After my NYSC ( National Youth Service Corp), the first job I got was in a Media Company, as a Marketing Executive. I was assigned the duty of going to meet business executives for them to do TV commercials, radio jingles, and advertisements of different sorts. Though it was a corporate and reputable job and I was exposed to the opportunity to meet bank managers and top business directors, I never enjoyed the work because marketing wasnโt my flair. Naturally, I don’t like begging people for a favour, chasing them with reminders and being given terms with everlasting promises. Three months into the job, when I realized I was not as productive as I ought to be and also lacking job satisfaction, I resigned.
I was only 3 months in Lagos because it was that job that took me to Lagos. The day after my resignation, I got up from bed usual time and set off. To where? To create value! I didn’t go to look for another job immediately, I needed to develop myself in the career of my dream, to be valued, to be productive!. So with the little savings I made from the marketing job, I enrolled in a three-month crash program at the College of Aviation and Management Studies (CAMS). I wanted a career in International Travel Agency Management (since I studied International Relations), and I needed to be certified. Two months into the program, I got an offer to work in a private immigration firm ( Harvard Chambers), and I knew I had landed my dream job. I finished the program one month after I started work and from there I began my journey as an immigration consultant.
Productivity and value are two sides of the same coin. Productivity is referred to as the act of being effectively and efficiently useful in performing work or duty. To be productive means to efficiently and consistently complete tasks and accomplish goals. Value refers to the standards of behaviour that make an individual impactful and contribute positively to a place, a group, a business, or an organization. A person of value is one who knows what is important or not, what is right or wrong, and what is expected or not, and uitlizes them to elevate his life and contribute significantly to the world around him.
Productivity measures value because it correlates the output and the input in a value. A person who is productivity-oriented is a person who understands the significance of value, and to be productive, elements of value need to be infused towards an implied outcome. These elements include commitment, motivation, and drive, saturated with focus, efficiency, time management, adaptability, self-discipline, continuous improvement, collaboration, and so on.
A good analysis of the relationship between productivity and value is seen in modern monetary policy where the value of a country’s currency is determined by its productivity in the market price. Hence, the ongoing slide in the value of naira is largely a factor of productivity in the forces of demand and supply. To salvage the naira value depreciation, economists and policymakers have suggested fostering productivity growth over the long term as one of the viable options.
In clear terms, value is strengthened by the intentional actions taken to secure and sustain it. The steps taken, the efforts exerted, the time put in, and the psychological disposition made towards it are all what give value a meaning. Value, through deliberate efforts, changes the status quo and makes productivity happen.
To every child or young adult, instead of waiting for productivity to happen by chance, why not engage in creating and nurturing strategic bearings to provide significant value? You can attract success and yield productivity by the version of value you have. Evolving to a better-cultured version, a more disciplined version, and a more cautious version, yields greater productivity.
Whether at home, in school, in the workplace, in the community, or anywhere else, being productive starts with creating, maximising, and preserving the value needed that pave the way to success. This record needs to be set on time and guided by good habits for a desirable outcome.
โ๏ธAmara Ann Unachukwu
