Quote Roulette #9

“Optimization in my experience is a bit of a myth. You can’t be hyper-productive and eat healthy and exercise and be on top of emails and be clean and organized and socialize and expect to read a novel per week, you just can’t. Something’s gotta give.” – Ganzeer

Everyone would like to say that they have a style. I believe and have experienced this with our ways we are productive too. Ganzeer points out really well this truth. Finding your style though as well as deeply understanding it can help you be much more productive. The days of “one-size-fits-all” are gone. You have to specialize in you.

I’ve experienced in my life so far 4 types of really clear productivity styles:

• Prioritizers
• Planners
• Arrangers
• Visualizers

I usually fall into prioritizing or planning as my clear types. My life and work really demand that a I play in both, flexing when I need to between the two. Yes, your productivity identity can fall into more than one, but usually not more than two.

If you’re very goal oriented in the way you focus your productive moments, using lots of data, thoughtful incite, rigor, and like to tackle the most important projects you can get your hands on, you’re a prioritizer.

If you love making lists for just about anything organizing what you find and doing things in an A-B order with milestones, you’d be a planner. For you great planning and scheduling strategically are keys.

If you appreciate the importance of teamwork and are generally empathic in response to wondering how this will make people feel if you go about the work a certain way, you’re a arranger. Compassion and understanding how others work is your compass as you bring the team together for the work ahead.

If you are like a drone flying above the work and create a holistic step in your approach where you hover from a top down view of the work, you’re a visualizer. You’re a master as well at gathering and synthesizing everyone’s input into something completely new. This is the one I least understand because I seem to need a little more structure in my productive moments. Ganzeer above, I think is probably a visualizer when it comes to productivity types.

Whatever your style is, embrace it completely. Find others like you and learn from ways they’ve innovated their productivity style. Learn where maybe using a different style as a fall back, could give you a different perspective into the work. It could be very beneficial. Understanding you, is a great step to a happier and more optimal you.

✌🏻 Shawn