Sales professionals, when they want to do more work, simply work longer hours. Many times on Sundays, late evenings & unfortunately some of them even during family holidays!

I agree some of the situations could be genuine & exceptional, however nowadays it is a unwritten rule; to work beyond office timings & work days. Such behaviour is a short-term relief & is not sustainable in the long term. Sooner it becomes a way of life where office work spills over into personal life resulting in; high levels of stress and eventually, poor productivity.

Productivity is a measure of how efficient we are in doing a given amount of work & not how extremely busy (real or a show!) you are. In the present market scenario, it's important to work intelligently & leverage available resources (time, finance & experience) to achieve more within a given time.

This short quiz will help you to understand how productive you are, & suggest areas for improvements.

Sr	My working style	Not at all	Rarely	Sometimes	Often	Very often
1	I leverage other people's time to work efficiently.	1	2	3	4	5
2	I organize my day to take advantage of natural highs and lows in my energy levels and motivation.	1	2	3	4	5
3	I actively look for ways to improve the flow of my work, and the way that I approach tasks.	1	2	3	4	5
4	I can maintain focus on one task for a significant period of time.	1	2	3	4	5
5	I have to spend lot of time to look for information or documents.	1	2	3	4	5
6	I actively look for ways to avoid wasting time and effort - both for myself and for my team.	1	2	3	4	5
7	I do multitasking regularly.	1	2	3	4	5
8	I use the experience, time, of other people on my team to help get the work done.	1	2	3	4	5
9	I use techniques like fast reading and note taking to identify the key points from the documents that I receive.	1	2	3	4	5
10	I have a tracking system to understand how I spend my time.	1	2	3	4	5
11	I always have a plan to deal with disruption and interruption.	1	2	3	4	5
12	I am overwhelmed by the volume of correspondence and documentation that I receive on a daily basis.	1	2	3	4	5
13	I try to delay the difficult or unpleasant tasks until the last minute - or until the issue disappears on its own.	1	2	3	4	5
14	To ensure that things are done right, I keep close track of the activities and decisions of others on my team.	1	2	3	4	5
15	I find that many times my mind wanders, and it's hard to concentrate for long.	1	2	3	4	5
16	I do all of the tasks that are assigned to me, and hope that I can keep up with the volume of work.	1	2	3	4	5

If you answer "very often" to the question no:1 give yourself 5 marks. After answering all the 16 questions calculate total number of marks you have achieved.

Interpretation of your marks is as follows;

Total marks	Your work style analysis
16-36	-You have to take more efforts to be more productive. -It's waste of resources to simply spend your day with actions or to try to do too much; without knowing your limits and priorities.
37-58	-You're on the right path with your productivity efforts, and you probably get your most important work done. -You can become more productive with proper time planing & resource allocation.
59-80	-Great ! You have sorted out the priorities, and use your time to maximize your output. - You are also on constant lookout for efficient ways of working. You can be a great asset to the team & the organisation ! - Why don't you think of helping your colleagues to be more productive?

So how to be more productive & efficient? lets meet to know more!