Productivity Success: How do you Measure it?

What is Productivity Success?

Productivity in 2020 isn’t the same as it was a few years ago, or so it seems. But what it means for one person is different than for another. Our current research project sets out to summarize the problems that we face while working toward productivity as well as the solutions people employ across the globe to find success in this effort. We are publishing our results freely and hope you’ll take 5 minutes to give us your input and add to our study.  

At the center of our study, we are exploring what ’productivity success’ looks like. Is it about building wealth, having more personal time, or measuring accomplishments? Success for you may likely include some of all three, perhaps it is also connected to how we each define happiness?

Productivity Success & Happiness

Perhaps happiness can be a successful metric of productivity, but that answer might seem trite and oversimplified. Still, a group of researchers inspired by a 2005 New York Times article on the same topic set out to create a quantifiable measurement for happiness. Gross National Happiness (GNH) was coined by the fourth king of Bhutan patterned after GDP. This happiness research turned into the Happy Documentary which debuted in 2012. This documentary concluded that happiness is directly correlated to three things:

1. Making the world a better place
2. Improving yourself through continued education
3. Spending time with loved ones

So what does happiness or GNH have to do with productivity you might ask? Perhaps better measuring our productivity efforts as we serve, learn, and love other people is a step towards feelings of success.

For 78 years, Harvard set out to study the lives of 724 men to know what drove their happiness. In 2016 a TED Talk watched by more than 13M viewers, director Robert Waldinger who performed the research shared the primary lessons learned he learned. The biggest discovery being that the health of relationships directly correlates with living happier longer lives. Again though, what does all this have to do with productivity? Mr. Waldinger suggests a few ideas himself starting at minute 11:00 of his linked Ted Talk.

For some time now, here at Todo Cloud, we have been shifting our own thinking about productivity success. The biggest adjustment we have been making has been to put people, families, and teams, at the center of our task management technology.

How Todo Cloud Can Help

As it stands today, ToDo is a leader in the productivity crowd with robust capabilities to track everything you need to get done while putting the people and organizations you care most about at the center. Here are a few ideas to help you create greater efficiencies

• ’Tagging’ is a simple way to associate individuals with your current tasks.
• Schedule daily time to think of the names that come to mind for whom you are inspired to do something then jot them down in ToDo. End your day by reflecting on those same people. Did you get done for them what you had hoped? If not, try again tomorrow.
• Structure task descriptions leading with the name of the person for whom you are doing the task.
• Create list names that are people specific where you can group your tasks.

Best wishes from us at Todo Cloud in finding productivity success!