What Is Your Productivity Personality?

Get up right away, because if you’re late for the start of the day you’ll be late for everything else.

Consider staying in your warm, cozy bed, but you get up because you want to have enough time to make breakfast for your family.

Turn it off and fall back asleep within seconds. You were up until 2am working on a project, and have no intention of getting up at 6:30; you just forgot to turn off the alarm on your phone.

Hit the snooze button once, but get up the second time. You won’t accomplish your goals if you lie around in bed all day!

Walk down to the staff kitchen for a quick cup. You may run into some co-workers and chat for a few minutes, but your schedule is tight today, so you don’t dawdle.

Meet up with some friends around the coffee pot and chat for ten or fifteen minutes about your respective evenings, the weather and the latest episode of Bones. Your friend Shelia almost puts her elbow in a small puddle of coffee, but you notice and warn her just in time! Then you grab a paper towel and wipe it up, just so that there’s no chance that anyone else could stain their clothes.

Are wrestling with a new problem. You walk to the coffee machine and get a fresh cup – maybe the movement and caffeine will make things clearer.

Have a coffee pot in your office. You pour yourself another cup and get back to work.

Know exactly how you’ll spend it – two hours researching the finances for a potential company purchase, and some time purging your files and cleaning out your inbox.

Dive into the project that your boss wants done in a few days. You’re a bit later starting it than you had hoped, but it should still be done in time.

Spend some time sorting through e-mail and researching a few things that are of interest to you. The big problem for the day has been solved, you can afford to take it easy for a few hours.

Look through everything on your plate and decide which is most important to your career. That’s the one you’ll work on first.

Spending Saturday out in the yard, since the weather is supposed to be a bit iffy on Sunday and you want to get the spring annuals in the ground before it gets too hot. Then on Sunday you’ll clean the house, do the laundry, and prepare for the week ahead.

Heading out to the state park with your family and some friends for a day of hiking, picnics and fun!

Supposed to be painting the downstairs hallway with your partner and maybe a friend or two. Instead, you’re experimenting with how the paint comes off the roller, and tinkering with improvements to the process. The hall will get painted by the end of the day…

Dealing with a few housekeeping chores and preparing for the big presentation you have with the top brass next week.

Quickly move him to a hard surface, then grab the paper towels and the carpet cleaner before the stain has a chance to set.

Go searching for the carpet cleaner, but when you find the bottle, it’s empty. Whoops, you forgot to buy another one after the last carpet incident. Damn. How much would it cost to replace just the carpet in that room? You can’t well have your friends and loved ones stare at the stain on a regular basis!

May or may not notice, depending on what you’re doing at the time.

Lock the dog in a room with tile floor, clean up the mess and leave a note for your partner to make sure the dog gets to the vet for a checkup.

All of your followers and contacts neatly organized into lists by level of engagement and importance.

James is eating a lackluster baloney sandwich, Chrystal was ready to commit grave bodily harm on her boss, Tyrone wants a new iPad and Sparky the dog thinks his owners should keep throwing him the tennis ball.

Several thousand unread tweets. Has it really been five days since you last looked at this thing?

Updates from all the people you followed because you thought that interacting with them would be helpful to you down the road.

Already have plans. But you’ll put the next late night event on your calendar, because it does sound like it would be fun.

Call up your significant other to suggest that you go, and mentally think through the refrigerator to plan out a good picnic meal. You can eat on the lawn outside the museum, then wander through the exhibits after desert.

Go, of course! It’s such a fascinating place.

Dismiss the idea of going – there are much more productive ways you could spend your time.

Be organized and know what’s going on at all times.

Lend an ear or a shoulder to cry on whenever they need it.

Come up with unique solutions to interesting problems.

Make decisions and see the big picture.

Meticulously organized.

Packed full of things that are meaningful to you – photos of your loved ones, souvenirs from trips you’ve taken, letters people have written to you over the years, the rock that became the subject of a running joke during your senior year in high school… you know, the important stuff.

Covered in piles of papers and books. But everything there has a purpose – it’s related to something you’re working on. And you can find everything at a moment’s notice – you put it there in the first place, so why wouldn’t you be able to find it again?

Spartan, but highly functional.

The books on the list you had when you walked in, of course.

Nothing. You actually never made it into the library proper; you ran into a friend in the parking lot who you haven’t seen in months, and you spent the hour you’d planned for the library catching up over lattes in the coffee shop next door.

Several interesting books that you ran across while looking for the one or two that you came for in the first place.

The exact books you came in to get, which were waiting for you at the front desk because you had your assistant call in advance so they would be ready.

Ability to organize and coordinate.

Empathy, listening ability, and sensitivity.

Creative energy, unique problem solving abilities and wide ranging interests.

Drive and ambition, logic and critical thinking skills.

Difficulty coping when your plans are altered.

Chronic tardiness, state of controlled chaos and tendency to put everyone before yourself.

Tendency to lose track of time, tendency to become immersed in a problem to the exclusion of everything else and lack of traditional organization skills.

Ruthlessness in pursuit of a goal, obsession with getting things done well, and unreasonably high standards for the people around you.

Yes, I do that, what about it?

Meh. Colors are much more fun.

That might be a fun project for a rainy Saturday afternoon. What do you mean, it has to be done consistently?

Pointless. It separates files that are related, meaning that it takes longer to find what you need.

Have already finished it, double checked your references and left it with your boss yesterday.

Call and order take out to be delivered to your house, so your family can eat, and then settle in at the office to finish this thing tonight. It’s amazing how fast you can work when no one else is around…

Write up the first half and send it in. Your boss won’t get to the second half tomorrow anyway; you can finish it when you get back to the office.

Tell your assistant or your partner to order a big bunch of flowers and a nice card expressing your best birthday wishes and your regret that you couldn’t make the party.

Look up the pertinent specs for the models on the market and use the “compare models” feature so you can cross reference and decide which is most appropriate for your needs.

Ask your friends what they have and whether or not they like it. A couple of people mention Dell, but more mention Apple, so you head up to the nearest store and buy the model that the nice salesman tells you is best for you.

Ask what your friends have, do a bit of research, then head out to the store once you have a few essential pieces nailed down.

Go for the absolute best on the market, no compromises.