3/28/24 What are the best productivity hacks for your personality?
What is the purpose of this podcast? To encourage people by sharing.
Live intro with hook - Hello my lovelies. Today we’re talking about Productivity Hacks and Personality and we’re giving you some great tips to help you to be more efficient, have more fun, get more done without hassle and create a home and work environment that works for you, no matter what your personality is. We’ll be working through some principles I teach in the Productivity by Personality course and Whole Home Reset Program and, if anything in this podcast resonates with you, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player.
For those who are new to the podcast, when I talk about personalities, communication and relationships, I use the DISC personality model of behavior and refer to people as D or Driven, I or Inspired, S or Supportive, and C or Cautious. You can find links to take your own Personality Assessment in the Show Notes.
Fun fact, I’m not fond of the word hacks when it comes to improving your life, but when you have to please the SEO powers that be, and they prioritize words like that, you use them, so are you ready to dive into the Productivity Hacks I’ve come up with for each personality type? Here’s a secret - they’re all the same but for different reasons, so buckle up and let’s help each other be the best we can possibly be.
As we always do, we’re starting with the D personality, and we’re going to quickly go through 10 productivity hacks I think can help every personality type, and I’ll share why they’re helpful for each one. This is going to be rapid fire, so buckle in and here we go.
Productivity Hack #1 is to find the Sweet spot - if you’ve been around for a while, you know I talk about the sweet spot in your home and in every area of your home. If you want to learn more about that, I’ll include a link to that episode in the show notes. Now if you’re a Driven personality, you might wonder why this is important for you because you have so much drive, the sweet spot might seem unimportant to you, but this also applies to your business.
You know that you have things to do each week, and if you work with a team, you know that you want certain things accomplished by your team each week. That’s your business sweet spot. Maybe you want your sales people to have a certain number of calls, contacts or closes per week. That’s the sweet spot, so when you figure that out for yourself and your team, and you can start each week knowing what the goal is so that you make it to the sweet spot, it takes so much pressure off of everyone.
The challenge in that is to remember that not everyone is as driven as you are, and if you’re the boss and owner of the company, no one wants to work as hard as you do because they will never reap the benefits that you do. I know that’s a hard pill to swallow for some of you because you’ve always said you only expect people to work as hard as you do, but why? So you can have more and more? So unless you’re sharing your profits equally with your employees and contractors, relieve both of you of the burden of that type of work ethic.
Instead, find the sweet spot where you are happy with the progress of your business and those who work for you can flourish and be happy too.
Productivity Hack # 2 is the 2 minute tidy - For the Driven personality, you can accomplish so much in 2 minutes, but you can also overlook details, so when you start something, whether a project, email or proposal, make sure that you spend at least 2 minutes per day tidying up those items that you are most likely to forget a few details on, or if you have a team, have the most detail oriented person on the team help you out.
Personally, this can be a great tool to use with your children to make cleaning up after themselves easier and less frustrating for you too. After dinner, see if you can clean off the dinner table, put things back in the fridge or load the dishwasher in 2 minutes, without breaking anything. Set a timer for your children to brush their teeth for 2 minutes and see if you can get a quick task done while they do that, like going through one shelf of your medicine chest and cleaning it out. Sounds weird, but it works. You might want to make a list and tape it inside a cabinet door so you can check things off because we both know how much you like to check things off a list.
Productivity Hack #3 is to use a Timer - Look, I know you work quickly, but not everyone around you does, not do they have the focus that you do, but with a timer set for 5, 15 or even 60 minutes minutes, you can get more done with more cooperation than you might think because you love to move quickly and beat the timer, and others know there’s a stop, which is good since you can drive others past their limits, which does nothing but cause resentment, and that’s no good for anyone.
Please understand that isn’t a criticism because a Driven person in balance knows just how far to push someone so they can live up to their potential, but they also know when to back off so they don’t break someone’s spirit. When you get that balance just right, it feels like magic in your business and your life.
I have two children with a fair amount of D in their personality mix, and it’s amazing how they rose to challenges, especially when they were given control over their circumstances. For one of them, we told him at age 12 that as long as he conducted himself well, we would pretty much stay out of his way, and he did really well with it. We rarely had to get involved in his schooling, with his coaches and never with his work. Today he is thriving and building a family and a life that makes him happy and us proud.
