63- Entrepreneur and startups need personal productivity tools

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In this episode of TheStrugglingBiz.com, we review the main points required for success in the area of effectiveness and efficiency — that is, having a real personal productivity toolkit that can help you to do the following:

Allow you to accomplish more;
Have you successfully do this in less time;
Result in better quality;
Can reduce your stress.

These are the four cornerstones of personal productivity which I myself used to teach in an 8-hour seminar (or 8 webinars) in a premium course offering called Gain Control of Your Day. This podfaded podcast offering was based upon the skills taught by Q4 Systems out of Dallas, Texas, several years ago.

Now, with the advent of the iPhone in 2010, the client base became enamored with apps, and they thought that a 15-minute video of instruction was all that was required to obtain these skills and thus be productive immediately.

However, it does not work that way. In order to be productive, you MUST develop habits that will allow you to save 20 to 25 per cent of your time during the working day and become most efficient and effective in knowing your objectives and being able to accomplish your tasks and projects and goals by doing more in less time with better quality and reduced stress.

This highly successful course was overshadowed by the “tyranny of the urgent” — that is, by the need for today’s younger audience to assume that such skills can be achieved by just one viewing of a five-minute video, instead of the 30 days of repetition needed to learn and master new habits for productivity.

And so, since I used to teach personal productivity both in corporate America and in my seminars, I have sadly seen that the younger entrepreneurs have become undisciplined and impatient — and that they fool themselves into thinking that they are being truly productive (in both effectiveness and efficiency), when all they are really doing is shuffling paper or switching from one task to another randomly and increasing their own stress because they cannot see that they are lacking true productivity.

And since I have been searching for any type of course material or tutorials that really instruct one in the area of true productivity, my sad conclusion is that they are just fooling themselves as they ride the whirlwind of task-switching that is seen by the stress that is growing with them — but not productivity.

Now, why do I say this? Mainly because I still use the tools which I have taught for years before, and my productivity is real and it does reduce stress while I do accomplish more in less time with better quality. But the younger entrepreneurs will NOT listen, as their impatience prohibits them from having a more open mind, and they will not accept the tools that are really needed to learn the habits required and measure their success. Instead, if it cannot be incorporated into a five-minute tutorial or one-hour seminar into a smart-phone, then they want nothing to do with it.

So be it.

And so they will always be in the world without real productivity due to their own narrow-mindedness — and they will continue to be ruled by the “tyranny of the urgent.”

And, by the way, when I do have someone that sees my productivity, then they begin to have an open mind. And although I really don’t teach the course for others in open sessions or in virtual environments, I would make an exception and deliver to them the tools and the training for them to learn the skills and develop the habits to be truly productive. So there are a few converts who have finally come around to learn personal productivity and then realize that they are, indeed, accomplishing more in less time with better quality and reduced stress.

Thank you for your attention.