Reclaim Lost Time with Personal Productivity Training
Lost time at work can be incredibly stressful—both for employees and employers. Often, a vicious cycle occurs: losing productive time leads to people stressing about falling behind, leading to them working longer to make up for that lost time, leading to extreme fatigue and falling even further behind.
As noted in a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article on productivity:
“Considerable evidence shows that overwork is not just neutral — it hurts us and the companies we work for. Numerous studies by Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and her colleagues (as well as other studies) have found that overwork and the resulting stress can lead to all sorts of health problems, including impaired sleep, depression, heavy drinking, diabetes, impaired memory, and heart disease. Of course, those are bad on their own. But they’re also terrible for a company’s bottom line, showing up as absenteeism, turnover, and rising health insurance costs.”
So, if simply working longer hours doesn’t allow you or your employees to reclaim lost time (and actually causes more harm than good), what can be done?
Rather than trying to work longer, try implementing personal productivity training so that you and your employees can do better work in less time.
The Benefits of Personal Productivity Training
The most obvious goal of personal productivity training is to increase the output of workers. However, it can have more benefits than just getting more done faster.
For example, individual employee productivity has an impact on the ability of the organization as a whole to meet its goals, and boost employee morale. Productive employees are able to meet their individual goals with more time to spare—giving them extra leeway for taking vacations and engaging in activities that lower stress.
Ironically, employees having more time off can actually increase productivity. As noted in the HBR article, “In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased.”
Fewer mistakes will mean less time and effort wasted on correcting those mistakes.
Another benefit of personal productivity training is that it can give employees the tools they need to be more confident, effective, and creative at work. It allows employees to explore systems for increasing productivity, identify key areas for improvement, and apply these tools to both their short-term projects and long-term careers.
In fact, this is exactly what the Big Think+ Personal Productivity Course is designed to do.
Getting Started with Learning Personal Productivity
The Personal Productivity Course uses a combination of video lessons, reflection assignments, group discussions, and “develop your team” missions across five weeks of employee development modules.
The course features insights from productivity gurus like Carson Tate (author, Work Simply) and Deepak Chopra (Co-author, Super Genes), among many others.
Getting started on learning new personal productivity techniques doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, you can get started right now with Big Think+’s Personal Productivity Course!
