Importance of Productivity in our everyday lives

ALL PAKISTAN ESSAY COMPETITION: IMPORTANCE OF PRODUCTIVITY IN OUR DAILY LIVES

A gentleman residing in a rural environment starts his day with the break of dawn. By 12:00 noon his work is done, which leaves him with ample time for his siesta. He can spend his evenings with his family and ends up utilizing quality time very efficiently. In my dictionary the definition of productivity is not in behaving robotically; a robot may be 99 percent efficient but not necessarily 99 % productive at the same time.

Effectiveness as I perceive it, is making each and every unit which can be utilized meaningfully. There is absolutely no point in making a trillion units of which only a thousand can and will be utilized; while the rest discarded. I would endorse the statement that productivity has immense importance in our day to day life. Not only to we become result oriented; but also end up doing more things than we previously did and bring perfection in the tasks performed. The most common excuse people of my age have is that ‘We did not get the time to successfully complete this; hence half done. Some time ago I got a forwarded email quoting a wise gentleman/lady saying that ‘We have the same amount of time as Hellen Keller, Quaid e Azam, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Lenin Mar and Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan so why is it that these people have created history and others have come into this world and left without doing anything substantial or worthwhile. The answer to this is constructive utilization of time, thought process, and channelizing our talents in the right direction is how I personally define productivity.

I genuinely feel that the downfall of our country was due to misallocation of resources, of which time being the most integral resource is often overlooked.

There’s an article I came across in my economics class given to us by our Economics Teacher when I was in the third semester of my B.B.A Honours. The article as I remember was titled “My wife does not work” In the article the gentleman had a dialogue with the writer about him going for work regularly and his wife staying home and doing nothing. The writer asked him what the lady does at home the entire day, to his surprise he discovered that the lady performs 15 varied routine tasks almost everyday. All these tasks were assigned weightages in order to quantify them and the total worth of work performed was calculated in terms of a percentage. Once the weights were summed up, it was found that in terms of units attempted/performed, the lady does twice as much work as the man does in office also taking into account the idle time.

It is only a matter of quantifying each activity. Lets take the example of a gentleman doing ‘gardening as a hobby’ subsequently making his lawn beautiful, yet remaining constructively occupied mentally. This gentleman has 2 factors to consider, one is the opportunity cost of his own time, other is saving the gardener’s salary, which ranges from Rs. 500 to Rs. 1500. If the gentleman is a retired fellow, and has the luxury of time to himself, then he can afford to engage himself in a variety of cost saving activities; being productive is also about what you have at stake. If a person’s schedule includes a variety of tasks to be accomplished like going to office, coming back home and taking the dog out for a walk, or tutoring his children, or practicing a fitness regime like playing squash or going to the gym then there is a trade off. One needs to prioritize activities ranging from most important to least important, and deciding which ones can be compromised on so that the most important activities are not made redundant by default.

We (our economists) need to devise a framework whereby we can quantify all the qualitative attributes/variables prevalent in our economic system.

The way to being more productive is eliminating the most repetitive tasks or activities perceived as trivial and carried out unnecessarily and that too at a frequent pace must be made redundant and eliminated eventually.

Our productivity as a larger group of people is literally the summission of each and every activity performed by every single individual. It is about streamlining our everyday tasks in a more meaningful manner, which is both sequential and organized so that we do not end up procrastinating.

Productivity is also about meeting all your deadlines, adding value to the activities performed by investing adequate time, effort, both mental and physical, effective thought process channelization, shunning off lazing and fine tuning one’s attitude. Remodelling or fine tuning of attitudes is what drives groups and nations forward towards progression.

If we ponder on the psychological behavioral aspects of a person, motivation is one thing, which keeps people on their toes around the clock, regardless of their social status. However psychology proves that the road to motivation would differ from person to person. A highly motivated gentleman/lady would be more proactive and hence more productive in terms of every little thing they do. Teams can be more productive if all members work. The nature of work may differ on basis of preference, talent, tasks, aptitude, requirements, vested interest etc. If every single individual performs truthfully in his/her respective capacity, we would not only be productive, but also self reliant, confident and more competitive as a country. To reiterate, happiness and a nation’s wealth stem from efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.

We possess infinite amounts of energy; the requirement of the hour is to constructively channel our energies with control over ourselves.

The reason why importance of productivity is phenomenal and profound is due to it having a trickle down positive impact on the country’s overall productivity.