Critical Skill 10: The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity — Are YOU the New Killer App?

Think and DO!!

Are you guilty of having too many ideas?
Do people run when you get a brilliant thought?
Been there. The Internet and the innovative offline world are bursting with what ifs and how abouts.

BUT . . .
ideas vaporize when all we do is think about them.

We need to DO something with ideas to make something happen.

The 4 Keeper Traits of Productivity

In this series, I’ve laid out critical thinking skills important to success in a world of thinkers. Each is a way of using our minds to work with information and ideas to solve problems and move actions forward. The first nine skills aren’t much without the ability to manage and to apply them.

Productivity gets noticed because it produces results.

Self-sustaining productivity gets noticed.

Whether it’s millions of books made especially for kids or it’s millions of kids who learned to read, because teachers cared that they did.

Results are the point. What good is all of this critical thinking without something to show for it?

Self-sustaining productivity has four keeper traits.

They all begin with C.

• Commitment. Keep believing in your goal. Self-sustaining productivity demands that we stick to plan even when something shiny looks attractive right now. Commitment brings our priorities into focus when we’re distracted.
• Competence. Keep training to achieve it. Without high-end abilities, skills, and experience, it’s hard to produce high-end results. Things move more quickly and with fewer problems when we’re geared for the challenge. It’s hard to be productive, if we don’t know what we’re doing.
• Consistency. Keep your standard high. Self-sustainining productivity relies on effective and efficient performance.
• Credibility. Keep your promises. We’re most productive when do what we say we will. Credibility is the trust and confidence that inspires people to help.

Self-sustaining productivity is confidence in relationships on the street, in the workshop, and in the boardroom. It’s confidence in ourselves and confidence that others invest in us.

I wrote this paragraph in the introduction to this series.

Intellectual property–content–is an asset that not only gets produced, but reproduced, reconfigured, and repurposed for variety of media. Those who produce intellectual property are builders of wealth. An original idea that solves a problem or presents an opportunity is worth more now than it ever has been. Those who develop and mold original ideas are the new “killer app.”

Be social. Network all you can. But don’t neglect the time to stretch your mind.

What are you doing to think ideas, solve problems, and make new realities?

Yeah, you. Can you be. . . will you be . . . are you the new killer app?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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