day 505: Turning Productivity Inside Out

If you run a business, or a part of a business, you are always looking at your productivity levels. It is a measurement that can sometimes be elusive, especially in those jobs and areas where the output is less tangibly measurable, but even so, striving for maximum productivity is one way to know that the business is performing. The government also measures this, but they do it along the lines of the amount of hours being worked versus the number of people working and productivity becomes a measure of how much "work" is being done because someone is on the job longer. We all know that just because someone is at their desk or in the office that it doesn't mean that work is getting done. What we want to know is that when people are working that they are gaining the greatest amount of efficiency and that their output is off the charts. We are looking for the "wow factor" and want to be amazed that so much was done with so little, by so few (I wish I had been the first one to use that line). As we chase productivity we also must be sure and look "inside" and see what else we can do to ensure that everything is running as well-oiled as possible. Since we are talking about humans and not machines, there is plenty to examine and inspect and it becomes hard because no two people are the same. We all boot up differently each day and life has so many variables that we become highly unpredictable and our productivity, our real productivity, can vary over a bad night's sleep, a crying baby, a stalled car, a failing relationship, a bruised ego, or just a bad mood. Paul tells us something about how to find productivity in the book of Titus. He says we have to turn it inside out and look to others first; "Our people must learn to do good by meeting the urgent needs of others; then they will not be unproductive." If we want to find productivity from those around us, and ourselves, we have to dig deep first and be sure that the urgent needs of life are solved first and then we will find productivity. Asking a car to run when it is out of oil is asking for trouble. Asking a person to be productive when they carry the weight of worries or crisis on the home front, is asking for failure. As we search for productivity, let's search for solving our core problems first and then productivity will come. This is an area where God wants to come to work with us. Let Him carry those burdens for us so we can work to His glory. Today, spend some time thinking and praying about those areas in your life and in the lives of others where if the urgent problems were solved that a new spring of productivity just might flow.

Reference: Titus 3:14 (New Living Testament)