Have you mastered productivity?

The 2Time Mgt Blog compares Tae Kwon Do Belt Colors to productivity mastery on eleven levels. Much knowledge can be gained from reading the individual posts. I was intrigued by the idea of seeing how to gradually improve skills on these different levels, and was motivated to create a pdf that compiles them. See the post on Putting it All Together for a sample personal development plan.

Productivity Levels

I’ve got to add this:  “Ready to Test for Your Belt?” from MarkTaw.com

Blog to Discovery

There’s an interesting series called “My Organizer” at Blog to Discovery. I especially like the form shown in “How I successfully plan my day” and the ideas in “Dealing with repeating tasks in a paperbased system.”

Data Visualization: Modern Approaches

This is a very cool look at different ways of making data visual.

Marketing U

            Marketing is about developing a strategy to interest customers in the products or services you offer, and then implementing it. Marketing is a plan for how to communicate benefits. Marketing yourself works the same way as marketing for profit or non-profit organizations.

            Begin with determining your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) Use the formula from Duct Tape Marketing by John Jansch: Action Verb (What you actually do) + Noun (target market you do it for) + Benefit (the result of what you do.)

            Once you know your USP, think about your brand. With a brand, you plan the entire customer experience by packaging an image that reveals identity. An effective brand, appeals to emotional needs, and includes things like:

• graphics
• logo
• business cards

• Show Off Business Cards
• Cool Business Card Designs

• taglines

            Find ways to sell benefits rather than features. Benefits are the results that you can achieve if you use the features. An effective brand appeals to emotional needs. After you’ve done all the homework, you still have to fish for the hook.

            As an individual, your products or services include your strengths, skills and talents. List these, then next to each one list features and benefits, your target market, and media that are most likely to reach it. Media can range from print materials to videos on a website, and can vary greatly in cost. Get creative to achieve wow factor without spending a lot. To get ideas, brainstorm with others and ask for feedback.

            Additional tools in your marketing toolkit:

Be ready with a clear, concise, creative, compelling answer to the question “what do you do?”

• A verbal business card communicates value, going beyond a simple statement of occupation to describe the results that you achieve.

• An elevator speech is a micro sales presentation of self, pitching the high points of an idea.

• How to Craft a Winning Elevator Speech
• Idea Sandbox provides Elevator Speech Basics

• A mission statement describes who you are and what you stand for, including the values you hold most important.

•  Create a personal mission statement with Stephen R Covey’s mission builder.

• A vision statement describes what you see happening in the future.

•  The difference between mission and vision

See Also: Top Marketing blogs listed at Forbes, Jay Abraham and Copyblogger on Unique Selling Proposition.

You might be a digital packrat if…

you bookmarked this article at Zen Habits. (I did)

Clues to Purpose

Purpose. It’s what lights up your face, it’s what makes it a joy to get up in the morning and be alive. It’s what fills you with energy. It’s what you want to share with others, what you enthusiastically enjoy talking about. Do what you love-happiness is work that uses your talents for a purpose.

Some people just know. It’s like they were born knowing their talents and purpose. For others, it’s more difficult to identify, clarify and understand. We must fumble and stumble and feel our way as we attempt to puzzle it out. There’s no easy answer, but there are some things we can do that will provide clues.

• Schedule quiet time for reflection.
• Explore your talents and strengths, values and mission with the Discover U series.
• Write in a journal.
• Create a vision board.

Brian Tracy on Talents:

• •You love to do it.
• •You do it well.
• •It is responsible for most of your success and happiness.
• •It was easy to learn and easy to do.
• •It holds your attention.
• •You love to learn about it.
• •When you do it, time stands still.
• •You admire and respect other people who are good at it.

Clue Resources:

Strengths-Marcus Buckingham is the author of several books about discovering and putting your strengths to work that include access to an online strengths finder.

Max Lucado has written “Cure for the Common Life” and has a free webinar to find your STORY.

Fast Company articles: “Are You Deciding on Purpose?” by Richard Leider “What Should I do with my life?” By Po Bronson.

My personal favorite: the book “Is Your Genius at Work?” by Dick Richards. See my notes and a tool for finding genius here.

Update: Sand for your inbox

Dynamic Time Management card sort

Keep looking for those clues…

Links for 7-26-2007

Productivity Printable Templates at Organize IT.

Business Week chart: What people are doing on the Internet.

Keeping employees in the loop at Service Untitled.

Links for 7-19-07

A sentence from the book Words That Work - It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Dr. Frank Luntz made Linda Zdanowicz at Exceptional Dental Practice Management sit up and get excited. Here is the sentence: “Education must precede motivation, and even information.”

Idea Sandbox outlines the 7 Levels of Change based on the book by Rolf Smith. This outline is a terrific guide to productivity.

Productivity 501 is a offering The Habit List, a great tool for tracking repeating tasks or habits for RSS subscribers.

Stephen at HD Bizblog discusses the concept of GTD 2.0 which includes communication and relationships in New Ways of Looking at What We Know.

Life Optimizer has a nice Map of Personal Effectiveness.

A Menu of Options to Feel Happier by the End of the Day at The Happiness Project.

Productive laziness

Will Manley promotes “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as the ultimate management book in the column “Tom Sawyer and the Art of Good Management” in the July issue of Booklist Magazine. (sadly the current issue is not online yet) He says, “I routinely give Tom Sawyer to my new managers and tell them to throw away their management textbooks.”

Tom re-frames the “work” of white-washing a large fence as “creative play” to convince others to do what needs to be done. It’s difficult for those who have been trained to have a strong work ethic to understand how productive his laziness is. The job of a manager is not to do the job, it is to dream up ways to motivate others. The less work a manger does, the more effective they are.  Motivation is “nothing more than an advanced form of con-artistry.”

Productivity adds up

Goal Setting…as Waveforms at Simple Productivity, original article by Graham English-Cool metaphor.

Motto Magazine’s purpose: Motto helps people make smart and informed decisions about how we are spending our lives. Most of us have been given roughly 30,000 days to live on Earth. How do you want to spend those days?

In Can Life Really Be Balanced? at Your Life. Organized., Monica Ricci does some math:

Total hours in a week: 168

Subtract hours for the following:
Sleep: (7 hours average per night) 49
Work: 40
Commuting: 10
Meals: 10
Home & life maintenance: 40 (this encompasses everything from laundry to getting dressed to running errands, to washing the car, to grocery shopping, and more)

That adds up to 149 hours of your week.

This chart is from the American Time Use Survey 2006:

Laura Stack, the Productivity Pro summarizes some of the results of the American Time Use Survey 2006.

Timeanddate.com provides a variety of interesting date calculators. You can use the Duration Calculator to enter your birthday as the start date and today’s date as the end date to determine how many days you’ve lived. Subtract that number from the approximate 30,000 days mentioned above for an estimate of days remaining. Using them well is what it’s all about.