Why big changes happen when you focus on small improvements

Doing more in less time is not the ultimate solution to productivity. It's the path to burnout.

Productivity rests more on small improvements. By focusing on the small things, the big things will take care of themselves.

Most people perform a combination of varied small tasks in a day. There may be many small improvements you could make to your workflow or environment to get more done.

Step one is finding out what those things are. Involve your peers or your manager if you need help with this.

Every week, choose one thing from your list and focus on it.

• Think of ways to improve this one thing.
• Experiment, and see what works.
• Talk about this one thing with your manager and ask for feedback.

The goal is to find ways to improve that small part of your work.

Communicate how the small changes helped you to improve. After a week focusing on this one thing, our natural tendency is to want to share how we did toward our output.

Be sure to talk about the small thing you focused on. It will help reinforce that focusing on the little things consistently over time will produce big results.

Large, abstract goals are intimidating. This is why focusing on smaller areas for improvement can put us in control over our own development.

Instead of an abstract goal like "becoming a better manager", you could use an actionable step like, " I want to devote one hour a week to preparing more for my 1:1s with my team."