Tips & Insights for Top Performance

I don’t know about you, but this summer has been flying by! As I am working with many of my clients, we are designing what they want for the fall . August is here, a few people may still be trying to squeeze summer activities in before “back to school/work” time! This is a great time to get some work done that is harder to do when people are around and demands of your time are greater. A few months ago we talked about SPRING CLEANING. Now that you have all your cleaning done, it is a great time to assess your environment for maximum productivity in the fall. While this concept may overlap spring cleaning, the focus is on preparing for the fall. An exercise that is great to do this is visiting TOLERATIONS.

Christy Geiger, Executive Business Coach & Trainer from Minneapolis, MN

Productivity is an ideal state of being in today’s fast paced world. Often we find ourselves unable to escape from responding to crisis. It is the urgent that drives us and whatever else needs to happen will have to wait!  The art of productivity comes from discipline and clarity in 5 key areas.

1) Your ability to be self aware and adjust as needed.
2) Your level of orderliness.
3) Your skill level to think through and plan.
4) Your discipline to be repetitious and effective.
5) Your willingness to collaborate and receive support.

The following assessment will help you evaluate how you are doing with productivity and begin to explore how you might increase your results.

Click here to download a Productivity Assessment

Christy Geiger, Executive Business Coach & Trainer, Minneapolis, MN

Now is a great time to assess your environment for maximum productivity.  An exercise that is great for cleaning up your environment is to visit your tolerations. 

What are you tolerating? Take steps today to start to remove those nagging annoyances that subconsciously suck energy from you. Really, it is amazing how much they absorb. You will know exactly how much after you complete this exercise; history shows it is amazing!

First, make a list of 30 things that you are tolerating in your life – this is a brain dump. Any things that nag you, annoy you, and cause you to think, “I really need to get that fixed” or “I really need to do something about __________.” Put anything from the little things to the enormous. i.e. make a brochure, send out promotional mailing, get website, sort a stack of unfilled papers, deal with a chip in the windshield, a broken appliance, a messy car, a bag that is ripped, dust on the side of your stairs, dust, cutter, full e-mail box, squeaky door, etc. These items are the tolerations we hold internally that take up a ton of our energy. Do not stop until you have 30 things.

Once done, pick a few things you are going to get off the list this week. Each week peel more things off. It will go quickly at first as you take care of the 10 minute jobs and then become slower as you take care of the more monumental jobs – but just keep working at a minimum of two things each week. When you are done, the feeling of freedom and space will be an incredible reward!