Productivity Hack #4 is to complete One load of laundry per day - I have had more pushback from people on this productivity hack than any other because we’re talking about laundry, and that is such a touchy subject for so many. Let me be clear, when I say one load per day, I mean wash, dry and put away, and that put away part seems to be the thing that trips everyone up because they have too many clothes and have no room to put their clothes away. Want to know something else? It doesn’t take as much time as people think to do a load of laundry, and I know this because I timed it. If you sort, wash, dry, fold and put your clothes away, the time you have your hands on your laundry is less than 15 minutes. I know you don’t believe me, but if it’s one load and one basket, unless you are a particularly slow folder, you can do this and revolutionize your laundry system and possibly blow your own mind.
While this doesn’t necessarily have a practical place in business, there are tasks that we avoid in our businesses because we think they take too long, so we avoid them, but by avoiding them, we make them into a bigger deal than they have to be. The trick is to attend to them regularly so they don’t become such a big deal, and now is the perfect time to talk about taxes.
So many small business people put off their taxes until the last minute, and in the US, but if you start right now and work on one month per day, you’ll be ready by tax time, not an ideal situation, but it can happen and you can make a plan to do better next year. I know that may be more for the other personality types, but it can apply to the Driven person that hates to do taxes. Trust me on that.
Productivity Hack #5 is to use a Paper Calendar if you have a family- As a Driven person, you are smart, quick and prone to forget details. Using a family calendar gives everyone in the family a visual reminder of what is happening each day, and if you color code each person it makes it even easier, and I highly suggest you color code it because it makes for an easy visual reminder for everyone in the house.
I know everyone lives by a digital calendar these days, myself included, but children who don’t have phones yet can even benefit by having a paper calendar that’s color coded because they’ll know on any given day if they have an activity, and you can work on calendar skills, recognizing colors, reading and writing depending on the age of the child and how much you’re willing to let them own their own processes.
An extra tip that I love is that there are 16 month calendars that start in August, which means that for those of you with children in school, you can fill out the entire year’s calendar as soon as it is available at the beginning of the school year and not have to redo everything after the first of the year when most calendars start. I have included links to my favorite calendar and erasable pens in the show notes.
Productivity Hack #6 is to have Weekly Meetings - Isn’t it funny that we’re more connected than we’ve ever been, but we often feel more disconnected than ever too? We can find our loved ones with the press of a button, but we sometimes struggle to have a meaningful conversation? We have employees that we can locate with GPS, but we have no idea what their long term goals and dreams are.
That’s where the weekly team meeting comes into play. Whether it’s for work or with your very busy teens, make time a weekly connection at minimum, although daily would be even better. The key here is to make sure that each person gets to participate, even if they are hesitant to do so, especially at first.
In a family meeting, ask your children what they have coming up to add to the family calendar or if the items on the calendar are still relevant. Each of those activities is an opportunity to connect and build a better relationship even if it’s a math test you know will be particularly challenging.
In business, nearly every disaster I’ve had is from a lack of communication, so I’ve become a big believer in communication even if it’s awkward. It has occasionally cost me a relationship, but since honest communication is one of my values, it’s a risk I have to be willing to take. In some cases, I’ve repaired and renewed relationships I thought I lost, and in others, I wish the person well as we follow our individual paths.
This can be especially important for the D personality because you’re not one to go into details about things you want, and if someone has a different vision of how to do something, it can cause a lot of frustration and aggravation for both of you, but the weekly meeting can circumvent that and make every process smoother.
Also, since I know every Driven person detests meetings that could be an email, these do not have to be long meetings. They can simply be a 5-15 minute check in to make sure that things are going as planned, and again, this is where a timer can be exactly what you need to keep the meeting rolling and ending on time. Just make sure that you inform everyone involved that there is a time limit and make sure that you give each person adequate time to prepare and present what they need to.
Productivity Hack #7 Meal plan - A Driven person may look at me when I suggest this like they want to strangle me because the Driven person does not like to be boxed in and that type of planning isn’t always their forte, but here’s the thing about meal planning, it saves time, money and energy, and that’s something that appeals to a lot of D personalities, not to mention it avoids the dreaded 4pm question of what’s for dinner that so many of us detest hearing.
So how does this help in your business life? I am all for reducing stress any way we can, and while the Driven person loves a challenge, they do not love stupid stress, especially when it’s preventable. I’m not saying you need to cook every night because that’s not how most people function these days. Subscribe to a meal service. Pick up pre-chopped or pre-prepped meals, but when you pre-plan, you open up space in your brain for more important things, and that’s always appealing to the Driven personality.
