Personal Quotas
May 9th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
Email this article to a friend
Just as salespeople might have monthly sales quotas to meet, you can apply the concept of quotas to your personal productivity as well. I use this technique often and have found it highly effective for certain types of projects. Here’s how it works:
For each project you want to tackle tomorrow, set a minimum output goal. The goal must be measurable. I usually use time as the unit of measurement because I can always measure the time you invest in a project, but I might not be able to clearly and consistently measure any other aspects. Also using time as the measurement factor makes it easier to plan my day.
For example, I have a daily quota of writing of 4 hours per day. This is for a book I’m writing — blogging or writing articles doesn’t count. So every week I’m doing a minimum of 28 hours of work just on the book. I could also have used a minimum number of words or pages per day for my quota, but I like doing it by time best, since a large part of writing includes research, outlining, brainstorming, editing, and other tasks aside from merely cranking out text. I find my daily quotas highly effective at keeping me moving this project forward. I also put a restriction on myself that I never check email until after I’ve hit the quota. Most days I’ve reached it by noon, sometimes by 10am. The nice thing about having a daily quota for this type of project is that I know that if I simply meet my quota every day, the book will eventually ship. Guaranteed.
Using quotas is similar to timeboxing, but with timeboxing you’re only dealing with a single box of time all at once. With quotas you can split up the time investment throughout the day. And you can also use a measurement factor other than time if you find it appropriate.
You can also use maximum quotas when you want to limit the amount of time you spend on certain activities. For example, you could set a maximum quota on the time you spend web surfing, watching TV, or reading forums.
I’m sure you can think of many other ways to use quotas in your life. If you have a clogged inbox, you could set a quota of clearing out 10-20 emails per day until your inbox is empty. If you have a messy filing cabinet, you could set a quota of updating 5-10 files per day. Quotas work best when you use them every day (or every weekday), and you make the target highly controllable. This is why I like basing it on time, since all I have to do is put in the time, regardless of how creative I’m feeling and how productive I am that particular day.
How can you use quotas in your own life to fast-track a slow-moving project?
May 9th, 2005 at 7:12 pm
Gotta ask (sorry), what book can we expect
May 9th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
It’s a book on personal development. Each chapter covers a different aspect: self-discipline, personal productivity, courage, focus, planning, motivation, etc. The research and the outline are done, but I’m only up to chapter 2 in writing the first draft, so it will be a while til it’s ready. I’ll announce it with more details once it’s close to release.
May 10th, 2005 at 4:55 am
will it be free?
May 10th, 2005 at 6:47 am
It will be better than free. The payoff received from reading it will far exceed the trivial cost.
May 10th, 2005 at 9:22 am
We would like to send you cheers on your forthcoming book.
Have you found a publisher to work with? How about an agent or editor?
Your transformation from a blogger to a published author would be something worth writing about.
Best regards,
gochess
May 10th, 2005 at 9:28 am
Top Ten Book Titles for Steve Pavlina’s
New Book
10) Getting Things, Don
(Get it! Leave off the ‘e’! Capitalize on
David Allen’s readership!!)
09) After the Giant Awakens: He/She still needs
Time Management, Motivitation, Goals,
Courage, Momentum, Balance, Fulfillment,
and most of all Purpose!
08) Seven Habits of the Most Effective
Person You’ll Ever Meet: Me,
Steve Pavlina!
06) No more a Single,
Double your Time,
Triple your Productivity,
Quadruple your Income,
Quintuple your Happiness,
Sextuple your Fun,
Septuple your Love,
Octuple your Clarity,
Nonuple your Talents,
Decuple your Lucid Dreaming
Guide to Living Consciously.
05) Lucid Dreaming: Now DayDream
in your sleep, Also!
04) Yeah, You should’ve Really Done
It By Now.
03) How to Do It All in No Time
(aka, ReIncarnation, who
needs ReIncarnation?)
07) A Daily Dose of Courage to
the UnConcious.
02) Stop Seeing Patterns where
There are none, and Getting
Upset when it break down.
01) I Planned For you to
Read this book — so read it,
NOW!
May 10th, 2005 at 9:32 am
[Oops, messed up formatting on that one]:
Top Ten Book Titles for Steve Pavlina’s New Book
10) Getting Things, Don (Get it! Leave off the ‘e’! Capitalize on David Allen’s readership!!)
09) After the Giant Awakens: He still needs Time Management, Motivitation, Goals, Courage, Momentum, Balance, Fulfillment, and most of all Purpose!
