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By Dan Coughlin
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here are a variety of ways to try to measure your productivity.
You can focus on the number of hours you work in a
week or the number of days you travel in a month. I suggest
that neither of those is an effective way to measure whether
you are being productive or not. I could even argue that if you
are working more than 55 hours a week or traveling excessively
that you might even be getting in your own way of being more
productive.
Make Every Interaction a More Meaningful Interaction
In many ways, every business is a relationship business.
As I write this article I’m working with people in four
different countries on three different continents in real estate,
film production, academia, software solutions, manufacturing,
transportation logistics, supply chain management, executive
search, HVAC distribution and electrical distribution.
A person might think they have little in common. I think
they all have a lot in common. They all work with people, and
they are all trying to create and deliver value
to customers that can generate sustainable
success for those customers and for their
organizations.
You interact with other employees,
customers, suppliers, prospective customers
and people whom you can learn from and can
connect you to other people. What you do with those interactions
will largely determine your ability to produce results.
And yet we often go through our days glossing over the
importance of these interactions, barely listening and rushing off
to the next meeting, call or report. We don’t optimize these rela-
tionships because we’re so busy doing stuff and hurrying from
one thing to the next. It’s like we’re eating while we’re driving
rather than savoring a good, healthy meal. And some people will
do this for 70 hours a week until they are almost exhausted while
traveling from one city to another.
Please, slow down, and make the most of every interaction.