Personal Productivity Tips : ABC Method To Prioritize Daily Tasks

Building Good Work Relationship

We spend most of our productive adult life in our career. Having good work relationships helps to create more conducive work environment and gives us deep satisfaction and meaning in our work. To have good working relationships, we need to invest our time and effort in people. Below are some suggestions that we can apply to build good work relationships;  

Build our people skills - Good relationships start with good people skills. Among areas that we need to build include communication, influencing skills, working in teams and conflict management. Read books, attend courses and seminars on these topics.

Identify Our Relationship Needs – Relationships are built and grow when mutual needs are satisfied. Look at our own relationship needs. Do we look for inclusion (doing things together), control (telling and be told what to do) or openness (expressing feelings)? At the same time, we need to know the needs of others from our relationship.

Invest Time to Build Relationships - Devote a portion of our daily time for relationship building.

Examples include going for lunch together, replying to postings on Twitter or Facebook or asking a colleague out for a quick cup of coffee. A little bit goes a long way.

Develop Emotional Intelligence (EI) - Spend time to develop our own emotional intelligence ie our ability to recognize our own emotions and actions. We can do this by reading books, attending courses and seminars. High EI also helps us to be more sensitive to the emotions and needs of others.

Appreciate Others - Show appreciation whenever someone helps us. Be generous with ‘Thank you’, ‘I appreciate it’ etc to show our appreciation. These simple but powerful words will open the door to great work relationships.

Be Positive – Strive to be positive. Being positive is attractive and contagious. No one wants to be around someone who is negative and complaining all the time. Say positive things and look for the positive in others. Shut up if we have nothing positive to say.

Avoid Gossiping - Don't gossip. Remember that office politics and ‘gossips’ are major relationship killers at work. Gossiping will only make the problems worse and create mistrust and animosity.

Listen Actively – Practice to be a good listener. Pay attention when others are talking. Avoid distractions (such as playing with hand phones), nod, asks questions are examples of active listening. Most people love to be around good listeners.

Bringing Happiness to Our Life

We all want to be happy. When we feel happy, we are more productive, we tend to have meaningful relationships and we feel great about ourselves and others. Positive psychologist, Martin Seligman in his 2011 book ‘Flourish’ proposed the PERMA Model to help us understand the five essential elements to be happy.

According to Martin Seligman, in order for us to achieve lasting happiness, we must possess or experience these five elements in our life;

Positive Emotion (P) - For us to experience well-being, we need positive emotion in our lives. Any positive emotion like peace, gratitude, satisfaction, pleasure, inspiration, hope, curiosity, or love falls into this category – and the message is that it's really important to enjoy yourself in the here and now, just as long as the other elements of PERMA are in place.

Engagement (E) - When we're truly engaged in a situation, task, or project, we experience a state of flow: time seems to stop, we lose our sense of self, and we concentrate intensely on the present. This feels really good! The more we experience this type of engagement, the more likely we are to experience well-being.

Positive Relationships (R) - As humans, we are "social beings," and good relationships are core to our well-being. Time-and-again, we see that people who have meaningful, positive relationships with others are happier than those who do not. Relationships really do matter!

Meaning (M) - Meaning comes from serving a cause bigger than ourselves. Whether this is a specific deity or religion, or a cause that helps humanity in some way, we all need meaning in our lives to have a sense of well-being.

Accomplishment/Achievement (A) - Many of us strive to better ourselves in some way, whether we're seeking to master a skill, achieve a valuable goal, or win in some competitive event. As such, accomplishment is another important thing that contributes to our ability to flourish.

Martin Seligman recommended that we reflect on the quality of our personal and professional life and look for the existence of these five elements. By constantly being aware and taking conscious effort to achieve them, we will live a more satisfying and fulfilling life, be in at home or in our workplace.