08) Seven Habits of the Most Effective Person You’ll Ever Meet: Me, Steve Pavlina!
06) No more a Single, Double your Time, Triple your Productivity, Quadruple your Income, Quintuple your Happiness, Sextuple your Fun, Septuple your Love, Octuple your Clarity, Nonuple your Talents, Decuple your Lucid Dreaming — Guide to Living Consciously.
05) Lucid Dreaming: Now DayDream in your sleep, Also!
04) Yeah, You should’ve Really Done It By Now.
03) How to Do It All in No Time (aka, ReIncarnation, who needs ReIncarnation?)
07) A Daily Dose of Courage to the UnConcious.
02) Stop Seeing Patterns where There are none, and Getting Upset when it break down.
01) I Planned For you to Read this book — so read it, NOW!
May 10th, 2005 at 11:12 am
Most likely I’ll simply self-publish the book.
May 10th, 2005 at 11:57 am
Steve, generally I hate keeping track of time, but I found this software to be invaluable.
http://www.sphericaltech.com/
It tracks time usage on the computer relating to application and document usage. If you’ve been away from the keyboard for 30 minutes, it’s smart enough not to record that time. You can setup “projects” where certain documents are billed under certain projects. e.g. 4 hours of typing within book.doc can be billed to the project “Upcoming Book” while visiting bankofamerica.com can be billed to “Personal Activities”. It really takes the tedium out of logging computer activities.
Jim
P.S. I am in no way affiliated with this company. In fact, there are a couple other competitors out there that attempt to do the same thing (e.g. JobCapture)
May 11th, 2005 at 8:28 am
Sri,
the top ten list was funny.
May 11th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Yeah, it’s scary that other people sometimes know me better than I do.
May 12th, 2005 at 2:54 pm
Your article reminds me of something:
In the long term communism of coursea is FAR inferior to democracy.
But for short term things such as quickly preparing for World War II, or quickly industrializing a country, communism in USSR was actually superior to democracy. Why?
Because in communism everything is under one command. The party can actually order the factories to start producing weapons for war.
In a democracy, quickly preparing for war is a lot harder. The government can’t simply go to a factory and order them “you will drop whatever you are doing and you will start producing guns and tanks”.
History confirms this difference about quickly ramping up for war.
A few years ago I started wondering: Is the way in which I’m operating similar to communism, or to a democracy?
I thought long and hard about this, and came to the conclusion I’m in fact similar to an insane, unforgiving nazi dictator.
Now this needs a little explaining. How can a human being be compared to a whole country?
democracy = I listen carefully to each of my different parts and desires, and make sure that most of the parts are satisfied, and that I live in harmony with all parts of my being
dictature = I let one part (for example the desire to advance my business) take command. That part becomes the dictator and orders me around, with stuff like “it doesn’t matter that you feel frustrated - go write that code”.
One of my goals in the last 2 or 3 years was to become more democratic - in the sense I explained above.
As a result, I’m a lot happier and a little more productive than before.
I simply listen carefully to all my wishes, and try to reach a compromise.
Now, the method you are proposing may be interpreted as a democratic or as a dictatorial method. However, my feeling is that the method is more dictatorial than democratic. And this is a bad thing.
May 12th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
I don’t see myself as either democratic or dictatorial internally. While sometimes I slant one way or the other, I generally operate from a combination of both. Some decisions are consensus decisions; others are command decisions. As you say it depends on whether I want short-term or long-term results. I generally do long-term planning via a consensus model, but I do execution via a command model. When I revise the plans it’s back to consensus again. Deciding to go into speaking was a consensus decision. Exercising today was a command decision.
May 12th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Raise your quota
Well, Steve Pavlina’s done it again - another great idea to improve focus, drive forward progress, and increase your personal …
June 3rd, 2005 at 3:58 am
This quota thing is something musicians and artists have done through known history. You just can’t get any better (on a serious level) without a minimum of three hours of practise per day - some go to five hours per day and some truly dedicated play from 8-11 hours per day if their physique can take it. Of course the intensity of all this is known to break lives…some do go insane. But to be good takes dedication and devotion and as such this amount of practise is the price you will have to pay…
June 26th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
Tinkering in the garage of my mind
You’ve probably seen those tinkering types who accumulate a garage full of miscellaneous spare parts (motors, belts, pulleys, etc.). Then, one day they’ll get an idea, go out to the garage, and make something out of all those spare parts.
…