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Tips to Increase Productivity!

What is productivity?πŸ“‹

Productivity is the quality of being productive or having the power to produce. Productivity in the workplace refers to the amount of “work” that is completed over a specific period of time.

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How do you increase your productivity? Some suggest that you can take breaks in between tasks, set small achievable goals, and try to avoid multitasking (focus one at a time!). However, to sufficiently increase your productivity the most important thing is that you identify what you can and/or cannot do, then choose to focus on what things that you can do something about!

Stephen Covey (1989) proposed the circles of influence and circle of concern in his book named “7 habits of highly effective people” as one of the ways to increase productivity. By deciding how we view ourselves and the situations, as well as to have control over our own effectiveness.

_Circle of Influence_


The circle of influence includes things that you are concerned about, but you have the power and in control to do something about it. When we focus on enlarging the circle of influence by working on things that we have control over, the positive energy will cause the circle to expand. Proactive people, people who actively respond to a situation, will choose to focus and work on things that they can do about in a situation.

_Cirlce of Concern_


The circle of concern includes the things that we do not have control over whatsoever, but we still tend to worry about. When we emphasize the circle of concern, it will create negative energy and cause the circle of influence to shrink. Reactive people, people who think that the problem is “out there”, will focus on their circle of concern which leads them to blame the external factors of a situation. When there is a situation or problem, they tend to self-blame, blame others, use reactive language to respond to the situation such as “There’s nothing I can do.”.

How the circle of influence and the circle of concern interact with one another❓

Imagine you are having a situation or problem in your workplace. If you are a proactive person, you would focus on the circle of influence, actively to try and solve the problem. When you start finding a solution to the problem, you save your time from all the whining and complaining and get things done. If you are a reactive person, on the other hand, you would start to blame yourself or other external factors that could possibly cause the problem. For example, you might think “why do bad things always happen to me?” “This is getting worse.”, which certainly wastes your time and energy trying to control something you have absolutely no control of. This will cause you to be unproductive because the problem would not be solved at all and you will be overwhelmed by the negative energy.

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In short, these circles tell us that we have to focus on how we can do, influence, and change to improve the situation by actively thinking about possible actions that can be taken to solve a problem and disregard things that are not under our control. Eventually, this allows us to be driven on making progress in a task and hence increasing our productivity!

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