¿Somos realmente productivos?

WEBVTT

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Hello everyone and welcome to ideas for
a better life. I am Eugenio fencer

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Ruiz, Doctor, stubborn and lover
in personal development. Today I want to

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talk to you about smart productivity.
But before I start, I want to

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remind you that you have at your
disposal a compilation of the most relevant ideas

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and tips on personal development. In
my four books you already know them free,

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healthy and happy, thirty- one
days to improve your life, minimalism

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for normal people and seven steps for
a purposeful life. I leave you their

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link in the notes of the episode
and also since many of you have asked

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me and you are asking me how
and where to train in personal development.

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I tell you what has worked for
me, which is the personal or online

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development master' s degree, from
IPP' s Institute of Positive Thinking.

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You know, it is the best
training that exists in this field, the

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only one that covers in depth the
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body and health, emotions, relationships, transcendence and money and professional career.

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If you want to take a look
at your free master clash. I

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leave you the link in the episode
notes and now we' re going to

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talk about smart productivity. We'
re exhausted, no matter who you ask

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people. She seems to be always
messy, she seems to be always exhausted,

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she seems to always run head to
head from one side to the other.

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We have the feeling that we don' t have time for absolutely nothing,

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and I wonder if the time has
not come to challenge that culture of

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accelerated rhythm and to start focusing on
doing things with meaning, on doing things

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with the aim of lasting in time, not with the aim of crossing items

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into a list of immense tasks.
I believe that in our relentless pursuit of

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productivity, in that obsession with productivity
that we all have, we have fallen

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into a trap and that trap is
generating complete and absolute exhaustion. And if

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you' re exhausted, you can' t create that in the end it

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' s what we' ve come
to this world for, that is,

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that sometimes understanding productivity as a race
is hurting us. I think the secret

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is perhaps to do less, work
at a slower pace and give priority to

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quality over quantity. And for that, the first thing we have to do

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is confront the beliefs that have brought
us to this point. We have always

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been conditioned in this modern culture to
believe that a good job is something that

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requires a lot of activity, that
answering more emails, doing more tasks,

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having more meetings is somehow equivalent to
having better results. And that is a

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wrong mentality that is leading us to
value visibility, which is something completely different

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from productivity. We are leading to
value that visibility above creation. And,

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as I say, that' s
not productivity. That' s visibility,

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but it' s not productivity because
when you' re doing all those tasks,

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you' re not really creating anything. And I think the problem comes

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because productivity in modern office jobs is
very difficult to measure and this is a

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difference from what was traditionally happening in
industry, for example, in factories that

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produced tangible products that could be counted. This person has produced x toys or

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x cans of I don' t
know what, but in an office,

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in a modern job, we don' t have clear parameters to measure our

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productivity. Then, as we do
not have them, we have chosen to

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value more the visible activity, the
things that are seen than to measure the

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actual results, even if that means
blurring the limits that exist between work and

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personal life. And you can imagine
what the result of doing something like that

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is, or maybe you' re
already living it in your own flesh.

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Modern workers are increasingly stressed out,
they have increasingly difficult agendas to manage,

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they spend more and more hours in
front of the computer screen and, obviously,

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many end up burning because there is
no body or mind that can withstand

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this constant avalanche of emails, meetings, deadlines, etc. And it doesn

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' t have to be that way. What I' m saying is that

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we start valuing quality above quantity and
if we do that, it' s

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going to happen that we' re
going to do a better job and,

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besides, that we' re going
to get our time and our energy back.

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What I' m saying is that
we start focusing on what really matters,

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instead of doing things because it does, because it touches, because someone

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has asked us to, that we
stop doing a lot of things to do

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a few things right, because more
is not always better. And that would

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be productivity, real productivity, and
not the cult we have today for activity,

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not for productivity, although we think
it is the same for activity.

