Greater results and faster progress from your efforts, with IDEAL
Learn what actual productivity requires of you.
Success requires actual productivity
Success is impossible apart from being productive. Yet, productivity is the most misunderstood requirement for success. Get on the fast-track to greater productivity with the simple—but powerful—five-step model: IDEAL.
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IDEAL is:
Intend: what you want
Direct: how you approach what you want
Engage: your activities and their results
Assess: how you interpret your progress
Learn: your ability to improve
IDEAL: the natural process for success
Since IDEAL is based on human characters, these five steps create the most natural process for our development and success of our personal and business goals.
Challenges to improve, achieve, or become what is important to us are often the result of how we express IDEAL. The solution to these challenges is to learn how to apply IDEAL as a process. That is, the key to the success (or greater success) we want—in our lives and businesses—is to understand how the aspects of IDEAL work together.
1. Intend
Productivity is not general busyness; it's specific results from targeted activity. So, what results define "productive" for what you need to achieve today?
We all have intentions, but we don’t all know how to achieve the success that what want. Step One of the IDEAL process is to clarify what "productivity" means for a given day.
Productivity is specific to an aim, which means that you need to know what result you need from each day in order to sufficiently advance toward your goal.
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Productivity is relevant to long-term goals and simple To-Do lists. If productivity is a day's To-Do list, then the activities on that list are what must be accomplished in order for you to have been productive.
2. Direct
"Direct" refers to your choices, as the director of your day, life, and course to your success.
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Determine how and when you will approach each activity for your day.
Nothing happens without a process (steps). All successes (and failures) result from the quality of steps taken toward an aim—something that you intend.
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Think through the requirements for being productive in a day. Schedule your activities according to the time you have to allocate to those requirements. Recognize possible obstacles and interferences that could sidetrack you and factor them into your efforts to be productive. If you don't know how you could fail to be productive, you cannot make your best effort to achieve what productivity requires from you.
3. Engage
At this step, you answer what results are needed today, in order for your activity to qualify as productive.
At this point in the IDEAL process, it's time to put forth your effort to meet the demands for productivity. Prepare according to those demands.
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Consider productivity strategies, such as Time Blocks and Clock Days, to optimize focus and results.
4. Assess
Productivity is easiest to assess against a list of daily objectives. Assess in order to learn how to improve.
In order to ensure your success, make sure you're on-track to your goal. Draw from facts (not guesswork) about everything related to your efforts to be productive. Identify what supported and interfered with your efforts—schedule, strategy, interruptions, variables, etc.
5. Learn
The course to improved productivity may require a discovery process. In order to discover how to improve, be clear about: (1) the result you targeted for a particular day; (2) your use of time; and (3) what supports and derails key activities.
Success often involves a discovery process, which may include a willingness to learn and change.
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Complex goals may require tests—of tools, practices, etc.—to determine your best choices for optimal productivity.
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The Learn step of IDEAL may require you to have resources and make use of what information you can attain from your efforts.
Success requires you to be productive
It is impossible to reach any goal without being productive. Productivity is the common denominator among all successful endeavors.
If you are serious about the success of your goals, then master productivity across each of its cornerstones: plan, produce, prepare, and progress.
Where do you need to be productive?
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Start a business
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Increase sales for a business
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Become physically fit
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Better serve your clients
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Achieve a degree or advancement
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Become a subject expert
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Write and publish music
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Lose weight
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Master a skill
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Write a book or screenplay
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. . .
Productivity is specific to you
Whatever your goal, if you aren’t productive, you will struggle to succeed. This fact requires those who are serious about their success to understand what being productive actually means and requires.
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Productivity is concerned with everything that is relevant to your plan, preparation, and pursuit of success.
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Is it time for an update in your knowledge about how to achieve the success that you want? Consider coaching support from Steven.
The starting point of any pursuit of success is to know what success requires of you specifically. In order to know what productivity requires, knowledge about your subject and productivity is critically important. You need to also be clear about your minimum performance standard (MPS). The MPS is the result from activity required in order for you to avoid being at risk of failure. Get support to meet the demands for your success. Schedule a free consultation to get answers to your questions about productivity.
Caution:
Before you set out to chase your ambitious goal, be clear about your start point. In order to successfully reach your aim, you must have no illusions about where you are today. If you misjudge your start point, you’ll likely mistake your course to success.
Tips for greater productivity
Know and provide what's required
Productivity is specific to you - to what is required in order for you to progress toward what you want to achieve. This means: safeguard and support the activities you depend on.
Productivity is not limited to activities that achieve progress; productivity is concerned with everything related to your ability to sufficiently advance toward what you want to achieve.
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Support from a coach can help you identify and prepare to meet all of the requirements for your success.
Account for your Why-not
If you don't know how you could fail, you cannot be fully prepared to succeed. Why-not is concerned with defensive productivity, how to safeguard productivity against opposition.
Do you know you "why-not"? If not, the progress on which you rely is vulnerable. Learn how to make your best effort toward the productivity that you need. Consider support from a coach who is a productivity expert.
Sustain progress toward success
There are several causes of lulls in productivity. Among them is the inability to sustain motivation, focus, and on-track performance. Productivity safeguards and strategies can effectively resolve many challenges.
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Remember, productivity is not about activity; it's about results that are required by your goal. Work with a coach can keep you maintain progress toward what's important to you - in your life or for your business.
