Productivity vs Activity

Let me tell you a story about myself. When I was a restaurant manager, I had a server who worked my last nerve. This guy was a pretty good server. If anything, he could be too good...sometimes becoming more of an interruption to his customers than necessary. But that aside, he was good. Except, that servers in restaurants have a little thing called sidework. For those of you who have worked as a server, you probably just cringed at the word....sidework. Sidework is that work a server must do on top of waiting their tables. It usually entails rolling silverware into napkins and cleaning certain areas of the restaurant. Well, this guy was a master at putting it off.

When confronted with why his sidework wasn't getting done, Sam (not his real name) would tell of how busy he was and to not worry, that it would all get done. Yet, at the end of his shift, he wouldn't even be close to finishing. I started watching him shift after shift, and I began to notice that he flew around the restaurant like a mini-tornado. At first glance, it would seem as though he were truly busy. But he was not actually doing anything. He was only moving quickly from one spot to another. Like a fly buzzing around, searching for that oh-so-perfect pile of poop to land on. Anyone who has worked for me or knows me, knows that his actions didn't sit very well with me. Let's just say we had a mutual dislike for one another......I didn't like how he tried to get out of doing his job and he didn't like how I held him to standards of his job.

How many of us, though, act like Sam? We buzz around like busy little bees but at the end of the day have nothing, or very little, to show for it. I mean if these people really were bees they would be fired from the colony for producing no honey. In our world, no honey = no money. You see, production is where it's at. Produce the result you are being paid to produce and all is well. Don't produce and you can't act surprised at the consequences. Your actions really are NOT good enough. Simply showing up to work isn't enough, either. You are not being paid to show up. Shoot, a dog can be trained to be a certain place at a certain time. Even a cat knows what time is feeding time and where the food bowl is. But you are to do more. You are to produce measurable results. Whether you work for someone else or for yourself, the future probability of you continuing to get paid rests solely on production of results and not actions or good intentions.

So, cut out the busy bee, do-nothing actions of your day and ramp up the results producing actions that will  simplify or de-stress your life. Cut out the time wasting activities of your work and replace them with actions that create tangible, measurable, positive results and watch your business stature and success grow.