Productivity Profile
By: Ashik Shaffi
Tags: Blog, Habits, Strategy, Planning, Productivity

Photo by Kevin Bhagat on Unsplash

Today I was listening to the podcast named The Accidental Creative by Todd Henry, productivity is a prolific never-ending talk. Today’s episode of Discovering your Productivity profile, a catchy title indeed. I jumped in to see how it sounds, I love podcasts especially topics like these spark my interest.

I will share here the tidbits I took along with the podcasts, credits go to Todd Henry itself. As I love writing about my learnings potentially it can help someone with the same intent.

Three kinds of work :

Well, we work every day, but we often don't observe or categorize them. Right after listening to the podcast, I came across there are three kinds of work where humans can fit themselves in. They are,

Mapping

Making

Meshing

Lemme get into these 3M’s and will find out what's in there and why it's important for someone to understand and apply these in their life.

Mapping

Mapping, it's the phase of work where the planning goes in. Things like finding a strategy for our work, conceiving a plan pretty much plotting out a course of blueprint before the action. Todd says ‘ Work before the work’ which helps to stay aligned with the bigger picture.

Making

This is the phase of actually doing the work, leveraging the blueprint or the maps created for getting carried with the work. Here the execution of the plan goes in or doing the tasks we devised while mapping.

Meshing

Probably my favorite part or in other words, this is the phase majority of people’s lack in them.

This work is often overlooked in the hustle of daily activity, it's all of the work between the work. Apart from the daily schedules, it comes out of curiosity like developing skills, learning something regarding our interest which would doesn't put one in regrets as the time passes by.

Identifying Productivity Profile

By mixing up these kinds of works, a productivity profile can be obtained. As the 3M’s could be 4D’s instead, piling up these reforms into M’s and D’s feels good.

Driver

Mapping + Making — Meshing = Driver ( No meshing here )

They are plowing through their work and getting things done, and they are extremely effective in the short-term goals. However, over time they become decreasingly effective because they aren’t doing the little things that prepare them for future challenges and obstacles. They are not developing themselves or their capacity for future effectiveness.

People here don't have the discipline or lazy enough to work on developing their skills. They take life for granted and live on it rather challenging it.

Dreamer

Mapping + Meshing — Making = Dreamer ( No engagement in work or Action)

The dreamer loves to talk about ideas, and even work on developing the skill and follow curiosity where it leads, but is not disciplined about getting the work done.

Here the planning and the focus on developing skills go on, but what's the use of learning and have a blueprint without no action? Study on daily progress. For writing a book, todd spent writing 500 words per day. The idea here is compound interest.

If execution is the problem, breaking them into chunks will pave the way for success.

Drifters

Meshing + Making — Mapping = Drifter ( No strategic plan )

The drifter is someone who loves to develop skills and follow curiosity and loves to engage in the act of making, but they lack the conviction of a long-term strategic plan.

I can very much relate this to myself. I have some projects been withheld just because of my interest in that being dropped and shifted to something.

They bounce from shiny new project to shiny new project and fall prey to what Scott Belsky calls the “project plateau”, which is when they hop to a new project when the old one stalls.

To overcome this Todd suggests to plan the following things :

Plan the resources

How completion will look like.

What does this thing mean to you.

Developer

Mapping + Making + Meshing = Developer ( Consistent people )

Developers are best positioned to spot and leverage opportunities because they are planning, they are being diligent about doing the work, and they are developing themselves and their skills to position them for future activity.

These are the people who control and balance things quite strategically. Even getting through the execution pretty well, without anything holding them back.

This phase takes advantage of all the other stages and leaving no disadvantages behind.

There is no instant magic to jump straight to the right stage, everyone might be sticking up in certain stages identifying the stage, and taking the needed action is key.

Special thanks to Todd Henry, I wrote this down just because of how impactful that podcast was. And how useful it can turn out for people’s reading it.