Productivity is a measure of how much you do with the resources you have in a given amount of time.
Being productive means you are producing something.
Effectiveness is an ability; it is a measure of how you engage in a set of actions that produces the desired outcome. It is also a skill that can be developed like a muscle.
Being effective means that you choose what you focus on and where you place your efforts in order to cause an intentional effect on your life.
Set the compass of your life in the right productivity direction then use effectiveness to take steps each day to achieve you goals.
As this is a book about time, there is a lot of content about email management. Immediately action those that you can and educate others about best practices for sending emails. Be brutal with emails, and if possible only check emails at set times per day. The book suggests organising emails into folders but in reality this is time consuming itself – I suggest just use the search function.
Organised versus last minute – neither is better. An organised person being asked last minute unexpected requests may struggle, whereas a last minute juggler might be able to come through readily. How organised and last minute people view an hour is completely different!
Monochrones see time as fixed, rigid, and absolute. They do one thing at a time and view time commitments as critical. These people are task orientated and committed to jobs and projects.
Polychrones perceive time quite differently and see time as flexible. For a polychrone, a moment is capable of holding many events simultaneously. So they tend to multitask.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking that everyone else thinks about time the way as you do or draw unfavourable conclusions about those who have different time preferences to us. To be effective and productive, both personally and organizationally, we need to embrace the contributions offered by both
polychronic and monochronic time orientations.
When deciding about activities, aim to prioritise those that give you the best bang for your buck, the greatest payoff for your investment in time. These are the activities that really matter to you and are the most important for living a meaningful and rewarding life.
