Connecting personal values to productivity

- Occasionally in the midst of all this getting stuff done, of accomplishing things in your calendar, you might start to feel like you're just a hamster in a treadmill. You're working really hard, but you're not actually going anywhere. Even worse, what if you're doing all this work, but you feel like it's pushing you in the opposite direction of where you want your life to be? Clearly, this is a multilayered issue that should fill an entire course. What I want to do is just talk about how to make sure that your daily actions are connected to your values.

In particular, your personal values, the things that you believe in. You can call these principles, you can call them your beliefs, whatever you want to call them, I'm just going to refer to them as your values. First, in order to make sure that you're living these values, you must define them. Again, there are entire books devoted to this subject. I'm simply going to suggest to you that you figure out what three words or phrases best describe what you believe in.

If you want to create more than three, that's fine, but having three to start with gives you something meaningful to create. Do you believe in honesty? Do you believe in hard work? Do you believe in having fun? Schedule some time on your calendar to go out on a personal exploration of sorts. Think about this question. Read books that are meaningful to you and then write down some thoughts about it. Your answer doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, there's no such thing as a perfect answer here.

It doesn't even have to look great or have perfect grammar. We're just creating a starting point, a first draft of your values. Next, put those values up somewhere where you can see them everyday. Frame them, post them on a wall in your cubicle, make them your desktop background. Whatever you do, make them visible, which will help you remember what matters most to you. Next, when processing, occasionally, not every time, ask yourself a fourth question.

Now, before I share that question I might need to explain what I mean. I teach in my time management courses that processing is the act of deciding three questions. What is the next step? When will it be done? And where is its home? The fourth question that you can add to these from time to time is: why am I doing this? Now I don't recommend doing this with every task and every email in your inbox, but perhaps once a day you ask yourself this question about one of your activities.

Why am I doing this? Why am I processing? Why do I even care about completing this? In fact, to make this easier to remember, ask this why question with the last item that you process in any gathering point. So, if you're processing your email account and you get to that last email of the day, then ask yourself, why am I processing this? Then consider that email in terms of your values. Does it match up with them? This reminder will get you recentered on the values that you said were meaningful.

If you ever come across something and you ask, why am I doing it? And you don't have any reason why, that's a good opportunity to reassess the kind of work that you're doing. Or, how you're going about doing that work, and finding a way to make adjustments so that you can realign your daily activities with your values. If you work in a company or an organization that has a set of values, you can also add this fourth why question to occasionally review those.

Also, post up your company values and occasionally ask yourself, why are we doing this? Does this action align with our values? If you see a misalignment, that's a great opportunity to have a conversation with your coworkers about how to change things, so that you can get your workday back in alignment with the things your company believes in. Productivity isn't just about getting stuff done. Productivity is about focusing on the activities that are most valuable and most meaningful to you.