This is because if one is productive, he or she can set goals that are within his or her reach. He or she can also find ways to deal with defeats without having to feel anxious or depressed over something that may be beyond his or her control. To be productive, it is best if one never stops learning. To make it so, make it easily comparable to several set of activities or to other simpler and achieved goals. By that, the progress and development of your efforts to achieve the goals would be measurable and comparable. Of course, being realistic is part of the game. You would not set goals that are too impossible to achieve, right? Losses A company usually encounters these familiar forms of losses: downtime loss (equipment failures, setup changeovers, etc.), speed loss (small stops, rough running, etc.) and quality loss (scrap, reworking, etc). The key to productivity improvement is to know what they are and how to solve them. Again, a production monitor must be set up to display these real-time losses. If the man was a consultant and was paid for it, it will show up as an S in the equation and would show no increase in the multifactor productivity output. On the other hand, if the idea was from a bright worker and was not paid, then there is no input recorded. In conventional accounting, that would register well as an increase in the multifactor productivity side. The three basic ways of collecting data on a phenomenon or system are inquiry, observation and documentation. Afterwards, the basics are done the outputs are evaluated against the inputs. Some writers put in some qualitative indicators which create problems, although the rest confine the discussion of productivity to simple O/I (output and input) factors. For people who are just starting with the process of self-assessment to be productive, wanting something should never be enough. This is because wanting to learn the concept of productivity alone would not fuel your drive to aim for greater things or heights. If you really want to use self-assessment for you excel and be productive, don t be contented with what you have right now.