Word meer produktief: Die geheim van die rykes

Die konsep van produktiwiteit klink dalk taamlik vaal – 'n vervelige stuk bestuur- praat as daar ooit een was. Maar hoe produktief jy is om dinge gedoen te kry, is van kritieke belang vir jou winsgewendheid as mens.

Ons het in die Winsformule gesien dat die aantal ure wat u betaal omdat dit 'n 'vermenigvuldigingsfaktor' is:

Inkomste = (uurlikse tarief x faktureerbare ure) – koste
Dit is, 'n klein verbetering in faktureerbare ure kan 'n groot impak hê, want die effek daarvan word vermenigvuldig met jou uurlikse tarief. Tog is daar net soveel ure in 'n week, en jy wil nie regtig jou aande en naweke spandeer om jou inkomste te verhoog nie...

So hoe verhoog jy jou aantal faktureerbare ure? Jy moet jou produktiwiteit verhoog.

Dit beteken nou nie dat jy in 'n werkmasjien moet verander nie, probeer om verskeie dinge gelyktydig te doen, en gee nie een taak die aandag wat dit verdien nie.

Wat dit wel beteken, is dat jy moet leer hoe om die meeste uit jou tyd te kry, gebruik die ure wat jy het tot groter voordeel.

En om dit te doen, jy moet leer om jou tyd te waardeer.

Ek wens ek het geweet wie dit geskryf het – dit plaas regtig die waarde van tyd in perspektief:

Stel jou voor daar is 'n bank wat jou rekening elke oggend krediteer $86,400.

Dit dra geen balans van dag tot dag oor nie. Elke aand vee enige deel van die balans uit wat jy nie gedurende die dag gebruik het nie.

Wat sal jy doen? Trek DIT ALLES uit, natuurlik! Elkeen van ons het so 'n bank. Sy naam is TYD.

Elke oggend, dit gee jou krediet 86,400 sekondes. Elke aand skryf dit af, as verlore, wat ook al hierdie, jy het versuim om met goeie doel te belê. Dit dra geen balans oor nie. Dit laat geen oortrokke rekening toe nie.

Elke dag maak dit 'n nuwe rekening vir jou oop. Elke nag verbrand dit die oorblyfsels van die dag. As jy versuim om die dag se deposito's te gebruik, die verlies is joune. Daar is geen terugkeer nie. There is no drawing against the “tomorrow.” You must live in the present on today’s deposits.

Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness, and success! The clock is running. Make the most of today. Treasure every moment that you have! And remember that time waits for no one.

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present!

(Author unknown)

We often tend to think of them as a disposable commodity. If a complete stranger asked you to put your hand in your pocket and give him ten dollars, you would very likely give him a few choice words instead. But if you get held up in a traffic jam for ten minutes, you are likely to brush it off as a minor inconvenience.

After all, dit het jou niks gekos nie, behalwe 'n bietjie tyd.

Tog is tyd verreweg die waardevolste kommoditeit wat ons het. Ons het net 'n beperkte hoeveelheid daarvan, en as ons dit mors, dit is vir altyd weg. Onthou dit wanneer jy jou tyd per uur verkoop, jy veil jou lewe in happiegrootte stukke op.

Moenie jouself tekort verkoop nie. 'n Algemene fout is om te bereken hoeveel jy per uur by 'n voltydse werk kan verdien, oor 'n 9-5 werksweek. Maar vryskut is baie anders as gewone werk. As werknemer, jy word betaal net vir opdaag. Jy word betaal wanneer jy by die waterkoeler gesels, besoek die toilet - en selfs wanneer jy siek is of met vakansie is.

As vryskut, jy word net betaal vir die ure wat jy vir 'n spesifieke kliënt insit. All the time spent on interruptions, administration and personal matters have to be accounted for out of your own pocket.

Let’s say you decide to charge $50 an hour, and expect to work 40 hours a week. At first this looks pretty good – hey, you’re going to make over $100,000 a year. But when you start deducting time spent on vacations and illness, you find your revenue dropping sharply. Then there’s all the time devoted to looking for work, managing your finances, and everything else.

By the time you’ve finished deducting all this time-sucking overheads, you may find that, on average, you are earning nearer $15 an hour. That’s not much more than you could earn part-time in McDonalds.

So improving your productivity can have a real impact on your earnings. In fact, if you can reclaim an extra hour a day in billable time, your earnings (by $50 an hour) would increase by $13,000 over the course of a year.

And to get that extra hour back, you need to learn the secrets of effective time management.

The secrets of effective time management Good time management is not an innate skill.

We all work with varying degrees of inefficiency, struggling to get things done, but continually being distracted by everyday life. How often have you started the day with a single objective in mind, yet somehow reached the end of the day with that objective still out of reach?

It’s a familiar problem, but the good news is that it can be tackled. Effective time management is something that can be learned and developed.

If you’re a creative person, such as a writer or designer, you are more likely than most to have a problem with time management. Creative people tend to have fewer left-brain skills, and so find logical tasks such as time management more difficult.

That doesn’t mean you have an excuse for avoiding time management – it just means you need to work harder at it.

To start with, you need to understand what time management is, and – more importantly – what it’s not…

Time Management is not doing the wrong things quicker. That just gets us nowhere faster. Time Management is doing the right things.

So let’s take a look at the right things you need to do get things done.

Are you an early bird or a night owl?

Finding out which time of day suits you best can have a big impact on your productivity.

One of the big advantages of being a freelancer is that you have greater freedom over your choice of working hours. You are not tied to a 9-5 schedule from Monday to Friday.

