The Hard-Skill Way to Boost your Productivity

If you want to be more productive, learn to be more better at the one activity you do most often during the day. What exactly does that mean?

Well, which activities do you do most often at work? My list looks like this: writing, reading, working with the web and emails, delegating, business communication, presenting, creativity, etc. Specific apps I use: Email, Photoshop, Word, Excel...

What would happen if you could do the most important activities (tasks) faster and better? How much time would you save? What if you learned a new keyboard shortcut? What if you learned a new trick in Excel?

Imagine, for example, if you learned how to type on the keyboard with all ten fingers. The average typing speed is 36 words per minute (source: TypingTest.com). With the right training, this speed can be doubled or tripled. Today, if you're constantly looking at the keyboard for every other letter while typing, taking a typing course could save you up to 4 whole hours a week!

Investing in an activity that at first glance is unrelated to time management can often have a much greater impact on your saved time than some classic time management technique like to-do lists or efficient calendar management.

So... Which one activity, if you mastered it perfectly, would have the biggest positive impact on your life?

Try the following exercise:

• Write down on paper a list of all the activities you do during your work week
• Identify one key thing that you may have gaps in and if you became an expert in that activity, it would not only give you more free time, but also other huge benefits (more quality clients, faster turnaround times, fewer complaints...)
• Start educating yourself in that field. Read blogs with related topics, buy books, follow Twitter and Facebook pages of experts.
• Set aside at least 3 months (100 days) for your educational project. Unfortunately, no one becomes an expert overnight. But I believe that as long as you have correctly identified your key activity in point 2, this investment will pay you back many times over.

Which activity is the key activity for you? Writing with all ten? Presenting more effectively? Better delegation? Share in the comments.