Boosting Productivity for Financial Success and Personal Development

Boosting productivity follows from understanding the brain, focus and goals, not from using apps since the interview reveals that “Technology that was supposed to help, didn’t.”

Self-control generates self-motivation: “[F]eeling like you’re in control turns out to be critical for triggering self-motivation -- initiative -- which, in turn, is critical for productivity.” It heads unproductivity toward productivity since control facilitates proactivity whereas “If you don’t have this sense of control, you’re simply reacting to things in your environment.” The interview indicates that the “brain craves control” and that people can learn “to emotionally crave that control, and they will develop this bias toward action.”

Encouraging a personal preference for control juxtaposes experiences with feelings since “You give people experiences where they can take control and learn how good it feels.” 

Parents often keep clear lists of acceptable and unacceptable uses of allowances “to teach our kids the right things to do – but it’s the wrong instinct.” Boosting productivity instead leads to children deciding since “it’s important that they learn what it feels like to make decisions, even if they’re sometimes bad ones.” The interview mentions, with the example of self-motivating to reply to “a million emails,” assembly-line style, that “Getting over that hump is the important first step.”

Self-control and self-motivation, for long- and short-term sustainability, need to be bolstered by meaningful answers to such questions as “Why am I doing what I’m doing?”

Self-questioning offers reminders of routine task completion and opens new, useful neural pathways “instead of pathways that just sort of happen in reaction to the world.” 

Self-control, self-motivation and self-questioning produce the same substantial, successful, sustained results regardless of whether boosting productivity relates to financial, personal or professional endeavors, focuses or goals.

Reactive behaviors, emotions and thoughts quaver before distractions while proactivity holds fast to focusing upon reasons for compiling pre-shopping lists and visualizing results of attending meetings. 

Budgeting and economic decision-making and financial and retirement planning require committing numerical and textual information to memory and scrutinizing gains and losses, inflows and outflows. Their success stands to benefit just as much from aligning mindsets, priorities and results and from auto-talking and self-writing as career paths and personal development do. 

Boosting productivity by interacting with data, events and ideas ultimately takes less time by revealing “patterns in ways that you can use to make better decisions.” 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Through interviews, speaking engagements and his own writings, Pulitzer prize winning reporter and best-selling author Charles Duhigg presents tips for mastering self-productivity.
Featured quotation is excerpted from April 20, 2016, interview of Charles Duhigg by Stephen J. Dubner for Freakonomics Radio episode, “How to Be More Productive."
Stretch goal and SMART (specific measurable achievable realistic timeline) goal exemplify two types of perfect to-do list goals.: Freakonomics @Freakonomics, via Twitter April 22, 2016, @ https://twitter.com/freakonomics/status/723496670286077953

Charles Duhigg states that the brain's craving for control can induce a "bias toward action."
Experience with control reveal "how good it feels.": Charles Duhigg, via Facebook March 16, 2016, @ https://www.facebook.com/charlesduhigg/posts/957357347666509/

"I spoke to Money Magazine about the craving for control, inner dialogues, and avoiding the dreaded 'splurchase' at the grocery store."
photo by Matt Furman for MONEY: Charles Duhigg, via Facebook April 20, 2016, at 12:21 p.m., @ https://www.facebook.com/charlesduhigg

"Charles Duhigg’s: Smarter Faster Better - The Secrets of Being Productive" (2:22)
Uploaded March 31, 2016, by BroadcastExchange ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpIMJ2R47Aw

Duhigg, Charles. 2014. The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York, NY: Random House Trade Paperbacks. 

Duhigg, Charles. 2016. Smarter Faster Better : The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business. New York, NY: Random House.

Medintz, Scott. May 2016. “Simple Steps To Get More Done.” Money Volume 45, Number 4.