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4 Ways to be More Productive

I sometimes feel un-productive with my time. Many times I feel guilty for not getting more done with my time, whether at work or home I hate procrastination.  I think procrastination is a common enemy to us all.   It’s easy to procrastinate with tasks that are difficult and unpleasant.  But it is the unpleasant tasks of life that we most need to get past.

There are little things that we can do to increase our productivity each day, things that don’t require a productivity seminar and a 500 page book to read.  Below are 4 ways to improve your productivity.

  1. Get up early, give yourself at least 2 hours before you need to leave for work, there is something about the early morning hours, being alone and starting your day before the average person, I think it gives you that extra sense of productivity for the rest of the day.
  2. Write a list of things to do in the morning, every day write a list of the major things that you want to accomplish for the day, keep that list with you and refer to it at lunch and mid afternoon.
  3. Do the most difficult tasks first, Michael Hyatt discusses this concept well in his blog.  http://michaelhyatt.com/stop-procrastinating.html

“We only have a limited supply of willpower.  Once it’s been used up for the day, chances of us tackling hard tasks are pretty slim. Dive into your hardest task when your energy level is at its highest. This will ensure the best results.”

      4.   Realize that you are just one person, you can only accomplish a finite number of things each day, its ok to just go to bed and get ready for a productive morning.

Do you feel productive most days?, what ways have you found to help you feel more productive?

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Competency is Critical

Good Leader Bad Manager

Have you ever wondered what makes a great manager? It is more than leadership skill, I know of several good leaders who make ineffective managers. There are also effective managers who don’t seem to be strong leaders. What can explain this discrepancy? How could a strong leader not manage well? I think that competency makes all the difference in high-tech R&D leadership.

In the field of high-tech R&D an effective manager needs to be competent in their field. The level of competence needed for effective management is often underestimated. Many think strong leaders will lead well wherever they are. If they are trained in management then they will lead well even if they are not competent in their field. Project leadership teacher say one does not necessarily need to understand the science in depth to lead a technical project. I believe this is often not the case.

“Competence is possessing skill and knowledge that allows us to do something successfully. It also describes the ability to apply prior experience to new situations with good effect. Our competency usually increases over time as we acquire more information and ability through inquiry, observation, and participation…” –  www.wisdomcommons.org

High Tech Competence

Most R&D projects require high-tech competence beyond the average person. Compared to running a retail business or marketing products or managing a construction project, high-tech competence is difficult to find. Therefore managers of these projects must be willing and able to learn from his/her scientists. Even be able and willing to work as a scientist in order to gain the necessary competency to manage.

Often the employees who are highly competent in science don’t make great managers because they are not interested in management. They became scientists because that’s what they wanted to do, they love science and love inventing. Few want to move into the stressful field of management? As a result many scientists are not accustomed to making difficult decisions under pressure.

But for those brave enough to venture into management I think there are at least three things we can do to prepare ourselves to manage R&D projects.

  1. Pursue competence through study and research, don’t take the shallow expert in everything approach, go deep into whatever you are working on.
  2. Always be in the habit of learning from your own experiments or other scientist’s work?
  3. Become decisive, develop the habit of making decisions and correcting bad decisions, break through the fear of making bad decisions.

Have you ever noticed a strong leader who is a lousy manager? and was competence part of the problem?

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The Learning Industry

I work in research and development for a technology company. I’ve been in an R&D division since the mid 90’s. I work with some of the most intelligent and skilled people that one could imagine. These people are from the top universities and have created dozens of inventions making life better for countless millions of people.

There are many things that I will write on the topic of research, development and innovation in this blog, but in this post I want to bring out the concept of learning. We in R&D are professional learner’s, we are paid to learn for our company. We learn then invent on behalf of the company.

All of this learning has taught me several valuable insights, (besides all of the technology and science). Four of these insights are listed below.

  1. There must be a proper environment created for learning.
  2. There are private learning curves and corporate learning curves and they are very different.
  3. The faster the private learning’s become corporate learning’s the more efficient the R&D organization will be.
  4. An early stage organization may pay several times for the same learnings without good management.

Management of the learning, teaching and collaboration processes is critical in R&D. When I see attitudes in universities and industry where information is siloed with insecure scientists and engineers I know that is contrary to efficient innovation. It is wastefulness on display; it’s the opposite of what is needed for quality innovation. To have the attitude of the insecure scientist who conceals learning’s from the competition is contrary to what needs to happen in the learning industry of research and development.

An efficient research and development organization is one that both learns and teaches, that is our trade and those with attitudes or behavior contrary to that should consider changing fields.

Are you in the reseach industry?

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