Last month, I shared with you about the problems around “traditional” toxic productivity and hustle culture. So at this point, you might be wondering… What IS true productivity? Today, let’s get into what true productivity is, and what healthy productivity looks like…
True productivity is efficient and abundant. It’s about getting more high quality and meaningful work done in less time, WITHOUT burnout. True productivity is about working on tasks that you like doing, and making awesome progress toward achieving your dreamy goals, while still having abundant energy to actually enjoy all that extra time you free up. True productivity, when we look at it through this lens, actually begets further productivity.
What is true productivity?
True productivity is about efficiency and abundance, energy and joy, success and accomplishment, and genuine freedom and fulfillment in your own life and business.
True productivity is also highly strategic. Rather than priding yourself on being super busy and very important, we want to focus on the tasks that actually matter, that really support you and your goals, so that every day you can SEE the incredible progress you’re making in our work. All of these pieces work together. 
Time management is rooted in energy management, and it is crucial to true productivity. For example, the amount of time you spend on a task or a project will drastically decrease when you have more energy to focus and do your work. The more energy that you have, the faster you can get things done. If you're exhausted and tired, it'll take you that much longer to complete a task.
The quality of your work also increases considerably with more energy. When you show up to the office exhausted, you can’t produce high-quality outputs.
The amount of energy and vigour also affects your ability to meet deadlines. Feeling too sluggish and tired means you might not even notice a looming deadline—or, if you do know it’s there, you’re stuck in the cycle of constantly scrambling to meet the deadline. When you’re tired, you struggle to keep on top of your workload, let alone get ahead on it. The goal is to always keep on top of your workload—and even ahead on it!
The more energy you have, the less fuzzy your brain will be. You get more focus and clarity when you have more energy. And that also means you’ll reduce the amount of mistakes you might make in your work.
Focus and clarity plays a huge factor in your decision-making skills. As a small business owner, you have a lot of decisions to make on an ongoing basis! And team members who work at small businesses are often wearing multiple hats, so it means that each person in your team probably also has to make decisions on your behalf. If you and your team are all exhausted, none of you will make the best possible decisions.
This also helps to support your work/life balance. It ensures that we build a better relationship between your personal and professional life. It helps to bridge the gap between the personal and professional, so that they’re in sync and support one another…
…and that also lends itself to personal enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfilment. Increased energy can then be highly motivating. It can help with loyalty, both in the people you hire and in your customers and clients. It enables you to experience more daily joy on a personal level, which then in turn gives back to your families and friends and communities. I hope you’re starting to see just how powerful energy management is! It truly affects everything, within us and around us.
And by the way, research shows that happiness increases productivity by 12%. Imagine that. Just by virtue of being happy in the workplace, happy in the projects you're working on, you naturally become more productive. What a delightful reason to prioritize happiness along with energy management!
Learn more about how to improve healthy productivity with a strong foundation of energy management in my FREE training, 3 Steps to 10x Your Productivity.
To recap, in answer to your question What is true productivity?
True productivity is…
- Efficient and abundant.
- Getting more high quality and meaningful work done in less time, WITHOUT burnout.
- Working on tasks that you like doing, and making awesome progress toward achieving your dreamy goals, while still having abundant energy to actually enjoy all that extra time you free up.
- Joyful, maximizes success and accomplishment, and provides you with genuine freedom in your own life and business.
- Highly strategic.
- Rooted in energy management.
- Increases your focus, clarity, and time management skills.
- Supports your work/life balance.
- Leads to personal enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfilment.
Are you ready to discover the specific steps you can take to skyrocket your productivity, using my anti-hustle methods?