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.

Personal Productivity Tips - How to Have the Growth Mindset

Managing Our Emotions

All of us have said things that we regretted later on in our moment of emotional outbursts. We say nasty things that we don’t really mean. Sometimes the damage is reversible. Other times, the bridge is burned and friendships are lost forever.

Renowned psychologist, Dr Rob Yeung in his book ‘Confidence – The Power to Take Control and Live the Life You Want’ suggested the FAÇADe technique to manage our emotions (such as anger, lack of confidence, shame) better. He suggested that when we are stuck in our emotional ‘hole’, pick up a pen and paper and go through the FACADe technique below;

Feelings – After we have calmed down, list the emotions that we are experiencing at the moment such as anger, anxiety, shame, despair, etc. Give each feeling a score from 0 to 10 depending on how strong we feel it.

Actions - Write down how our behavior changed because of the feelings that we feel. For example, when we feel angry, we may want to confront the person and give him a piece of our mind or when we feel despair, we want to go and finish that extra-large ice-cream in the refrigerator.

Circumstances – Describe the situations or circumstances that trigger our feelings. It could be something that we remember from the past, things that are happening now or our anticipation of the future. It could also be an event or someone. Write down anything that make us upset.

ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) – Next, write down the thoughts and beliefs that popped into our mind when we feel the emotions. What are the dialogues that we say to ourselves at that moment? Do we say, “I am hopeless”, “They must think that I am a loser”, “What an idiot!”, etc?

Defects – Lastly, search for the flaws or defects in our thoughts. Re-look at the ANTs above and rate how far we actually believe them to be true. Use the 0-10 scale. Think of constructive and compassionate thoughts to challenge the ANTs. If our ANTs says that we are not good in public speaking, we can challenge it by saying “All good public speakers start as bad public speakers first”.

I must admit that it took me a while to get used to this FACADe technique. However, after a few sessions, it becomes easier and has helped me to reframe and relook at my emotions from a different angle. So, the next time you are in your emotional ‘hole’, use this technique and you will be surprised at the results.

Personal Productivity Tips - The Growth Mindset

How to Read More Books in Less Time

Have you ever wished that you could read a book faster and still be able to absorb the important points? Wouldn’t it be great if you could double or triple your reading speed and finish four books in a month instead of two?

A renowned success guru, Brian Tracy in his book, ‘Time Power’ suggested the OPIR method to help us read faster and still retain the important points. OPIR stands for Overview, Preview, In-view and Review. Let us look at it in detail.

Overview – Firstly, read the front and back covers. Then, look at the flaps inside each cover and browse the table of contents. Look for subjects and headings that are of special interest to you. Highlight them to mark out anything that stands out. Next, turn the pages quickly, about 30 to 40 pages per minute. This is to get the feeling of how the book is structured. Read a paragraph here and there.

Preview – Go back to the first page and turn the pages again one at a time. Stop and read an occasional sentence or paragraph. Read the first sentence or paragraph of each chapter. At the end of each chapter, read any questions or summaries if available. Then, use a highlighter to mark out sections of the book that you want to spend more time on. Limit this phase to ten minutes.

In-view – Next, return to the sections that you are interested in and browse the relevant material. Put your hand or fingers down the page to keep your eyes on the lines. If you find anything that is particularly interesting, slow down and use a highlighter to mark the passages. Make notes in the margins, turn down the page corners or color the edges that you might want to access quickly later on.

Review – Lastly, review what you have read. Return to the pages you have marked previously. Read the notes that you have written on the margins and the ones that you have highlighted. You can create a learning record by transferring what you have written on the book onto separate sheets of paper that you can file later on.

This OPIR method can help you to complete a 300 page book between one to two hours. The good news is, the more you use this method, the faster and better your will become. Then, you should be able to read more books in a month, retain most of what you have read and increase your knowledge at the same time.