Because actions come from attitudes, increasing productivity may require reshaping some of the attitudes that now dictate how you use time. Consider these practices that affect productivity and see how attitudes are involved:

Concentrate On High Priority Activities

The quickest and most effective route to increasing productivity is to spend time on tasks that advance important goals.  Make certain you spend your time on work that really matters; otherwise, you may be completely consumed by trivial details. Help others spend their time on their high priority activities, and  concentrate your time and effort on high priority activities that lead to the achievement of your goals.

Exercise Self-Discipline

Self-discipline enables people to stay focused on a task and work on it until it is complete. Establish your priorities and then refuse to let distractions, interruptions, or happenings of the moment destroy your concentration. Discipline yourself to give tasks only the amount of time and effort they truly deserve from you, or delegate them to other appropriate team members.

Be Persistent

Careful planning and goal setting, determination to achieve, and recognizing the benefits of reaching a goal are all vital to personal productivity. This combination of factors enables one to be persistent, and persistence is always characteristic of the successful individual. Persistent individuals keep their goal in mind and work tenaciously toward it until they savor the success of achieving it.

Get Started!

The best way to guarantee completion of a project is to get started on it – now! Two reasons account for failure to accomplish important jobs – people either never start, or they never finish. Both of these unproductive time patterns fall under the debilitating umbrella of procrastination. Several patterns of faulty thinking account for most procrastination.

Strive for Results – Not Perfection

Overemphasis on perfection nearly always renders negative consequences – immobilizing fear of making mistakes, discouragement, and preoccupation with what others think rather than genuine productivity. Productive people distinguish between what is important and what is not. They set aside a reasonable amount of time to accomplish a specific task; then they stick to their deadline. They recognize some tasks simply are not important enough to lavish too much time or effort on them. Even on genuinely significant projects truly productive individuals simply strive for results – not perfection.

Attitude Is Everything