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Why Character is at the Root of True Productivity

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This is an excerpt from chapter 6 of How to Get Unstuck: Breaking Free from Barriers to Your Productivity, “Character: The Great Unsticking Force.”

Central to good time management is doing what is important, not merely what is urgent. 

Yet, how do you know what is important? Importance is something even deeper than your own goals. Important things are things that align with correct principles and God’s truth.

And that takes us to the heart of why character is essential to productivity, for principles bring us into the realm of character. There are two sources for knowing correct principles. First, the Scriptures: “Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the LORD!” (Ps. 119:1). And second, we have the capacity to discern correct principles through our conscience, which is directly informed by our understanding of the Scriptures. We have an inner compass that enables us to detect what right principles are.

The way to put first things first is to build this inner compass—that is, our character—so that we are able to discern what right principles are and desire to follow them. Character enables us to see and understand correct principles so that we can base our lives and decisions on them. That is why character is central to true productivity.

We then can articulate our mission and values flowing from those correct principles, and our personal vision can become an accurate way of identifying what is important. This is at the heart of time management and why productivity is rooted first in character, not techniques, for it is character that enables us to discern what is important and use the techniques well.

Are You Stuck? A Quick Survey to Identify If You Are

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How can you tell if you are stuck? The following is adapted from the “Unstuck Clinic” at the end of chapter 2 of How to Get Unstuck. It can help you know if you are stuck and, if so, in what areas. (Once you’ve identified that, how do you get unstuck? Well, that’s what the book is for!)

The Unstuck Clinic

Note: Writing down your answers to the questions has been scientifically shown to be more effective than just reading the questions or thinking bout the answers in your head.

What Does it Mean to be Stuck?
We get stuck in our productivity when we don’t know where we should be going, don’t know how to get there, or keep encountering obstacles.

Are You Stuck?
What are the biggest ways you are stuck right now? Take a few minutes to reflect, and write them down.

Taking it Deeper: Diagnostic Questions
To help you think this through further, here are a few diagnostic questions grouped into the three areas where we get stuck in our productivity.

Vision

  • Are you accomplishing what God wants you to accomplish?
  • Do you know what God wants you to accomplish?
  • When you accomplish your goals, do you feel they were the right goals?

Execution

  • Do you feel prepared for each day?
  • Are you completing things on time?
  • Are you unhurried?
  • Are you making progress toward your goals?
  • Do you like the approach you have for managing your work?
  • Are you able to get from where you are to where you want to be?
  • Are you able to accomplish the things that matter most to you?

Obstacles

  • How often do you get in the zone in a typical workweek?
  • In your work, are you able to do what you do best every day?

Need help getting unstuck? If so, I wrote How to Get Unstuck to help!

Now Available: The Best Next Steps Application Journal

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Now available in our online store—a digital application journal to help you advance further in your productivity.

Why did we create this? The hardest part of improving our productivity is consistently applying the right principles and making them ongoing habits. We designed this application journal to address this issue. Research has shown that writing out your answers to exercise questions leads to far greater understanding and application than just reading the material.

So that’s what this journal does. With this short and interactive resource, we walk you through a process of discerning how you can become more effective to help you clarify what your priorities should be and how you can get the right things done. Use it to build a plan that works for you and start applying these principles in your life today.

This PDF resource is available in our online store for $2.

How Do You Define Value in Your Work?

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From Great at Work, which is now the best book on personal effectiveness I have ever read:

As our study suggested, we should evaluate the value of our work by measuring how much others benefit from it. That’s an outside-in view, because it directs attention to the benefits our work brings to others. The typical inside-out view, by contrast, measures work according to whether we have completed our tasks and goals, regardless of whether they produce any benefits.

This may seem obvious in retrospect, but how many of us intentionally work this way? It is so easy to get caught up in accomplishing tasks, defining our productivity that way, rather than defining it in terms of the benefit our work actually brings.

If we take this outside-in view, I see two benefits. First, we will have more success in our jobs. That seems obvious, right? Second, we will be able to become more efficient, because now we have a criteria that allows us to identify unnecessary tasks or unnecessary steps in our tasks.

Beyond this, the outside-in view is very much in line with the gospel ethic, which is others-centered.

There is one nuance, of course: do not let this stifle innovation or too easily justify the status quo. You know the benefits of your work by how people act, not mainly what they say in response to your initial idea. Focus groups, for example, are usually a bad idea. As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked the public what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” What actually produced the greatest value was when Ford democratized the automobile — something people weren’t asking for initially.