, income will initially be nil and will probably grow only slowly. Profits are a long way off yet. Many products are slow to ‘catch on’ and this part of the curve typically does not rise steeply.

2. During the growth phase the product reaches general acceptance, and sales increase steeply. Profits mount as development costs are recovered and unit costs decrease with greater volume of production.

3. As the product reaches maturity, initial demand is beginning to be satisfied, competitors may have arrived on the scene, and there will be greater reliance on replacement sales. Sales increase more slowly, and profits come under pressure and may start to decline.

4. When the market is fully saturated, sales will ‘peak off’ and profits decline still further.

5. Finally, sales will go into definite decline and margins come under very severe pressure as it becomes increasingly costly to maintain sales at a reasonable level.

The curve for any particular product may be steeper or flatter, the time-scale may be longer or shorter. Some products seem to go on for a very long time. For this reason the pattern must be applied with care. In addition, we must be careful what we mean by a product in this context: for example, the market for glass has risen steadily over the past 50 years, but within this period the sale of lamp glasses has declined and that of milk bottles has risen steeply (to decline again in some countries in face of competition from waxed cartons or plastic and the change from doorstep delivery to bulk purchase from the supermarket).

Nonetheless the typical pattern stands as a warning that it is dangerous to rely too heavily for too long on one product, so that, as profit from one declines, profit from its successor rises to fill the gap. Ideally this will give a steadily rising profit for the company as a whole, even though some products have entered the ‘decline’ phase of the product life-cycle.

It must be emphasized that the product life-cycle diagram is not a rigid description of exactly how all products always behave. Rather it is an idealized indication of the pattern most products can be expected to follow.

There is nothing fixed about the length of the cycle or the lengths of its various stages. It has been suggested that the length of the cycle is governed by the rate of technical change, the rate of market acceptance and the ease of competitive entry. So, each year numerous new fashion styles are introduced, many of them to last only a few months. At the other extreme, a new aircraft must have many years of life if it is to be commercially worthwhile.

The main importance of the life-cycle concept is to remind us constantly of the three following facts:

1. Products have a limited life;
2. Profit levels are not constant but change throughout a product’s life in a way that is to some extent predictable;
3. Products require a different marketing programme at each stage of their life-cycle.

Implications of the Product Life-cycle

If we have to accept that no product will go on earning profits indefinitely, then we must plan so as to have a whole succession of new products coming ‘through the pipeline’. Peter Drucker has drawn attention to the need to keep all products under review to ensure that not too high a proportion are at the end of their life-cycle. He describes the following six categories:

1. Tomorrow’s breadwinners – new products or today’s breadwinners modified and improved;
2. Today’s breadwinners – the innovations of yesterday;
3. Products capable of becoming net contributors if something drastic is done;
4. Yesterday’s breadwinners – generally products with high volume, but badly fragmented into ‘specials’, small orders and the like;
5. The ‘also raps’ – generally the high hopes of yesterday that, while they did not work out well, nevertheless did not become outright failures;
6. The failures.

Product Elimination

From the product life-cycle concept and Drucker’s analysis of product categories, it follows that all products must be kept under review to assess their present and likely future contribution to profits. A common mistake of marketing management is to keep in the range products that have little or no prospect of contributing to profits. Products are kept in the range until they fade away, meanwhile consuming valuable resources, which could be more profitably utilised elsewhere. These marginal products lower the company’s profitability, and it is essential to control them.

Source: http://en.articlesgratuits.com/the-product-life-cycle-concept-id1560.php