I trust you have been enjoying this series exploring the 7 Keys for Living a Productive Life from my book: The Productive Life. In this post I am going to explore Key #6: Know Your Self.

In this chapter of my book I explore five steps you can take to know your self to help you increase your productivity. The steps are:
(1) Discover Your Uniqueness from Tests.
(2) Learn How to Do a Self-Assessment.
(3) Develop a Personal Profile Document.
(4) Apply Your Findings to Productivity.
(5) Keep Learning About Yourself.

If you know me fairly well, you will know that not only have I taken just about every possible personality or productivity test that has been created, but that I keep a very detailed document that contains the results of every test and other personal insights that I have gathered over the years. When you work through this Key in my book, I will point you in the right direction so that you can start something similar and also give you a template which will have all the links that you need to get started.

While training young couples who are approaching marriage I developed a way in which you can self-score yourself on the DiSC personality test and I have even applied it to help you figure out which Tendency you are (that is the test that Gretchen Rubin uses – you can take her test online at: http://bit.ly/Test_Tendencies), however, if you want my tool you are going to have to sacrifice something this month and purchase a copy of my book!!!

Let me leave you with an extract from this chapter of my book: “As far as I can remember, the first quotation I ever memorised was: ‘Know Thyself’. It has a somewhat disputed origin with some suggesting that it be attributed to Socrates. The story goes that In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living and when asked how he would sum up all the philosophical commandments, he replied: “Know thyself.” No matter who said it, the idea of getting to know yourself is a critical part of living a Productive Life. Until we actually understand who we are, how we are wired and what makes us do the things that we do, we won’t actually be able to consistently live life in a way that is personally satisfying or meaningful to others.”

In the next message I will explore the final key to productive living: Renew Your Energy!

Your productivity coach

Mark