This work identified twenty-six concepts of personal productivity in forty self-help books and found them relevant to the theories of knowledge worker productivity. The next step should be to identify how these concepts work together to improve the overall personal productivity of the knowledge worker. My hypothesis is that the knowledge worker needs to adopt all the concepts to effectively improve his productivity and that the concepts are interdependent. To explore this hypothesis I created a personal productivity framework by grouping the concepts into personal productivity levels and supporting functions. The levels are organized by dependencies. The lower levels work like an underlying base for personal productivity. If the knowledge worker does not have a strong base the higher levels do not increase his productivity as much. The idea is that the worker should obtain some skills in each level before moving to the next level and then iterate for further improvement. The supporting functions can be used in all levels to increase skills or apply practices. Figure 14 shows these personal productivity levels and supporting functions. The figure suggests how the concepts work together to improve the personal productivity of the knowledge worker.
Figure 14: A hypothesized personal productivity framework with the concepts grouped into levels of personal productivity
The first level is the spiritual needs of the worker. The worker needs to have a vision, to belief in a better future and know who he wants to be. A vision is a source of intrinsic motivation and helps the worker focus and be effective (Moran & Lennington, 2013; Scott, 2004). The spiritual needs include the concepts of vision and motivation. The second level is biological needs. The concept of energy management encompasses what the worker needs to fulfill his biological needs. It is important for the worker to get enough sleep, eat a healthy diet and exercise so his body can function and his mind engage (Baumeister & Tierney, 2011; Greenblatt, 2009; Harvard Business Essentials, 2005; Henry, 2011; Holden, 2012; Leland & Bailey, 2008; Loehr & Schwartz, 2003; Stack, 2004; Tracy, 2013). Energy management also touches on the spiritual needs and emotional needs of the worker but to simplify the figure a concept was not grouped into more than one level.
The third level is emotional needs. The concepts of social interaction, self-awareness, relationships, perspective and environment were grouped into this level. People have a need to feel connected to other people. Social interaction and relationships are important for positive energy and renewal (Lewis, 2012; Loehr & Schwartz, 2003). Self-awareness and perspective allows a worker to control how he experiences situations and utilizes his strengths. The environment influences the worker and can either fulfill the emotional needs of the worker or contradict them. It is important for organizations to have an environment which support the worker and his needs.
The fourth level is effectiveness. If the worker does not have his spiritual needs fulfilled, if he does not know who he is and what he wants out of life it is hard for him to be effective. Effectiveness is doing the right thing by focusing on key result areas (Meier, 2010; Moran & Lennington, 2013). Goals are statements of what the worker wants to achieve and should be aligned with the worker‟s vision and each key result area in his life (Covey, 2004; Covey et al., 1994; Lewis, 2012; Moran & Lennington, 2013). Decision making and thinking are tools to help the worker be more effective. The worker needs to choose what to do and eliminate work that does not produce value.
The fifth level is just do it. It includes the concepts of action, collaboration, autonomy, accountability, commitment and planning. Long-term results are created by the actions the worker takes every day (Moran & Lennington, 2013; Pash & Trapani, 2011). The worker needs to manage his commitments and know when to say no (Covey, 2004; Moran & Lennington, 2013; Stack, 2004). The worker only has part of the knowledge needed to get his job done so collaboration is increasingly vital (Goleman, 1999). Autonomy and accountability is important for the knowledge worker because he needs the freedom to choose his tasks and methods and take responsibility for them. Planning is a tool to help the worker get things done. All these concepts help the worker get things done, but if the worker is not effective he could be wasting his time.
Level six is continuous learning and includes the concept of self-development. The knowledge worker deals with new challenges every day, he needs to be able to learn from experiences and learn new things to keep up with his work. Level seven is efficiency and is of little use if the worker is not effective and does not get things done. It includes the concepts of time use, technology, flow and performance measures. To increase efficiency the worker needs to be aware of where his time goes, manage his time and consolidate it. Technology can be used to both increase productivity and distract the worker. The worker is the most efficient if he manages to get into a state of flow. Flow is a state of focused
attention where the work is effortless and enjoyable. Performance measures are necessary for the worker to track process and know when he has succeeded.
The supporting functions are composed of three concepts: habits, self-control and creativity. Habits are used in all levels to change behavior and help the worker improve. Self-control is used to control thoughts, emotions and impulse. The worker needs to exercise self-control in everything he does. Self-control gets depleted with use but can be replenished by eating nutritious food. Creativity is the ability to solve problems or create new ideas (Amabile, 1996). The worker uses creativity in all the levels.
This proposed framework of personal productivity should be tested to confirm the interdependency of the personal productivity concepts and the effect of each concept. Designing a research to test the personal productivity concepts and their interdependency will be difficult. Personal productivity was defined as the value produced from the worker´s effort aligned with the organization‟s objectives which fulfills requirements of stakeholders (Óskarsdóttir & Oddsson, 2014). According to this definition, personal productivity is subjective. There is a need to figure out how to measure improvement in personal productivity in a systematic and reliable way. The second step in the research design would be to explore how to teach the personal productivity framework and the skills, methods and techniques contained in the concepts. The research could then consist of measuring the personal productivity of subjects, then teaching them the personal productivity framework and seeing if there are any improvements in their personal productivity.
The challenge with this approach is the number of uncontrolled variables when working with knowledge workers and soft concepts like the personal productivity concepts. The environment, previous experiences and attitude of the subject will affect the results along with a number of different variables. This approach also only tests the whole framework, not the interdependency of the personal productivity concepts. Another approach would be to create teaching material for each concept, teach groups different sets of concepts and compare the personal productivity improvement. The challenge with this approach is the subjective nature of personal productivity which will make it hard to compare improvement between the groups. Testing the personal productivity framework proposed in figure 14 will need a series of research designed with care. Hopefully the framework will increase the personal productivity of knowledge workers and therefore give organizations a tool to improve their overall productivity.
Examples of research questions for future work to investigate the personal productivity concepts and the proposed framework of personal productivity are:
Does the framework of personal productivity increase the productivity of knowledge workers?
How can improvement in the personal productivity of knowledge workers be measured?
Are the personal productivity concepts interdependent and what is the effect of each concept on personal productivity?
The speculation above on how the personal productivity concepts work together to improve the productivity of the knowledge worker resulted in a proposed framework of personal productivity. Ideas for future work were discussed and examples of research questions suggested. The next subchapter speculates on the effect of Scrum on personal productivity.