What does it mean to be super productive?
\nBeing super rich?
\nSuper busy?
\nSuper efficient and fast?
\nSuper effective at reaching your goals?
In reality, true productivity has nothing to do with any of these traits.
\nProductive comes from the Latin verb Producĕre, made up of pro- (forward, out) and ducĕre (to lead, to guide). So producere, in its original meaning, is literally to lead out, to bring forward, to bring to the surface. In effect, it means transforming a resource by drawing out its value, by making that value emerge.
\nThe original meaning of productivity is not ‘doing a lot’ or ‘doing things fast’, but rather bringing something out, taking something that has only potential value and giving it a value that can actually be used.
\nA productive person is someone capable of turning something useless into something useful, and something useful into something more useful: an idea into a work, a beginner into an expert, a plot of land into a house.
\nIn the Latin world, productivity and fertility converge strongly around the same idea: generating, bearing fruit, bringing out something vital.
\n‘Producĕre’, in fact, can be translated with the verb ‘to be fecund, fertile, fruitful’.
\nFertile comes from the Latin fertilis, from ferre, a verb that means to carry, but also to produce, to generate, to bear fruit. Fertile means capable of generating, of producing fruit, of being productive.
\nThe Treccani dictionary, in fact, defines fertilis as what is productive and capable of producing abundantly¹. We still say today that a soil is fertile, that a period is fertile, that a mind is fertile.
\nProductive and fertile are very similar, but they are not the same thing.
\nFertility indicates a generative capacity, while productivity indicates that this capacity has shown itself in a transformation.
\nFertility is the potential to generate.
\nProductivity is the ability to turn that potential into fruit.
A word with an etymological root very close to ‘fertile’ and ‘productive’ is happy.
\nThe Italian word for happy, felice, comes from the Latin felix, felicis, which means both fertile, fruitful, productive and prosperous, fortunate, favored².
\nEtymological reconstruction traces felix back to an ancient Indo-European family associated with the meaning of nourishing, producing, generating, from which Latin words such as fecundus (fecund) and fetus (fetus, birth, offspring, fruit) also come.
\nFertility is having within yourself the conditions to generate.
\nProductivity is bringing it out, turning potential into results.
\nHappiness is the state of what is fecund, productive.
Now let’s look at one last term: useful.
\nThe Italian word utile (useful) comes from the Latin utilis, connected to ‘uti’: to use, to make use of. So utilis is what can be made use of, what is suited to a purpose, advantageous, beneficial.
\nIf fertility indicates the capacity to generate something, usefulness indicates the capacity to serve some purpose.
\nBeing useful means bearing fruit that serves, that generates value for someone. Indeed, no plant produces fruit that is useful only to itself.
\nProductivity is the disposition to transform the resources available, increasing their value so that they are useful and benefit the whole system.
\nTrue productivity does not simply consist in transforming something by increasing its value but, like the fruit of any tree, in creating usefulness for others.
\nThe productive person makes everything and everyone more useful; the unproductive person makes everything and everyone less useful (except to their own interests).
\nThis semantic link explains well every human being’s desire to feel useful. Nothing creates a more fulfilling and pleasant feeling inside us than knowing we have been useful to someone. Nothing is as depressing and devastating as feeling completely useless.
\nBeing super productive basically means being super useful.
\nA super productive team member is a team member who is extremely useful to their company.
\nA super productive manager is a manager who is extremely useful to their company and to the people who report to them.
\nA super productive supplier is a supplier who is extremely useful to their customers.
\nWith that clear, how do you become super productive? How do you become super useful?
\nFirst of all, we should ask ourselves who we are useful to. To customers? To team members? To the company? To our children? To our partner?
\nYou cannot define a person’s productivity without first identifying who that person is productive for. It makes no sense to say: ‘you are productive’; it is an incomplete sentence, like saying ‘Paolo eats the’ — the object is missing.
\nWho are you productive for?
\nThis question defines your so-called referents, that is, all the people for whom we get up in the morning, work, commit ourselves, study, grow, stay disciplined, stay reliable.
\nOur referents are the people we serve and the people we are of use to.
\nFor each referent, we have a role.
\nIf our referent is a child, that makes us parents.
\nIf our referent is a customer, that makes us salespeople or suppliers.
\nIf our referent is a team member, that makes us managers.
\nIf our referent is a manager, that makes us team members.
\nEach role defines, precisely and unambiguously, a set of referents.
\nOur referents tell us, precisely and unambiguously, how we are useful and how we can be super useful.
\nThat is how you become super productive: by asking your referents how you can serve them better.
\nWho is most useful to you? Who are the people who are super productive toward you?
\nThese people have certain recognizable and rather rare traits.
\nThey are the ones who manage to make the biggest difference for their companies, for their own lives, and for the lives of the people who live and work with them.
\nA useful and productive person is someone who makes a difference, who is missed when absent, who will never have trouble finding work or money.
\nNo company, no manager, no man and no woman would ever do without a person who knows how to make themselves truly useful.
\nPeople who know how to be super useful have consistent, recognizable traits; let’s look at them one by one.
\nFirst trait: they know what they have to do or, if they don’t, they ask. Productive people know their functions, know what their responsibilities are, and when they don’t know, or aren’t sure, they ask their referents.
\nSecond trait: productive people are reliable, meaning they know how to take care of things: they take care of people, projects, objects. They tend not to spoil what is entrusted to them but rather to enhance it, whether it is an object, a person, or a department.
\nReliability includes discipline, consistency, honesty, integrity.
\nUnreliability, by contrast, means being superficial and imprecise.
\nThird trait: productive people know how to spot problems, how to see them and admit them. They avoid personal opinions and judgments as much as possible, observe reality, and learn from it. This makes them causative*, and leads them to use every single problem as an opportunity for growth and development.
\n*Seeing themselves as the cause (and not the effect) of problems. An adjective used to describe someone who takes responsibility for their own actions and failures, without looking for outside blame and excuses.
\nAn unproductive person, on the other hand, tends to hide problems or admit them only when it has become unavoidable. Excuses, complaints, and criticism of others are at the root of an unproductive person.
\nFourth trait: productive people are competent and, when they are not, they know how to rely on someone more competent than they are or find a way to acquire those skills.
\nIn other words, productive people fulfill their duties and are adequate in all the roles they hold.
\nThese traits and skills can be developed. Through training and practical application, a manager, a team member, a parent, or a partner can be turned into a super productive person.
\nA course that ignites people’s productivity should teach how to:
\nThis course is called ProdUp!.
\nFor more information about the ProdUp! course, write to valentina@prodability.com
\nSources and references
\n*1 - https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/fertile/
\n*2- Treccani puts it particularly clearly: felice derives from the Latin felix, from the same root family as fecundus, and its original proper meaning is given as fertile (https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/felice/)
\nLewis & Short, the great dictionary of classical Latin, gives as the first meaning of felix ‘fruit-bearing, fruitful, fertile, productive’, and then ‘happiness, felicity’ (https://alatius.com/ls/)
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