Bookstore productivity

Imagine you and your partner run a bookstore.

You’re sitting down together in your store, after hours, discussing whether the store has done well so far this year. In particular, you’re deciding how to measure your store’s success.

You begin: “Q2 profits are up by 12% compared with last year. I think we’re doing great!”

Your partner has a different view.

“I don’t know honey”, they say, “it’s true that our profits are up. But look around you. We’ve got tens of thousands of books on the shelves that we haven’t sold yet. It doesn’t look to me like we’re doing very well.”

“Umm, hon”, you say, “that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense…”

Now imagine you and I are having a conversation.

I ask, “How’s your productivity been in the first half of 2020?” And you go, “Well, I’ve completed lots of projects, but I still have 624 tasks in my task manager…”

Don’t measure productivity by the number of tasks you haven’t done yet.

P.S. How should you measure your productivity? By whether you’re achieving your goals and whether you’re happy! That’s what Big-Picture Productivity is all about.