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I believe that the pandemic has begun
to change this situation a little. I

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think we' re better off than
we were five years ago. Many companies

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that went to work remotely during the
covid are now seeing how their workers have

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some resistance to returning to the office, and that resistance I think is not

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just because they want to avoid displacements
or because they want someone to work in

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pajamas. It' s great to
take those two things off. It is

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phenomenal but from home it is easier
to avoid pseudo- productivity, i e

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activity rather than productivity. It'
s easier to avoid meetings. It is

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easier to avoid activity by activity,
which is what characterizes any day in any

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office. Of course, the question
is how we can adapt the teachings of

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the truly productive professions. I am
thinking of musicians, artists, scientists,

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writers, how we can adapt their
way of working to the reality of a

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normal job, because the key to
these professions is to do few things every

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day, but to do them very
well. The most prolific writers, for

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example, all have methodical work habits, work habits that are oriented to quality

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and not quantity. And, above
all, these kinds of professions, these

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kinds of professionals often say not to
almost everything. On the other hand,

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in today' s working culture,
the normal working culture, to say that

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it does tend to be considered a
positive thing. And if what we aspire

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to is a meaningful work, an
important work that contributes to the duration of

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time, I think we should learn
to say no more often to say no

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to that which is superfluous and saying
no to that. Really, what we

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' re doing is giving priority to
what really matters. The idea is to

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lighten our workload to have plenty of
time, to focus and delve into a

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few things, things that are really
important. And for this we must classify

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tasks into compromises and distractions. So
when you' re invited to a meeting,

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you have to think if it'
s an engagement or if it'

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s a distraction. And if it' s a distraction, obviously, rejecting

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it and not going to have fewer
chores throughout your day doesn' t mean

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you' re less productive. It
means that you have the chance to do

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those tasks better than you will be
able to pay each of them the attention

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they deserve. So, the only
tasks that you should accept, I think,

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are those that connect directly with the
objectives that you have, the objectives

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that you should always have clear at
the beginning of each year in all aspects

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of your life, not just at
work. You have to have goals for

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your health, you have to have
goals for your relationships, you have to

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have economic goals and you have to
have professional goals as well. And the

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second derivative is to take enough time
to complete those tasks. I think so,

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the great minds of history, the
inventors, the scientists, the painters,

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see how we work today. I
think they died again because we live

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in an unceasing cycle of activity.
We have bosses, we have clients who

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are constantly controlling our process and then
free time, leisure. It seems that

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it is relegated to the background,
it seems that everything is for yesterday.

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But if we think of great minds
and think of copernicus, for example,

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we realize that he spent almost fifteen
years perfecting his ideas about the movement of

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planets before going and sharing them with
the world. And besides, it is

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known that he was a great lover
of the time of Leisure, that he

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loved the theater, that he loved
the music. And it' s not

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the only example. If we go
to Isaac Newton for example, then we

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see that his theory of gravity took
more than two decades to publish. What

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this tells us is that patience that
perseverance is essential to create things that are

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worthwhile and that can last in time. But to create like these geniuses we

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have to set a rhythm, and
a rhythm includes for, because normally it

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is in those pauses that the best
ideas are to be born. So what

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I' m proposing is that,
instead of just focusing on what you can

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get in a day or what you
can get in a quarter. I propose

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that you work with longer time periods, for example, five years. Make

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yourself a five- year plan,
a five- year plan. What allows

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you to do is to set a
pace of work, and that pace of

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work as it is so long,
because it can include pauses that I have

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already told you that is where,
in those pauses where the best ideas are

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born. In that rhythm you will
have more active seasons and inactivity seasons where

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you will also have the opportunity to
rest. In the end, it'

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s about protecting the quality of your
work above the quantity. You have to

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be obsessed with the quality of your
work. A good novel doesn' t

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write the same way you run a
speed race. It' s not a

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sprint. It is a gradual process
that takes a lot of time. It

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requires working, every nuance every character, looking for inspiration in many places,

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talking to other writers, reading a
lot, and that you can' t

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do in a few days. You
can' t have a task of writing

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a novel in an impossible month.
It' s probably a job of years

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or many months, that you have
to organize in a sustainable way, making

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an investment in yourself and with a
normal job it' s exactly the same.

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You have to take the best of
professions that really produce important things and

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things that are left for posterity and
apply them to your own work. So

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you know, the contemporary concept of
productivity leaves today' s workers burned by

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a lot of meaningless tasks and by
a rhythm that is unnecessarily frenzied. To

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create meaningful work, meaning quality work, we have to adopt a slower productivity

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model, a model that says no
to activity, by the activity that allows

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us to work at a more natural
pace. We need to shift the focus

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from quantity to charity. If you
liked this episode, please like to share

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Point com there you can subscribe and
download completely free a copy of my

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latest book, Seven steps for a
life with purpose and if you want to

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learn much more and train in personal
development with the best experts. Check out

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the free master' s degree of
personal development online from ipp TE. I

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leave your link in the episode notes. Down there, next to my books,

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and I' m just saying goodbye. Thank you very much, as

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always and until the next