A Radically Simple Productivity Strategy That Is Usually Overlooked

One of the most powerful strategies to become more productive is radically simple but is commonly overlooked. The strategy is simply this:

Keep 100% of your promises.

That’s it. Keep 100% of the agreements that you make with others and that you make with yourself, and you will easily be one of the most productive people around. Unfortunately, this strategy is as difficult to implement as it is easy to understand. In reality, this strategy is impossible to achieve, because perfection is always impossible. No one can keep 100% of his or her promises. Nevertheless, by consciously striving to achieve this ideal, your productivity will increase tremendously.

Ways to Use Promises to Increase Productivity

1. Always do what you say you are going to do. You will have no choice but to be more productive. In order to achieve this standard, you will need to be more careful about the things that you commit to.
2. Be on time every time. Never be late for your appointments, meetings, or dates. By being on time, you will save the time of others and increase their productivity. Many people (but obviously not all) will have a greater respect for your time if you respect theirs. If you are often late, others will be more likely to be late. It is also very important to be on time for appointments that you set with yourself. If you agreed to exercise at 7:00 PM, then do it. Starting on time every time is the antidote to procrastination.
3. Meet all of your deadlines. This is pretty self-explanatory. You will obviously need to be more productive to meet your deadlines than not to meet them. Meeting your deadlines forces you to focus.
4. Complete your Most Important Tasks (MITs) every single day. You decided which tasks were your MITs for the day, so begin to place a priority on completing them. By doing so, you will avoid procrastinating by doing tasks of lesser importance.
5. Never violate your personal standards. If you have a standard for how much you want to weigh, then you will have to be productive in achieving that weight. I previously talked about my personal standard of posting a minimum of 4 new quality posts and 1 weekly summary every single week. To meet this standard, I have no choice but to be productive.

You can see how powerful these strategies can be. They are also very difficult. I don’t claim to be anywhere near perfect when it comes to using these strategies. However, it’s an area that I’m constantly trying to improve on.

What other ways can you use promises to increase your productivity?

Tagged as: Productivity, Success, Time Management