This workbook is about understanding our productivity and making improvements around our work and craft for a range of outcomes from process to product – the most important being personal fulfilment. The workbooks is a mix of accessible theory and practical exercises to complete in the workbook and in your days.
If you think about whatever you do as a craft, at the heart of the craftsperson’s day is making – turning raw materials into products – but the product is not the only measure of output. The craftsperson also wants fulfilment, flow, mastery, growth, connection and the satisfaction of producing something that makes someone else’s life easier or more pleasing. To some degree we’re made to be busy, fruitful, energized, valuable; living our days on purpose.
This book will help you improve your productivity, but that statement needs a bit of unpacking, this is not a tips and hacks book. Maybe you have identified a problem, or a symptom, that relates to work and productivity: you’re too busy and approaching burnout. Or you can’t get enough done because of interruptions and distraction. Maybe there are too many meetings or too much email or poor management or a toxic work culture and you may feel stuck or cynical about the possibility of improvement. Or you’re languishing; you’ve arrived where you always wanted to be but now that you’re here, you’re not experiencing any fulfilment.
If you can find a quick fix that solves the problem you’ve identified, that’s good but this workbook takes a deeper dive to remedy the causes of problems, not just fix the symptoms. And it’s main aim is to help you improve your typical performance.
What does improving typical performance mean? At times we may measure our performance by wins, results or outcomes but they are the by-product of consistently working, day by day, in a supporting system.
It is a designed system that will raise, by degrees, your typical performance. All the skill in the world won’t help you at the working surface if you don’t refine the workshop around it. Results come from systems.
This specialist workbook, next in the Day Crafting Apprentice Series, builds on the foundations explored in the Introductory workbook. Apprentices need to complete the Introductory Workbook before continuing with any of the four specialist workbooks: Body-clock, Productivity, Self-care and Change.
The Productivity Workbook contains links to bonus resources including the Project Canvas and a deck of Day Crafting Productivity Tools.