In the 21st century the way in which value is created has had a significant shift. We have moved from creating value in terms of manual labour to creating value in terms of creative mental labour.

The industrial age saw the worker as a machine. Their contribution expectation was restricted to user manuals and job descriptions and nothing beyond. But the knowledge worker is the complete opposite. It recognizes the need for solutions and realizing no limits to the contribution that can be made by an individual. This has brought us to the culmination of a knowledge era. It has shifted the economic value from low-decision content work to a high-decision content work.

This era is full of turmoil, and the velocity of problems for decisions to be made on is almost overwhelming. This era is like an earthquake where you don’t know if the water is rushing towards you or away from you. You will be making more decisions than ever, tied to more data that will keep competing for your attention and finally juggling multiple personal commitments as well.

In most cases these problems are tried to be handled in a linear way, one at a time in succession. But where the issue really boils down to is that high-value decisions are not linear in nature, they are by definition non-linear.

To put to perspective, the impact that the decision has on the final outcome plays a critical role on defining its urgency and complexity. Lets take for example a high-productive individual and a low-productive individual working in a fast food restaurant scenario, a factory scenario and then in an investment banking scenario. In the case of a fast food, it’s a low-complexity job and hence the decision making is at its minimum. In this case the productivity difference between the low performer and the top performer would be somewhere close to 3 times. Put them in a factory production scenario and the difference would reach close to 12 times. However, put them in the situation of a high complexity investment banking job the productivity difference is unmeasurable, almost infinite.

What makes the variable difference between the fast food and investment banking is that the decisions are more critical as they have a final impact on the outcome. It is here that prioritizing comes into play, reflecting on decisions to act on immediately and those to postpone becomes important. Following a linear pattern, in investment banking is a death trap. It will culminate in unimaginable losses.

What really is the difference between a low-productive individual and a high- productive individual is that the later has the ability to step back and prioritize the choices coming in.

A linear approach in a non-linear reality is a recipe for failure. It’s not the speed but the quality of decisions and the order of decisions that make the final impact towards productivity.

Regardless of any challenges and opportunities what you have and will always have a choice on in “what to do right now”. To understand how to maximize the understanding of how to choose what it is to be done right now, enroll for the 5 Choices to Extraordinary Productivity Program today.