With all the US Presidential election behind us, regardless of your political persuasion, let’s talk about the big message of the Obama campaign: change.  If you want to become more productive, you’ll have to be willing to make changes and create new, positive habits and leave old habits behind.  It is easy to become set in our ways and continue doing things the way we’ve always done them because, well, it’s how we’ve always done them.  I’ll take a line from Dr. Phil and ask “How’s that working for you?”  Content, satisfied people are not apt to make changes.  After all, if everything is going along swimmingly, what’s to change?  But people and organizations must continue to change for things to improve.  If your relationship with your significant other never changed, it would never grow stronger over the years.  If organizations didn’t change, the buggy whip industry would have died if it didn’t become the transportation industry.  If the company you work for doesn’t change, you should be very, very worried.

How do we get ourselves in the mindset where we are ready for change?  People are ready for change when the pain of not making a change outweighs the stress of actually taking the action to change.  Some people just naturally are go-getters and constantly seek ways of being more productive while most people need a little more motivation to change.  If you’re the latter, take some time to think about why you want to change.  I talked before about finding your “why.”  Once you’ve done that, it’s time to actually take the steps to make changes.

Don’t try to change EVERYTHING right now.  Pick a couple of things to work on over the next 21 days.  Make a concerted effort each day related to that habit you want to break or create and in just three short weeks, turn around and look at how far you’ve come.  Each time you take a step in the right direction, it will become easier to do more and eventually be as productive as you desire to be.

(C) 2008 Laura Stack.  www.TheProductivityPro.com