Finding True Productivity

Imagine for a moment the following scenario...

Bill a colleague of yours has just checked his e-mail and received a note from a person with whom he has a tense relationship. There is a recurring issue between the two of them, that won’t go away. He interprets this e-mail as “snarky” and bullheaded, so sits there at his desk his mind filling with scenarios and responses he would really like to send back. This internal “chatter” goes on for 5 minutes as he stews in his own emotions. He sends a reply in an equally “dry” tone and immediately regrets sending it, so stews further in guilt for another few minutes (say three minutes).

Total productivity loss: 8 minutes.

As he was working on something else at the time he needs to refocus his attention: another 3 minutes to build back momentum.

Total productivity loss now: 11 minutes.

As a result of this decaying relationship there is a heaviness and running conversation weighing within him he is barely aware of, that won’t go away. Total time spent in chatter, tension and loss of productive action and poor wellbeing – significantly more than 11 minutes.

Total productivity loss now: immeasurable with a significant cost to his inner well being.

Now multiply that over the number of employees that work at your company. It could run into the thousands of minutes, 100 employees translates into 1100 minutes a day (approximately 18 hours). Now I know that not all people everyday stew and keep tension inside them, so I exaggerate somewhat to make a point.

I work with management teams everyday who successfully break free of this scenario and significantly improve their productivity.

In error we connect productivity to behaviour, our actions.  Technological gadgets are invented to save time and effort; smart phones, e-mails, laptops, iPads were all designed to make our lives “easier and more efficient”. But my experience tells me that these endeavours don’t get at the answer to real and profound productivity improvement which exists within us and between us.

Let’s dissect this scenario for second. We find that Bill is unproductive because of his limited perceptions and thinking. Unable to break free of habitual responses, interpretations and judgments of whom this other person is and what happened to create this situation in the first place, he follows predictable responses that waste time and energy for all involved. And the funny thing is, if you were ask Bill if he was productive, he would say “Yes”.

Start to connect productivity to thought and perception rather than action and behaviour.

When Bill learns to examine his own thinking he is free to discover a more accurate “picture” of reality and certain things begin to occur. His mind begins to relax and open up, the resulting clarity allows him to accurately perceive situations, create options for responses and to reconnect with what is really what is really going on. With less head chatter and unnecessary emotions, Bill will be able to distinguish between actions he needs to take and those that are unnecessary.

The source of productivity is within thought and perception itself. We can perform efficient actions with the help of gadgets, but ultimately to find the final 5% of workplace productivity we will need to learn how to work with our thoughts themselves.

There Is No Box?

What is beyond those things we take as accepted solutions?

When you start asking a question like this the answer can be startling in its simplicity. All of a sudden freedom is possible, and meaning to life is clearer. There is an energy, a vitality you can tap into when you are free for instance, to end the need to, try and “think outside of the box.” It might in-fact be better to discover, that the box never existed in the first place.  

 Ask yourself, “What is beyond the advice I feel compelled to follow? "

A new perspective is available. Acceptance and freedom from internal suffering, doubt, and chatter is possible. For instance when we let go of our incessant need to question ourselves and simply love who we are all our internal judgments and manipulations drop away. All the energy and time we take in distracting self chatter can now be used for more enjoyable pursuits like deeply connecting to those we love.

I have spent over 20 years exploring and creating models of personal and organizational change. Some worked brilliantly, other dismal failures. Throughout it all though was the drive and feeling that we were missing the obvious, that we were focusing on the surface issues not getting to the root of it all which just may be thought itself.

My job as an advisor to CEO’s, business owners and executive teams is to help them answer, unanswerable questions by teaching them to think differently . But to do this requires them to explore the assumptions and language they hold on to as truth.

What truths are you holding on to?

Together we will look at what if there never was a “box”?

The Story Behind Thinking Differently®

I am someone who has, for as long as I can remember, been interested in how people think and operate in the world. Even as a teenager, while painting water pipes high up in factory rafters during the summer, I remember listening to people interact and wondering how they can work better together. It has been a lifetime pursuit that gets expressed through all I do both personally and professionally.

Though I do have a university degree, I was not a good student and it was not until my mid-thirties, early forties that my fascination for human development and the potential of the human spirit fully blossomed. I have created and refined over the years all the programs and the philosophy that I live and my clients use. It would have been no doubt easier to go out and buy into other people's training packages but I was driven to create, write and reflect on my own observations and conclusions.

The interesting challenge, of course, is to accept who you are and how you operate in the world and then to fully maximize this understanding. I would say that when this clarity hit me between the eyes my ability to help my clients increased significantly. I see my progress as the inverse to formal learning where you learn in order to apply knowledge and skills in the world.

For me, it can be described as "I am and now let's figure out what that really means to me and others." As you can no doubt conclude it is extremely important that I live what I teach. I believe to be truly effective in helping someone transform their life; I have to be prepared to go to the edges of myself. Life, after all is worth playing to the fullest.

I am happy to share this knowledge with Thinking Differently®, a philosophy based on how the root of thinking and perception influence actions and outcomes.

The Goal:To answer the unanswered questions you have within you that have probably been there for quite sometime, maybe even years; questions that have taken too much energy and time to answer. Questions about you, your life, your business, and what you really want.

Learn more at http://www.jonathancreaghan.com/

I encourage you to share this new way of thinking and look forward to hearing how you have found the answers.