If I were to be honest I would have to say that I don’t believe it’s possible to always be productive. Everyone goes through waves of extreme productivity and seasons of productive drought. As a leader it is crucial that I am able to produce, whether it be vision, concepts, plans, messages, training, etc. If I am not producing then it is also probably true that what I am leading isn’t going anywhere. So what do you do during the down times? How do you keep producing when you have lost all drive and creativity?
In this series I hope to give you some ideas to keep up your productive momentum as well as prepare for the times when you seem to have stalled.
Tip #1: Plan Ahead
If you are in a current productive wave try to maximize it by preparing for the down trend. When you are in those moments you usually have ideas flowing out of you so fast that you couldn’t possibly give them all your full attention. Why not save some for when you have no ideas. If you have a bunch of great ideas that need to be worked on write out some motivational descriptions and lists of things that can be done when you can’t think of what to do.
Writing it down is crucial. You will not remember during the slumps. That is why they are called slumps. But if you write it down you are sure to have some great ideas all the time just waiting to be nurtured into a great plan, message or whatever.
You may be thinking that it will ruin your productive times if you take time to write things down for the future but here is what I have found. The down times are a lot more frequent than the up times and so it is a wise investment to plan ahead for the inevitable.
NOTE: This series is being written during a period of poor productivity and is the result of this tip. 😉
[…] works really well when used in conjunction with tip #1. Having a To Do list gets rid of the guess work or even the decision process. With a list I have […]