How to Make the Most of Your Time With Continuous Improvement

Are you continuously improving? 

How does that happen and how can you be certain that you are? 

The need to self-evaluate is a crucial skill that will not only make sure you meet expectations, but also make sure you are growing.

There are several ways to determine if you are improving and we will review them today.

Let’s get started.

Expectations

Within any role you’ve had, you have had the obligation to meet some level of expectation. 

Whether you met them to your degree of satisfaction is up to you. However, the application of how you determined if you made the mark is where it matters.

We are always self-evaluating and sometimes we express how we think we are doing.

Whether that expression is to ourselves or someone else. Most of the time, we are comparing our performance to someone else’s to see how we compare. Other times we either ask our direct report, or we may be issued feedback from our direct support.

Sometimes feedback is good and sometimes we need improvement.

In the beginning stage of any new task, improvement is always necessary. This is where the self-evaluation comes in.

Regardless of your self-evaluation tactic, we normally don’t feel we’ve performed positively until our performance aligns with either our own expectation or the expectation of our direct support’s. (Direct support, can be your boss or loved one).

This leads us to the next topic…

Actions

Once we collect feedback from either self-evaluation or from our direct support, we try to implement ways to improve our performance. 

Sometimes we get pointers from others who have more experience, sometimes we gather our own action plan and sometimes it is both.

Creating an action plan so that we meet or exceed expectations is usually our next motive. 

Think of any job you’ve had and how you had to meet expectations within the 30,60 or 90 day evaluation period. Your determination to meet the bar, with focus and dedication, was in play.

You created an action plan before you even made it to the evaluation period. Your action plan started when you derived a plan to find a job. Now, you were a few steps further into your plan.

As you obtain goals within your plan, your confidence level increases with your ability to obtain goals.

However, goals in life rarely end;  and if they do end, you should not let them. Establish more goals to continue your growth.

But, how to you improve continuously throughout life?

Goals

Setting goals is a crucial part of life. 

We often have multiple goals of which some are complex and some are not. The ability to create a plan, take action and achieve your goal is a great feeling. 

It builds confidence and knowledge of good practice. Often times we share those practices with others who are trying to achieve.

If you aren’t sharing, I recommend you do so that you can also feel the gift of gratitude from helping another person meet achievements.

An excellent practice for life goals is to always create your goals in pairs. 

Meaning you have a short term goal, but you also have a secondary goal that is dependent on meeting the first goal.

Setting goals in pairs gives you better understanding of setting a directional path and it also provides visibility into what will be necessary in helping you achieve the end-goal. Taking time to create plans that are actionable is important. 

Also, it is okay to set goals high. Maybe something you feel that would challenge you and take a long time to achieve. Be sure to measure the results in your goal setting as well, so you can acknowledge and celebrate your wins. Celebrating your wins allows you to track your actions to truly take note of how you made it there.

The next topic is time. This is by far one of the most important aspects of today’s topic.

Time

Not only is time an important aspect of continuously improving, it is a measure of continuous improvement. 

Of course within meeting expectations, there is a task-level requirement to meet, measured by time.

An expectation is a common measure of how we are performing. This measure is usually viewed from the aspect of us meeting someone else’s expectation.

But, how are you applying your use of time to evaluate yourself?

• Have you ever thought about measuring your performance from that aspect of how much time you are creating? Literally, are you creating time?

Example – 

When you first learned a new task, let’s say it took you 4 hours to complete. However within 2 months of performing the task, it now takes you 1 hour. 

Have you ever thought that now you just created 3 hours worth of time that was previously occupied doing something else?

Yes! You should! This is a very good self-evaluation tactic that you can use throughout life with any constructive goal.

Ultimately, with anything you are tasked to complete, you should be creating time to apply to other aspects of extended goals. That time that you are applying to other extended goals, is literally your growth.

Conclusion

An increase in productivity is often measured by the initial output compared to the ending output. 

Of course the change in the rate of measure matters, but if you were once doing 10 units per hour and now you (or your team) is doing 30 units per hour, you’ve tripled your productivity.

The time that you previously used when you could only produce 10 units per hour is now applied to other tasks that support your continuous improvement.

Use this continuously throughout your goal setting and gage whether you are creating time. 

This is applicable with any task you’ve obligated yourself to. 

Compare, the then and now, and self-evaluate.

Thanks for joining us today faithful readers – future leaders.

Love ya and continue to strive for growth.

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Please comment something that you have continuously improved in life and how you did it.