How to improve your average working speed?

25/1/2017

We all want to achieve significant in life and for this, we made extra efforts to achieve the goal. We also get motivated reading and hearing many success stories around us. All this make us push harder to get nearer to our goal. But how long or consistently can you make extra efforts decides your success rate.

I have finished writing e-book, How to design the solar power system by yourself ?, in 10 days. My average working speed was writing 10 pages per day and I did it quite consistently writing on the daily basis. I could even complete this e-book in a single day by writing the whole of the 50 pages in a day but the question was would I be able to sustain this rate in the coming days, I don’t think so. Keeping the massive target and try to accomplish in a day without maintaining your stamina to accomplish the same on the daily basis will neither help you in sustaining the average working speed nor give any increment in it.

(1) You cannot take large step every day but can take tiny steps every day

We generally waste our time in thinking of doing something special, massive, spectacular in one go and we actually end up wasting the whole day. For example, I think of writing the 50 pages e-book in a single day then I need to make the following changes and the arrangements:

I should get up early in the morning to start the writing
I should write at least 10-12 hours in a day to complete the book
I should not heavy diet as it can make me drowsy
I need to have the internet connection for the whole day
The electricity should be available round the clock to charge the laptop
I should not go out whole day, social cut-off, so as to write e-book
No time to talk to the family and friends

When all the above parameters are holding true then I would be able to write the e-book in a single day. I made so many restrictions about achieving the goal that if any one of the parameters is not met then I would get demotivated, leaving my goal of writing the e-book in a single day.

(2) My performance when I tried to make sudden extreme & spectacular attempts

These restrictions made my performance to follow the following pattern:

My monthly average reduced to 3 pages per day and my writing schedule was very erratic and was not consistent. I did not make any incremental progress.

(3) My performance when I followed the incremental approach

I followed the incremental approach where I decided to start small and wrote 3-4 pages per day, taking time in between my busy schedule. The results were great and consistent:

I made the following findings:

My writing average came out to be 3.07 in a month’s time which was though marginally higher was better than my previous methodology
I was consistent the whole month
It became my habit and gave me a room to do an incremental improvement of writing say writing extra ½ or 1 page per day.
The average for the next month came out to be approaching 4 pages per day.
I didn’t disturb my schedule
I gave time to all the other activities in day
In that last, I grew consistently even giving time to all the activities in the life

I found that it does not require being an extraordinary to produce incredible outcome but your small but consistent efforts can do wonders and the same principle can be applied in the professional life.

(4) The science of the incremental approach

When you make little and consistent efforts your body adapts easily to these changes and gets ready to embrace another set of little efforts. But when you make massive efforts in a single day, your body and the mind finds it difficult to accept and rejects to adapt to this change in the future makes your performance erratic and inconsistent. When you make little and consistent efforts your strength increases makes to stretch more to accept the incremental change.
Try doing the following incremental strategy:

You have 45 customers and you personally meet all of them in month’s time. Here your average working speed is 45/30 = 1.5 customer per day. Try gradually increasing your average speed like meeting 2 customers per day so that you complete your task of meeting in the 23rd day of the month.
Try adding 2 more readers in your subscriber list
Try writing one e-book every month instead trying writing it in a single day
You talk over phone on an average 10 customers per day. Try adding one more client every second day in your list to increase your average speed.
The point is to give the incremental and the consistent growth not the sudden and the erratic progress.

Your progress chart should look like this:

The small incremental growth gives consistency and develops a habit in you. Anyone can be motivated for a single day and can make extra efforts but can you actually make these extra efforts on the daily basis, or can you manage these extra efforts on the daily basis?
This solution does the small but the consistent constructive change in your life, work or the health which you can manage and improve over the period of time. It can be named as incremental progress not the erratic and the inconsistent.

Conclusion

It does not require the massive effort and major time management to do small positive incremental efforts to transform our lives and maintain a balance between work and the life.
When I actually calculated my average speed it comes out to be very low then I realized that how much I used to waste my time in setting herculean targets and do the over thinking and wasting the whole day actually doing nothing. Here is my performance chart:

Moreover, my performance was not consistent on the daily basis. In some days, it was on the extremes, either very high or very low. I was very much concerned about my performance; I decided to at least

maintain the above calculated average figures and then increase it gradually. Yes, I am able to maintain my average working speed and even made a little increment in it.
You too can find yourself in this situation but do not feel guilty or worry, just try to write on the paper the constructive activities in your work and life which you can manage effortlessly in a day. Start doing them from the same day itself and maintain the schedule for the period of time say a month’s time. Then add little incremental in all those activities which you were doing for the whole last month. You will be easily able to embrace the incremental change in your work without actually affecting the other aspects of your life and you will surprise to see the incredible change in your work and life.

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