This is also incredibly helpful if you have children who pack their lunches. All my children took packed lunches, and our system took less than 5 minutes each school morning, and we never used lunchables.
This can also help you whether you work inside or outside the house during lunch. For the D personality, taking 10 minutes every day to decide what to have for lunch is time wasted, so even if you eat out every day, make a plan for where you plan to order from, and you’ll save yourself an hour or more every week. Try it and see.
Productivity Hack #8 Use your highest energy time well - this is one of my favorites for all personality types, and the truth is that most Driven people that I know are great at knowing what their best time is. If they’re a morning person, they’re up at 5am working out. If they’re a night owl, they’re clacking away on their keyboard at 2am, but in either case, they tend to know who they are and when their energy is at its highest point.
I’m really looking forward to helping others understand and use this hack to boost their productivity especially in conjunction with the next productivity hack.
Productivity Hack #9 Use your highest focus time well - This is something that people don’t always understand - your highest energy time and your highest focus times are not always the same. Some people are amazingly energetic in the morning but do better with learning in the afternoon when they’ve burned off some energy, and for Driven people, it’s more likely that they have to turn their focus off than try to find it.
The important thing for the Driven personality here is to understand that some people truly struggle with focus, and it’s not merely a matter of trying harder. That would be like telling a Driven person to sit on a beach and just relax. It goes against their nature because even at the beach, the Driven person is doing something whether it’s building a sand castle, looking for shells, swimming out to sand bars or something else that engages their focus and high energy.
On our first trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, we walked to the beach for the first time, and our oldest, who was 6 years old at the time, dove straight into a wave without fear. Of course it knocked his skinny body backward, but that Driven young man spent the rest of the morning learning how to swim with the waves while my husband sat in a few feet away in the water in case our son needed his help. In contrast, our 3 year old, who is just as Driven, built sand castles and occasionally wandered down to the water to cool off. Such are the differences of the Driven children but each one kept quite busy and fortunately wore themselves out.
Productivity Hack #10 Balance is an illusion - I love saying this to women entrepreneurs because if it’s the first time they’ve heard it, you can almost see their brain glitch because everything we’ve ever been told about working and having a family is finding balance, and I’m here to say that balance is BS. I’ve been on this earth for 7 decades, and I’ve rarely felt like my life was in balance, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I know that might freak a few people out, but hear me out.
I don’t say that to discourage you. I say that so that rather than chasing some illusive and unrealistic life where everything is equal, you make peace with the flow of life and business and enjoy both more.
One of the things that I love to do with Driven women after that initial glitch is helping them figure out what enough is for them. How much time do they need to spend with their family to feel like they’re giving them enough time and attention? How much time do they spend on their business to feel like they’re giving it the proper time and attention? In both cases, they know that what each needs this week could be completely different next week, and that’s where that calendar and all the things we’ve talked about come into play. All these productivity hacks are designed to work together to give the Driven person the success they want in all aspects of their lives so they feel powerful, accomplished and successful.
For the Driven women, most of the time, they feel more competent with their business work because business is more predictable than humans, so they can tend to invest more of their time in their work because it makes them feel good, and they figure the kids can raise themselves because they most raised themselves whether their parents wanted them to or not
Honestly, when I first started recording this episode, I thought I would include all four personality types, but as I finished up with the Driven personality, I realize there is so much to process that I decided to make this a series because each personality type deserves the deep dive into these productivity hacks so they can have the life and business that works for them.
If you’d like some help with that, book a free, 15 minute DISCovery call and we can get you on the track to better immediately. We might resolve your issue in that 15 minute conversation. We might schedule a more in depth strategy session, but I assure you that whatever we chat about, you’ll feel better about yourself and your life when we’re finished, and you’ll have some next steps to help you live better based on your personality rather than someone else’s plan that isn’t working for you.
So, go to the Moving Toward Better homepage and sign up for your DISCovery call to start living better asap.
As always, if you like what you’ve heard, please share and subscribe.
Until next time, keep moving toward better, whatever that looks like for you.
Show Notes
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Finding the Sweet Spot Episode - https://www.movingtowardbetter.com/podcasts/moving-toward-better/episodes/2148562147
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My favorite erasable calendar pens - https://amzn.to/49kJgdG
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