262: How to Know If You're Actually Being Productive

 How to Know If You're Actually Being Productive

You worked 10 hours, completed 23 tasks, yet your business is exactly where it was last week. Business strategist Cindy Gordon reveals the difference between motion and progress, and why most successful entrepreneurs are professionally busy but not actually productive.

In this episode:

• The difference between real productivity and motion productivity
• Why perfectionism on low-impact tasks steals from high-impact decisions
• How to identify what actually changes your business trajectory
• The warm audience reality check you need to hear
• Three tests to audit your actual productivity

The uncomfortable truth: You're doing too much of the wrong things.

Connect: @exclusivelycindy on Instagram | The Visibility Room Waitlist | UNMISTAKABLE Waitlist

About Your Host: Cindy Gordon is a Selective Visibility Strategist and 5x online business founder behind Exclusively Cindy. With a Masters in Special Education and training in Behavior Analysis, she takes an individualized approach to visibility, helping female digital entrepreneurs decide what they stand for, where they show up, and how.

Learn more at exclusivelycindy.com

💌 Join 1,500+ entrepreneurs receiving weekly strategic insights and business clarity frameworks - sign up now! https://cindygordon.myflodesk.com/countmein

Transcript

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You worked 10 hours yesterday, checked off 23 tasks, answered every email, created three pieces of content, and yet your business is exactly in the same place it was last week. Your confusing motion with progress and activity with productivity, deep down, you know it. You're not sure how to tell the difference anymore. Hi, I'm Cindy Gordon, and I've built and sold multiple digital businesses, and now I help entrepreneurs make strategic decisions with precision and not panic. Most successful entrepreneurs have no idea if they're actually being productive. They are completing tasks, hitting deadlines, staying busy, but the business isn't moving forward. Proportionally, you can work harder than everyone else and still be standing still if you are working on the wrong things. Today we are talking about how to know if you're actually being productive or just professionally busy because there's a massive difference between checking the boxes and actually moving the needle in your business. And that difference determines whether you scale or stall. You are not just sitting around doing nothing. You are not even procrastinating in the traditional sense. You are working constantly, the problem is you are doing the work that feels productive, but it doesn't actually produce results. 30 Pinterest pins, batched, and scheduled feeling productive. But if Pinterest isn't driving your sales, that's just sophisticated busy work. That email you spent three hours perfecting it might have felt important, but that quick Instagram story actually converted and took five minutes, but you almost skipped it. Here's what's happening. You are completing tasks that should exist, but prioritizing them over tasks that must exist. You are maintaining systems that could work someday instead of optimizing the one channel that's working today. The lie isn't that you're not working, it's that not all work is created equal because real productivity moves your business forward. Measurably motion productivity moves your task list forward emotionally. Motion productivity. Looks like hours worked tasks completed, content created, emails answered, systems maintained. You can do all of this and generate zero additional revenue. Zero New opportunities. Zero. Actual growth. Real productivity looks like revenue generated per hour of effort. Decisions that unlock growth. Assets that compound value, relationships that create opportunities, problems solved permanently and not just managed. The difference here is that real productivity leaves evidence. Your bank account, your client roster, your business capacity, something actually changed. Motion productivity leaves you tired with a false sense of accomplishment. Let's talk about the expensive habit of perfectionism disguised as high standards. That sales page that you've been tweaking for three weeks, the one that's 90% done, but you keep finding one more thing to fix, that's not high standards, that's avoidance. Dressed up as productivity. You spend three hours perfecting work that deserved 30 minutes while the strategic decisions that need three hours actually get 30 minutes of panicked consideration. You're inverting the effort equation because perfect execution feels safer than imperfect strategy. The truth is, is that your perfectionism on low impact tasks is directly stealing time from high impact decisions. Every hour you spend making something 10% better that didn't need to be better is an hour that you didn't spend on something that could probably 10 x your business. Forget needle moving activities. That phrase has lost all meaning in our conversation today. Let's talk about what actually changes your business trajectory. Ask yourself. If I could only do three things this week and then had to disappear, which three things would ensure that my business grew without me, so not maintained, not survived, grew. Those three things, that's your real productivity. Everything else is optional, despite how urgent it feels for most entrepreneurs, it's something like this. Optimize the offer that's actually converting or nurture the audience that's actually buying, make the decision that you've been avoiding for three months. It's not things like create more content for platforms that might work perfect. Systems that are already functional, answer every single message immediately. The painful truth is you are probably ignoring what's already working to build what might work. Your Instagram stories convert like crazy, but you are building a Pinterest strategy. Your email list buys everything, but you are focused on growing TikTok. Your one offer sells consistently, but you are creating three new ones. This isn't about putting all of your eggs in one basket. It's about recognizing which baskets are actually holding eggs and which ones are just decorative. Real productivity means doubling down on what's working before diversifying what could work. It means serving the warm audience that you have instead of chasing the cold audience that you want. So let me teach you the revenue test. This is how to know if you are actually being productive. Look at last week's calendar. Next to each time block, write how much revenue that that particular activity you worked on generated or protected. So not someday might generate revenue, but actually generated revenue. The ratio will probably shock you. Then I want you to do the compound test. Which of these activities build assets that work without you? Content that keeps converting systems that run automatically, and relationships that refer repeatedly if it doesn't compound, it's maintenance. The avoidance test, and this one might sting a little bit. I want you to think, what are you not doing while you're being productive? Usually it's the scary stuff, the big decisions, the uncomfortable conversations, the strategic pivots. If your productivity is primarily comfortable, it's not real productivity. Here is how to shift from motion to actual productivity. First, you're gonna limit your daily big three to things that would actually matter in 90 days. So not tasks that need to happen today, but progress that will still be visible in three months. If it won't matter, then it doesn't matter now. Second track results not efforts. Instead of, I wrote a blog post track, the blog post generated X leads, instead of I reached out to potential partners track secured partnership, meeting the outcome matters, not the activity. Third, embrace good enough for everything except your core value creation. Your email signature doesn't need to be perfect. Your Pinterest templates don't need to be 100% gorgeous. Save your perfectionism for the work that actually differentiates you. Being busy is easy. Being productive is strategic. Anyone can fill 10 hours with tasks, but it takes discipline to fill two hours with the right tasks and call it enough. Every hour spent on sophisticated, busy work is an hour stolen from strategic progress. Real productivity isn't about hours worked or tasks completed. It's about evidence of progress. Revenue increased. Decisions made, assets built, trajectory changed. Stop confusing. Motion with progress. Stop. Mistaking busy for productive. Stop perfecting the irrelevant while avoiding the essential. Your business doesn't need you to work harder. It needs you to work on what actually matters. And that list is actually much shorter than you think. If this resonated with you, join my email list where over 1500 entrepreneurs are leaning into measuring productivity by progress and not activity. Link in the show notes if you'd like to join us. I want you to remember that 10 productive minutes beats 10 busy hours every single time. Thanks for listening today. This is a strategic entrepreneur.