I read all kinds of productivity stuff because I’m fairly certain that I am not as productive as I could be. This is borne not from the fact that I’m not productive, but from the fact that I can’t get everything that I want to do done in the timeline I want to.
I am trying to get some non-knitting projects completed and these are my productivity observations.
Email/online can slow productivity.
There may be a way to solve something that can be better done in real life. I have had a lengthy email exchange with a company about setting up an appointment on another matter. I don’t feel very satisfied. I have an appointment with someone, whose name I don’t know. Because I have never spoken to a person. I had numerous other interactions today. Phone, while sometimes annoying, ends being massively more efficient.
I had another phone call with someone who admitted that they had just dropped the ball on my project because they didn’t know what to do. I cannot help solve a problem (if you can’t get a product, I’ll have to choose something else) if I don’t know one exists. Now two additional weeks have gone by, so no matter what solution we come up with, I am irritated because it isn’t going to get done on time.
Picking up the phone to make contact can increase productivity.
My mother’s glasses were broken this week. She is enjoying a stay in Health Center and someone stepped, sat, or otherwise crushed her frames. She says she’s not saying, and no else knows either. I know she paid quite a bit for the glasses so if we can replace the frames, she doesn’t have to get new lenses. I picked up the phone and explained the dilemma to her opticians. They pulled her file, and because she is 93 years old and gregarious, they remembered her. The frame is no longer available, but they said they’d contact the company and see if they had the frame. I got a call back in a short while from Jennifer, letting me know that there were two colors of the frames available, but that Jane’s color was the best, so she had sent a request to the factory in Denmark to see if they had that color and that she’d get back to me when she heard back.
I was having lunch with my brother and his wife and Jane, just down the street from the optician. They stopped by on their way to lunch (I think because Jane was hoping to see Aaron, whom she is very taken with) but they hadn’t had word from Denmark yet. After lunch I dropped in, Jennifer had a response, and the new frames will be shipped on Monday.
Did I mention that while I was on the phone with the Health Center about the broken glasses that I solved another potential problem and gave them a solution to something else? We could have emailed for days to get those things resolved.
Automatic formatting is not contributing to productivity.
Just that.
The photos are just what I took photos of this week. They have absolutely nothing to do with this post.
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