COACHd – 12 March 2021 – productivity

On Monday we will be meeting at Co Coaching to practise our coaching techniques around the subject of productivity. This is something that frequently occurs. According to hrdconnect.com, 84% of UK professionals say that coaching should be part of every business’s management and development programme. So what does this mean to you when you unpick this statement?

For me, I balance with knowledge of the return on investment that coaching delivers, as well as thinking of some of the recent benefits/outcomes clients have achieved. Increase productivity is certainly in there.

When a person has more time to focus on leading their lives (and their business), their vision becomes clearer. It helps those around them to understand this vision and to play their part in enabling this vision to be achieved.

Decluttering work processes can therefore be an important aspect. Minimalism avoids material items or luxuries and focuses on life itself – it removes the interference. Gallwey talks about this in his seminal book The Inner Game of Tennis and the subsequent equation:-

Performance = Potential less Interference

Removal of interference, be it through minimalism or successful adoption of processes, will increase performance and productivity. Less interference leads to better flow.

In late 2020, I experimented with a technique.

What if, I decided to use the concept of Furlough to help streamline my business? I completed an exercise to refocus my energies on what was important for my coaching business to operate, to remove the interference and to focus on the key aspects that delivered useful outcomes. What I found was that this process improved my efficiencies and focus. I found time to ‘not work’ and to build snowmen 🙂 It also, let me have some clear headspace to look at our environment objectively and plan for the future.

Simple questions were asked such as

  • What can I stop doing, what do I continue doing, what do I need to start doing?
  • What is my ‘chakra’ telling me (the mind, the heart, the soul)?
  • What am I seeing around me that is giving me energies? What is it that is taking energy away?
  • What am I avoiding? What am I overcompensating for?

Of these, I found that the intuition of giving myself a damn good listening really helped. Some people find journaling interesting (get in touch if you are interested in starting in this area as I am running a workshop soon on how to start journalling), and others have found that classical music or a sheet of A3 with some funky pens also helps.

We have triggers firing around us every day.

What is it that the ‘world’, ‘nature’, ‘our bodies’ are telling us to pay attention to?

The productivity giveaway

A gift for you to think about. In the book “Getting things done“, the author David Allen talks about the ‘mythical’ inbox Zero. In my experience, this is now not a myth as I strive to be at inbox zero at the end of my morning startup routine. He suggests creating three folders in your email.
  1.  *action – this is a folder where you put the emails that require more than a 2-minute action (Eg – they need SCHEDULING into your diary. Do that else it won’t get done)
  2.  *waiting – this is the folder you put emails that you are waiting for a response on.
  3.  *hold – placing useful emails here might be good. I use this folder for joining instructions for conferences, or webinars, or training sessions I am running.
I have also added the fourth folder, *to read. This folder is where I place all the emails that I want to read. I can schedule some time to ‘batch read’ these inspirations but I also do one other thing – if I don’t get value then I unsubscribe.
Have a good week – and see you on Monday at Co-Coaching.


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