Micro-Milestones – Improving Productivity By Utilizing Micro-Milestones

Improving your level of productiveness is not a result that will happen by itself. It will require learning some new skills and more importantly actually implementing them. We will be taking a look at one such skill in this report. The skill of using micro-milestones to get your important tasks completed in a timely fashion.

The implementation of this skill will mean that you have a systematic way to complete important tasks. One of the very real benefits from doing this is that you will have more time for family and friends. You will also feel a very real sense of accomplishment by doing this. On the other hand having this skill will be another way for you to prevent completing important tasks. It also means you can totally avoid feeling that feeling of not finishing something you know you should have.

THE MICRO-MILESTONE STRATEGY

Before we jump head first into this productivity improving strategy let’s make sure that we are all on the same page.

Wikipedia defines “Milestone” as

“… a milestone is an event that receives special attention.”

This is where the ambiguity can start to come into play as far as this strategy is concerned. What we are looking for here is a marker that exists in the duration of a total task that you will use as a way to split that task up and allow you to complete a portion of it.

When it comes to choosing the marker it should be something that makes sense to you specifically. For example, if we have chosen as a task to write a book then one of the sub-tasks would be to write a chapter in that book. For our purposes we may take this one step further and say our micro-milestone in this case might be 1000 words.

The important thing to realize here is that the micro-milestone should be chosen in a manner so that you don’t feel overwhelmed by attempting to complete the entire task in one sitting.

Think of it this way, “How do you eat an elephant?”

The answer is simple.

“One bite at a time!”

In our case the one bite at a time will be the micro-milestones. This will tend to create positive momentum for you and lead to an overall improvement in productivity.

WHY DOES THIS WORK?

The micro-milestone strategy is effective because of three specific principles that work synergistic ally to create a whole that is greater than it’s parts.

The first principle is the idea of “Momentum”. One of the greatest enemies of productivity is the idea of inertia or non-movement. Most of the time you delay starting on a task because of the perception of either being overwhelmed by it or biting off way more then you can comfortably deal with at the time.

By choosing micro-milestones you will find yourself more pro-active and not in a state of overwhelm. By completing micro-milestone after micro-milestone you Will be creating positive momentum.

The second principle of “Commitment” works on the idea that when we have decided we are going to do something and started on that path then we will tend to stay with it until we come to the logical ending. In this case by committing to complete a micro-milestone you have made it easier to get started because you know the ending isn’t a far off unreachable place.

Finally, the last principle that makes micro-milestones works is the idea of “Consistency”. All of us are hard-wired to be consistent with the way we see ourselves. This is why it’s so difficult not to follow through on something you have committed to finish. Having stated that I would like to make a clarification to what I just wrote. If you were forced to commit to something because of an outside authority then this principle’s effect is greatly diminished because you didn’t really make the decision yourself.

WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT

In this report we have taken a pretty thorough look at a strategy that if implemented can increase your productivity. We looked at some of the WHY reasons behind increasing your productivity, explained the idea of micro-milestones, covered the principles that make this specific strategy work and finally what to do if you encounter three popular stumbling blocks. By allowing yourself to implement consistently the micro-milestone strategy you will find that your productivity levels start to soar. The interesting thing about this is that it starts to become a pervasive affect. The other areas of your life will become productive because as your momentum increases then so does your sense of being a more productive person as well. This means more satisfying personal relationships, more successful business and/or career outcomes and of course a greater sense of accomplishment.