Secrets of Personal Productivity

To achieve opti­mal per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity, one must be aware of him­self, the sit­u­a­tion as well as the other party.  Who are the other party?  They can be your co-workers, bosses, direc­tor, ven­dor, etc. in a work­place con­text.  We can also describe per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity as an aware­ness of three things: Me, You and Sit­u­a­tion.  This is not some­thing spe­cial and it had been men­tioned in Sun Tzu’s Art of War quote:

知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆

It is said that if you know your ene­mies and know your­self, you will not be imper­iled in a hun­dred bat­tles; if you do not know your ene­mies but do know your­self, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your ene­mies nor your­self, you will be imper­iled in every sin­gle battle.

In our mod­ern day con­text, we are not try­ing to win a war.  We know “war” is too costly (it’s all in the news).  The fun­da­men­tal objec­tive is to achieve per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity through under­stand­ing our­selves, the other party and the sit­u­a­tion.   Under­stand­ing our­selves involves aware­ness of our choices of actions, responses, our think­ing, self-discipline and exer­tion of self-control.   Strength­en­ing the “me” is our core prin­ci­ple of under­stand­ing one­self.  Under­stand­ing the other party involves aware­ness of their thoughts, antic­i­pated responses within the given sit­u­a­tion.   We can­not change the per­spec­tive of another per­son, work­ing styles, life’s need or nor a sit­u­a­tion,   but what we can do is to pre­pare our state of mind and body to adapt and han­dle var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions when they arise.  Through this, we can “posi­tion” our­selves and influ­ence any deci­sions and out­come.  It goes the same when you enter the wrong “posi­tion”, the results are neg­a­tive consequences.

How does it have any rela­tion with improv­ing per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity?   Chances of us know­ing the other party (or per­son) and sit­u­a­tion dynam­ics is lim­ited.  But we have aware­ness and con­trol of our­selves.  Hav­ing being able to con­trol what we can, we then antic­i­pate and influ­ence what is out of our con­trol.  Under­stand­ing one­self is one part of the equa­tion to per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity.  To fur­ther enhance per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity, it is nec­es­sary to com­plete the other half of the equa­tion: under­stand­ing and react­ing appro­pri­ately to other’s behav­ior in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions.  Sun Tzu’s Art of War quotes have been widely used in the busi­ness world.   In our con­text, we bring it a level down to for the pur­pose of enhanc­ing per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity at work.

Through­out the jour­ney of find­ing per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity (is it work or life) with us, you will find that we begin work­ing on one’s per­sonal aware­ness and self-control (Me fac­tor).  Fol­low­ing through to under­stand­ing of the other party (You fac­tor) and han­dling of sit­u­a­tion dynam­ics (Sit­u­a­tion fac­tor).   You will find what’s writ­ten here able to address your needs, if you have trou­ble find­ing per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity at work or hav­ing a grumpy boss always con­cerned with your per­for­mance.   Sim­ple as the con­cept is, we believed that what we are shar­ing here will be help­ful in your search of per­sonal pro­duc­tiv­ity at work.

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