So take some time to analyze when your most productive times are. If you work more efficiently in the morning, for example, make sure that those morning hours are free from interruptions, so that you get the most done in the shortest possible time.

One hour of planning can save you ten hours of doing.

That’s a statement that’s worth taking notice of. So rather than rush into your day with only a vague plan of action, take enough time out to plan your schedule for the day.

Prioritize your tasks, so that you ensure that the really important things get done. Be realistic, egter. There are only so many hours in a day, and you won’t get more done just because you’ve drawn up a long ‘To Do’ list.

Decide what really needs to be done that day, what realistically can be done in the day, and create a schedule that takes both into account.

When you’re under pressure to get things done, it can be tempting to allow documents to pile up on your desk. The few minutes taken to put things away tidily seems like an unnecessary interruption.

But when your workspace becomes disorganized, your work can become muddled, too. A few minutes hunting for a file here, a few minutes looking for a phone number there – before you know it, a big chunk of your day has been frittered away.

Wanneer jy iets teëkom wat jy nie dadelik weet hoe om te hanteer nie, dit is maklik om dit terug te sit in jou 'hangende stapel'. Maar hoe meer kere jy elke stuk papier hanteer, hoe meer van jou tyd word vermors.

Probeer om 'n gewoonte te kry om dokumente te hanteer soos hulle aankom. Wanneer jy jou pos oopmaak, onthou die drie D's:

Hanteer dit

Gooi dit

Delegeer dit.

Maak seker dat jy een van die bogenoemde aanwend op elke stuk papier wat jou lessenaar kruis, elke e-pos wat in jou posbus aankom, en elke item op jou aksielys.

Om dinge uit te stel tot môre help nie - dit gee jou net 'n nog groter 'to do' lys om soggens te hanteer. Hoe meer jy dinge uitstel, hoe onmoontliker word die taak.

If you don’t allocate a specific time for a task, it’s easy to find that the job takes more time than it reasonably should.

Instead of concentrating on the required project, you may find your thoughts wandering.

Returning that phone call or sharpening your pencils may suddenly seem to be much more important than getting on with your work.

To avoid losing valuable time in this way, learn to budget your time effectively. Allow yourself a sensible time to complete a certain task, and then ensure that you stick to it.

Don’t get lost too much in the detail. It’s better to get on with the job and complete it than to become bogged down with minor problems and issues.

One of the biggest problems of time management is dealing with distractions and interruptions.

You may start the day with a seemingly simple set of objectives, confident that you can complete them all with time to spare.

And then the phone rings. A client needs an urgent amendment to a recent project. You check your email and discover a problem that requires immediate attention, then a delivery arrives and you have to ensure that is dealt with properly.

Before you know it, hours of billable time are slipping away.

While it’s almost impossible to cut out such interruptions altogether, you can minimize the damage. Make it clear that when you are working, you are not to be disrupted by ordinary domestic issues. Avoid checking your email until your priority projects are out of the way. And get an answering machine or voice mail service to screen your calls while you are busy.

Most important of all, learn to say ‘no’. People will just have to learn that during your working hours, you are simply not available to help with matters that can wait until later.

How many times have you set a New Year’s resolution, only to have forgotten all about it by mid-January? Setting career goals is one thing. Achieving them is something else altogether. Yet if you apply the following three simple tips, you will find that it is much easier to attain your goals.

Saying that you want to earn more money, or have a better lifestyle is all very well, but how do you measure your success? Instead of being vaguely ambitious, put specific figures on your goals. If you state that you want to earn $100,000 a year, then you have a specific target to aim for – and you will know exactly when you get there.

The simple act of committing your goals to paper is a major step towards achieving them. Once you have written them down, there is no doubt about what you are committing yourself to – it’s hard to argue with evidence in print.

A goal without a deadline is pretty meaningless. It’s easy to keep postponing a target that has a never-ending shelf life. Give yourself a deadline, and you will find that you work harder to hit it.

Research shows that 75% of American workers regularly complain that they are tired. This isn’t too surprising, as the average worker apparently gets less than seven hours sleep a night. So the vast majority of people start the day firing on just three cylinders. No wonder that poor productivity is such an ongoing issue.

But it gets worse. Some 40% of working people skip breakfast, en 39% miss lunch. And of those that do manage a break for lunch, half allow themselves 15 minutes or less. These are big problems, especially where time management is concerned. If you think that working late nights, burning the candle at both ends and missing meals makes you a hard worker, you really are missing the point.

Productivity depends not just on the hours that you put in, but also on the quality of work that you produce. If you are tired and not eating properly, your productivity will plummet. As your blood-sugar level drops, your body automatically slows you down to conserve energy. Add tiredness on top of this, and you might as well give up all pretense at working. The lights may be on, but there’s probably no-one at home.

That’s the negative side. Now let’s turn things around and look at the positive. Increasing your fitness can have a really dramatic effect on your productivity. You don’t need me to tell you what that entails – regular exercise, getting enough sleep, eating nutritious food and establishing a routine that your body can become familiar with.

Don’t forget to take regular breaks. Your body and mind needs to relax from time to time – you can’t operate for hours continuously like a machine.

We all know that getting in shape is easier said than done. But if you can improve your level of fitness, you will be amazed at the impact this can have on your working life. You will approach each day fresh and with greater enthusiasm. You will find it easier to solve problems, and you will get more done than you ever imagined possible. If there was ever a way to get 25 hours out of each day, fitness is it. Look after your health, and your wealth will take care of itself.

Most of all, try to ensure that you are undertaking work that you enjoy. That way, you can enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Thomas Edison said that he never did a day’s work in his life – it was all fun!

That surely is the best way to get the most from every week of your working life.