How to Leverage Your Productivity to Climb up the Career Ladder?

Like all employees, you should climb the career ladder quickly. You are aware that the management of your company expects you to achieve optimum productivity. But whether you know how to leverage your productivity to the fullest extent is a big question.

Before knowing how to leverage your productivity, you should understand what productivity is. "Productivity is a measure of output relative to input." You are wrong if you think you can improve your productivity by working more hours. Productivity is not related to the time you spend on your tasks. Then, how do you improve your productivity?

Try this way.

Before you begin any task, please suspend your activities for a while. Remember that there are multiple ways to carry out any task. If you apply your mind, you can easily find and zero in on the smartest way to do the task. Experts like James Altucher suggest: "Think of 10 new ideas daily," You should practice this consistently and improve your creativity. Enhanced creativity will help improve productivity, say experts.

What is the main benefit you will get by embracing the above suggestion?

The best benefit you will get by following this suggestion meticulously is that by choosing the most appropriate way to carry out your tasks, you will start working smartly instead of sweating and toiling for hours and hours. So, the measure of your output related to your input will increase by several notches. When your productivity improves significantly, your company's management will certainly notice it. So, whatever career growth you have mapped out in your mind will fructify.

The First Great Secret That Can Help You Grow in Your Career.

That you have to work very hard to grow in your career can be the most dangerous untruth you may have come across. While making this statement, experts have obviously distorted the truth. As the German philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg said, "The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted." So, what is the truth that has been hidden by this distorted untruth? What is the secret that can help you in your career growth? Let us find out.

Know this big myth and treat it as you treat a cobweb.

That hard work can help you in your career growth is a big myth. In fact, hard work can sometimes hurt your growth. An example can explain this clearly. If you work hard, you will be increasing the likelihood of getting burdened by more work than what you are capable of executing efficiently. Unfortunately, you will have a tendency or may feel a morbid pleasure that is derived out of wrong thinking that only because you are impressing your boss with your hard work, he is giving you more work. In reality, your boss knows that he cannot rely on other employees. Since you have always proved to be a reliable employee, he is dumping all the work on you.

An unfortunate fact is that there is a saturation point in everything. This means that your efficiency and focus will come down steeply beyond a certain point. So, the quality of your output will be much below par when you reach the point. Hence, at the time of writing your appraisal report, you will be rated as an "average" employee whose output is just average. When your work is viewed as "average," how can you expect to have exceptional career growth?

What is the great secret?

At the time of recruiting you, the recruiters of your company may have interviewed you and checked your credentials to ensure that you possess the academic and other qualifications that are required for carrying out the job for which you are being considered. But they may not have the complete scope to check all your skills. Of course, if you are an experienced candidate, they may scroll through the testimonies your previous employers may have given. 

Only after you begin working for the company and only after a few days after you begin executing your work, the company may know how capable you are. To put it differently, the quality of your output alone will decide your career growth. So, the great secret that can help you in your growth revolves around how you go about executing your work and how you keep improving the quality of your performance.

So, the secret that can help you grow in your career lies in being curious, asking questions, and learning  During the course of executing your tasks, you will have certainly have lots of chances to mingle with your superiors and employees who have more experience than you. Instead of discussing with them about the weather or the baseball matches of the previous day, you can ask questions about your job and the tasks you are carrying out, and how you can excel in your work. By adopting this approach, you will not only impress them with your curiosity but will be able to learn a lot from them as well. If you blend your creativity with the insights you gain from them, you can come out with unique and unimaginably great ideas. If you put these ideas to use, you can vastly improve the quality of your output. What more do you need for achieving the career growth you are aspiring for?

Habits You Should Get Rid Of For Climbing Your Career Ladder

If you think that the habits you have are ingrained ones and you can not get rid of them, you are deceiving yourself. Especially, if these habits are so toxic that they do not allow you to grow in your career, you should dispense with them forthwith. Maybe your habits are very strong but if you do not break them, they may become harder and it may become more difficult for you to get rid of them.

There is another issue as well. There are people who are emotionally attached to their negative habits. In fact, these people are stuck in these habits because these habits bring them some type of short-term comfort. For example, those who are addicted to apps such as Whatsapp, etc. or to watching the television incessantly may get comfort in the short term but these habits may bring them unimaginably huge losses in the long term. Unfortunately, these folks defend their habits. They do not realize that they are moving away from the process of breaking them. This means that unless they admit their mistakes, they cannot get rid of their toxic habits. Let us now look into those habits that will not allow you to climb your career ladder.

1. Stop daydreaming; Start taking action. 

You may have been working in a particular field for the last several years. But this does not bestow on you the privilege of getting promotions. Remember that it is a dangerous ignorance if you have an expectation based on your bias. The question is: Have you been taking steps to improve yourself? Have you acquired enough knowledge to make your management think that you are fit to be promoted? If you have not acquired enough knowledge and if you keep daydreaming that you will become another Bill Gates, you will continue to remain in the same spot. It is true that nothing can be more delicious than daydreaming. But if you want to climb the career ladder, stop daydreaming and start acquiring more and more knowledge. Develop an innovative mindset and come out with great suggestions that can lift your company's fortunes or that can save a lot for the organization for which you are working. Knowledge and knowledge alone will make your management consider you for higher positions. 

2. Is there any use of whining or worrying?

If you are a person who hits the panic button quite often, you should understand that this can be a big impediment to your career growth. How can you bring out the best output when you whine and worry about anything and everything? Let us assume that your management decides to promote someone else instead of promoting you, though you and everyone else in your organization know that you are more capable and qualified than the other person. You may start whining that you will be working under someone who is less knowledgeable, less capable, and less experienced than you.

There are only two ways to tackle this situation. You can put in your papers and walk out. But you cannot be certain of landing a job that will satisfy you fully. Another way is to accept reality and work so sincerely, of course, without whining or worrying, that the management cannot ignore your ability and the quality of your output. In such a situation, they cannot refuse a promotion to you. 

 

Never forget the fact that things may not work out the way you think. Reality has a strange trait. It may quite often collide with expectations. So, there is no point in worrying or whining. When unpalatable things happen, try and find out how you should get over them instead of crumbling. The wise words written in the book "Consolations of Philosophy," authored by Alain de Botton, are worth remembering. The author writes like this: "Though the terrain of frustration may be vast — from a stubbed toe to an untimely death — at the heart of every frustration lies a basic structure: the collision of a wish with an unyielding reality.

The collisions begin in earliest infancy, with the discovery that the sources of our satisfaction lie beyond our control and that the world does not reliably conform to our desires."

3. Never be pessimistic.

Nothing in life is worthy of assuming that the world is coming to an end. Things may look bad now but they can get better at any time. You may say that they may get worse also. But if you always keep adopting such a doomsday mindset, you will be accelerating the worsening process. You should, therefore, be resilient in your approach and move ahead. When bad things happen, use them as a tremendous opportunity to improve yourself, instead of adopting a pessimistic attitude. 

If you get rid of these toxic habits, you can certainly fast-track your career growth.