Learn, Share, Grow – “Productivity”

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

Below is an article from fastcompany.com on productivity and what companies can do to help maximize their team’s productivity.  Also below is results of an experiment that one of our team members did to help maximize their productivity.

https://www.fastcompany.com/40440992/employers-your-employees-lack-of-productivity-might-be-all-on-you

Blue Courage Learning:

On Friday, I found myself a bit overwhelmed by my “to-do” list and everything that kept getting added to it – yet I’ve been feeling like nothing is getting crossed off of my list. Based off of the article I read, I decided that I needed to set aside some time every day to start crossing off items from my list, without any interruptions – turn off email, silence my phone, etc. We aren’t nearly as productive if we are constantly being distracted, and often the top 2 distractions are emails and ourselves – starting too many things at one time without finishing the first thing first. My teammate coined this time that I plan to set aside as the “GSD” hour – “Get Stuff Done”, which I really liked, so I started calling it my GSD Hour (though sometimes it is longer than an hour.)

On Monday, the overwhelming feeling was even greater. I decided that I need to see just how impactful implementing this GSD hour into my daily routine is. I alternated the days between 3 different plans: 1) no GSD hour at all, 2) implementing the GSD hour, and 3) implementing the GSD hour starting with a guided meditation from davidji.

I found that the day that I didn’t implement my GSD hour felt like a wasted day and wasted energy – I was exhausted at the end of the day, knew I worked, but felt like I accomplished barely anything.

The days that I did just the GSD hour, within that time frame, I felt more productive and felt like I did cross a few things off of my to-do list, though not everything. I also found, however, that I was still getting a little distracted, and still bounced around a bit between 2-3 projects (though better than my 5-10 like a normal day).

However, when I started my GSD hour with a guided meditation first, I found myself more focused, motivated to prioritize the things I had to get done, started with the top of my list, got one thing done at a time, and actually lost track of time and ended up spending an hour and half knocking a few things off my list. I felt a better sense of accomplishment within that hour and a half than I did any other day, even though I know I didn’t cross everything off my list yet.

I have since set up alerts to keep myself on schedule, to include a GSD hour daily!

Michael Nila, founder of Blue Courage, added that when you are focused and uninterrupted, you have the potential to get into “flow”; time flies, you are creative and energized – productive. A good rule for productivity – the 2 Minute rule. If you can do something in two minutes or less, then do it right away. It will take you longer than that to think about it, remind yourself later, get refocused and do it. So if you get a to-do item and can do it in 2 minutes or less, then do it right away.