Taking productivity to the next level

Magnolia
Originally uploaded by rachelluttrell

"Self development" literature tends to focus on the "self".

How to set goals, manage your time and tasks. Building information management systems, being organized. How to stay in focus and be motivated. Having healthy and intimate relationships.

Self-growth is a hard and never ending mission, which I struggle with every day.

Albert Einstein once said:

"No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."

The same is true with the problem of personal growth.

In The The 8th Habit, Stephan Covey, talks about taking growth to the next level. How? Find your Voice & Inspire Others to find Theirs. Become a leader.

Leadership by Covey does not depend on your on your formal position, it is an attitude. What ever is your position is in an organization, you can always take the "personal-growth" ideas and implement them on the team/group/community/organization level.

The framework for growth focus on all 4 sides of being human:

• Body:
  Personal - exercise, be healthy, control your impulses, develop good habits and work to eliminate bad habits.
  Team /Organization - build good routines and information flow systems, keep the organization healthy by making sure it meets the needs for survival (i.e. economic growth, members satisfaction).



• Mind:
  Personal - Learn all the time, expend your skills and responsibilities. Visualise yourself in a year from now, 3 years, 20 years. Set goals and plan to achieve them.
  Team/Organization - Develop a mission statement, a vision. Plan for the long term goals.



• Heart:
  Personal - Learn to recognize your emotions and to control them. Develop heart-full relationships in your family, with friends and colleagues.
  Team/Organization - Trust (verb and noun) your team members, be a trustworthy person. Develop relationships inside the group and with other groups. Empower team members by beliveing in them and helping them in a significant way(for them).
  


• Spirit:
  Personal - Live by principles and values. Contribute to make the world a better place.
  Team/Organization - Act according to pricipels and values. Meet a genuine need in the world. "Don't be evil".

Questions to ask on a daily basis
(team = team/organization/group)

• Do I identify with my team values?
• How are my goals meet the goals of my team?
• How can my team grow and improve?
• How can I help my team members?
• How can I become a leader and a force of growth in my team?

The best way to learn a new set of skills requires two steps

The best way to learn a new set of skills requires two steps:

• Doing it
• Teaching it

Doing it
Michel Jordan once said:

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

You cannot be good in something if you have not practiced it. You want to be a good speaker; grab any opportunity you have of presenting something to a big audience, try Toastmasters. Sure you will suck at the beginning but after 1000 presentations you will be a great speaker. To develop any skill be it mental, emotional or physical you have to train yourself. Before you can run a marathon you need to train and run 5 miles. You want to own your own business, first be a leader in your own job - do your job to perfection, help colleagues as best as you can , be proactive and make a change in your organizational environment.

To help you do what you want to do, commit yourself publicly to your goals. Tell to all your friends what your goal is, write about it in your blog. The public commitment well help you stay focused on your goal in the first steep steps of the learning curve.

Teaching it
To really understand a subject deeply, the best way it to teach it to someone. When you teach you must reorganize your knowledge of the subject and connect it to other parts of your memory and associations. When you don't teach the material will probably stay in your memory in the same format it was presented to you and only few connections will be made with your full knowledge and skills.

This are the main reasons way I write a blog. I wanted to improve my writing and what a better way then committing to write a few posts a week. I want to develop myself and the blog is a place to publicly commit to my goals. And one of the best ways to make knowledge be an integral part of the way I think is to try and teach it to others, it using the blog platform I can receive continuous feedback from my readers on how am I doing and have a place to return and tap my knowledge about personal growth.