How productive are you really?

Ah yes, productivity. One of the biggest business buzzwords of all time. Also one of the biggest scourges in our careers. You can work 10-12 hours a day on your craft, but how often have you looked at how you are really spending that time? A true audit of what you're doing with your time can be extremely tough, but worth doing. 

Our generation has grown up with more stimulants and distractions than any other generation before us. The advance of the internet has only made this worse. The obvious time suck of social media alone is a monster. 

All of this could also just be seen as an excuse. 

Especially in startups today people like to throw around the terms "grind" and "hustle," when I think we have a real opposition to hard work. It could be a smaller attention span, it could be entitlement, it could be a host of many things. But when it comes down to it I think a lot of us like the idea of working hard instead of the actual process of working hard. Which is why I think a productivity audit is really important. 

Take a day of work this next week. and track exactly how you are spending your time. 5 minutes chatting with a co-worker? Mark it. 10 minutes on YouTube? Mark it. 

Then look at what your goals are. It's about focused effort. If you are playing guitar, 30 minutes of intensely focused practice will always be better than an hour of fiddling around. In business, what are your goals? Are your activities matched up with meeting that goal? No? Then change it. 

I realize the tone of this weeks email may seem a bit negative and pessimistic. To be honest, I don't think it is. We're not the first generation to deal with these types of problems, the circumstances are just different. The fact that we can address this now, when we are young, is what makes me excited. The sooner we can learn to work hard and with focus, the longer we can take advantage of it. It's like investing your money early, it gains value over time. We have more time to use that value.

I'll be doing my productivity audit this week. I probably won't like what I find. But the hard things are usually the ones worth doing.

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