Boost Personal Productivity by Knowing Yourself Well!

How do we improve per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity at work?  Recall that per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity is an equa­tion of Me, You and Sit­u­a­tion?  We want to work on the Me fac­tor.  Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity starts from the individual’s aware­ness or as we term it Per­sonal Aware­ness.  Per­sonal Aware­ness is based on how our men­tal model works.  Your men­tal model setups men­tal bound­aries, pre­dict the out­come or process of work.   Our per­sonal aware­ness (sur­round­ing the Me) can be char­ac­ter­ized into four quadrants.

“I know what I can do” – The most pre­ferred quad­rant.  Indi­vid­u­als of this quad­rant know what they are doing.  Know who, what, where, when and how they can do to achieve their objec­tives.  Usu­ally they are con­fi­dent indi­vid­u­als that are able to pre­dict the outcome.

“I know what I can­not do” – Usu­ally paired together with indi­vid­u­als of “I know what I can do”; Indi­vid­u­als are con­scious of their limit of their abil­i­ties.  This is impor­tant as they can iden­tify which type of work is suit­able for them and which are above their abilities.

“I do not know what I can do” – Indi­vid­u­als fail to rec­og­nize their fullest poten­tial.  Their supe­ri­ors may have iden­ti­fied their untapped poten­tials but always stum­ble with the unwill­ing­ness of the indi­vid­ual to unleash them.   Usu­ally these indi­vid­u­als are resis­tance to change.

“I do not know what I can­not do” – Igno­rance is not a bless­ing here.  Indi­vid­u­als that fall into this quad­rant are usu­ally igno­rant and over-confident.  They fail to see what they can’t per­form and usu­ally get them­selves into trouble.

Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity starts from under­stand­ing your per­sonal aware­ness.  In the four quad­rants, by know­ing where you are, you can esti­mate your effort in a task, the time frame com­mit­ted, the bound­aries you are work­ing in, or even fur­ther improve per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity.  Per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity is not merely the per­sonal aspect but it can also be achieved at the sit­u­a­tional aspect where for exam­ple, you are aware of how much effort is required in per­form­ing a cer­tain task in a par­tic­u­lar situation.

Of course, there is no one straight cut to a spe­cific quad­rant.  There can be com­bi­na­tions of quad­rant and they can devi­ate in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions.  Now look back the past events that hap­pened at work.  Which of the quad­rants do you feel you best relate to in how you are aware of your­self and the sit­u­a­tion?  Were you able to iden­tify that you were able to opti­mize per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity if you were being more aware of your­self or the sit­u­a­tion?    Have a thought about it!

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