How productive are you? I mean, really? Not, how active are you? Not, how busy are you? But what do you produce? What are your accomplishments? What do you actually achieve with your time?

The word produce is a great word in the English language. Pronounced one way, it is a verb meaning “to bring into existence”—coming from a Latin word meaning “to bring forth.” Pronounced another way (with the stress on the first syllable), it is a noun meaning “fruit”—like the produce section of a grocery store.

A producer in the entertainment industry is the one ultimately responsible (financially, administratively and in many other ways) for making things happen.

So if you are “productive,” you will bring forth, create, make things happen—and you will have fruit, or “produce,” to show for your efforts!

This is particularly relevant for teenagers to think about. Think of the fruits of your relatively short life. Think of your accomplishments in school, at home, and in the workplace if you’ve landed some sort of paying job. Think of the things you have produced in those areas. What do you have to show for how you spend your time? And how can you be more productive?

The Bible uses the phrase “bring forth” on many occasions in the Old and New Testaments. In the Hebrew portion of the Bible, the word for “bring forth” literally means to multiply. Is that what our efforts yield? Do they multiply?

God says that He judges a tree by nothing other than its fruits (Matthew 7:18-20), and He judges us by what we produce and accomplish with our lives. God is far more concerned with the end result, the bottom line, the yield—the fruit— than He is with the process. If the fruit is good, then the tree is good. Likewise, if the product is good, the process is good.

Jesus Christ gave His disciples a parable of a nobleman who gave each of his three servants a pound, or a monetary unit. He told them, “Occupy till I come” (Luke 19:13). They were to do business.

The most admirable of these servants truly did multiply what he was given; He turned that one pound into ten. The boss didn’t need to know, or care to know, how busy the servant stayed while he was gone. He didn’t need a blow-by-blow account. He didn’t ask how much the man intended to produce. He had all the proof he needed to know that this servant used the time wisely—he multiplied the owner’s investment by ten.

As cold and calculating as he may appear, this nobleman typifies Jesus Christ, who looks at the lives of His people in a practical, business-like way.

When he came to the man who didn’t do anything with the pound, he gave it to the man who turned his one pound into ten. There was another servant there whose one pound yielded five. To be fair, you would think, why not give the slothful servant’s pound to the guy with five because he only has five. But that doesn’t make any business sense. If one of your employees could turn a dollar into $10, and another could turn a dollar into $5, who would you trust your dollar with? Why, the one who will multiply your investment by ten! You’d give it to the one who would be most profitable with it!

What has your life profited? In Luke 17:7-10, God is unimpressed by those who simply do their duty and don’t go beyond that: He calls them “unprofitable servants.” God wants a return on His investment, and we should want a return on our efforts. Our time can yield great things, and we should demand this kind of “profit” from ourselves.

The fruit of our lives tells us what kind of tree we are. Yet, even though we should mainly evaluate our final results—that is, the yield and fruits of what we do—the process of how we achieve positive results is still important. Proverbs 12:12 says that the wicked covet the net, or spoil, of evildoers. They want to skip right to the huge bags of cash that the thieves escape with. But the other half of the proverb says that the root of the righteous bears fruit. There is a way that works: planting roots in our lives that develop bounteous spoils and riches—fruits.

So what are some ways that we can be more productive? How can you, as a youth, produce more? How much more can you get out of the time given to you?

Generally, young people devote less time to making a living because their parents provide most of their financial needs. So with the time you have, what are you producing?

This is not about just being busy. We can feel productive, but only be busy. Solomon said we strive after the wind. Haggai says we can sow much and bring in little, or that we can earn all sorts of money and put it into a bag with holes.

So here are five practical ways we can be more productive!

1. Be goal-oriented and step-oriented.

Every goal you have has steps that build toward the accomplishment of that goal. Losing a certain amount of weight might be a goal, but there are obviously more things to it than just writing “lose 20 pounds” on your to-do list.

Sometimes, when we are young especially, we can set broad goals that have no plan—that is, there are no steps on the to-do list of how to achieve that goal. Writing “attend Herbert W. Armstrong College,” or “become a music teacher” on a to-do list is practically useless. Those are noble goals, however.

And today, when you make your to-do list, what tasks or steps can you write on your to-do list that will move you in the direction of attaining that goal? There are plenty, aren’t there? There are many steps that could lead to being accepted to ac, and they cover a wide range of short-term spiritual, academic and personality development goals.

There are, likewise, many steps that could lead to becoming a music teacher. But there are also a huge number of short-term goals you would need to accomplish before someone would pay you to impart your knowledge of music to their children.

Have you ever wanted to get something done, only to find that it felt too big to get started? Then you’ve only been goal-oriented and not step-oriented. Your goals aren’t clearly defined by small, reasonable, attainable steps that build toward the accomplishment of that goal.

In my piano teaching, students often express to me that they intend to “fix” a certain passage that is wrought with mistakes. But they commonly don’t think about the many methods that they could employ to achieve what they’re saying.

You may want to accomplish something that may take several hours, or days—maybe even weeks or months. It is vitally important that you break it down into steps—each step being something that can be accomplished today.

Then, when you achieve that step, cross it off your list. The momentum you gain from those relatively small steps accumulates into a giant sense of accomplishment. It fuels you with more drive to keep achieving more and more!

2. Beware productivity imposters.

Constantly be aware that being busy and being productive are two different things. Sometimes our “busiest” days can be our least productive. God doesn’t judge how busy we are—rather what we produce. He doesn’t judge our ideas or our intentions—rather our fruits. We should judge ourselves by the same standards.

“Value is created by doing,” Sam Altman, a highly successful young ceo, wrote in his blog. “A lot of stuff feels like work,” he noted, but he challenged his readers to think about what they did in the sense that it created value for their company.

“Value gets created when a company does things like build widgets and sell them to customers. As a rough guideline, it’s good to stay in roles where you’re close to the doing. Of course you have to do the right things. Writing software no one wants does not create value—that’s called a class project.”

If you have a part-time job, or you run your own landscaping business, you want to be sure that what you do on the job creates value for your company. How have you earned your company more money? This principle can be applied in your personal life when assessing how much you’ve actually accomplished with your time.

Altman writes: “It’s easier to sit around and talk about building a startup than it is to actually start a startup. And it’s fun to talk about. But over time, the difference between fun and fulfilling becomes clear. Doing things is really hard …. The value, and the difficulty, comes from execution. … You build what you measure—if you measure your productivity by the number of meetings you have in a day, you will have a lot of meetings. If you measure yourself by revenue growth or number of investments closed or something like that, you will probably have fewer meetings. Another example of not-quite-work is every night in San Francisco, there are dinner parties where people get together and talk about the future. It’s always fun and usually not very contentious—most people agree we need to go to space, for example. But at the end of it, everyone goes home and works on something else.”

What are you only talking about, and what are you actually doing?

This is particularly relevant to those of you who have a job where you work for someone else. What value are you adding to your company? How is your company making more money because you are working for them? If you work for yourself, ask: When I’m “on the job,” am I adding value to my “company”?

You can even ask Altman’s question around the house. What value am I adding to this family? Is my presence making the home more livable, more attractive, more peaceful? This is simply looking at fruits—not intentions, not talk.

3. Take time to assess regularly.

If you follow this third point, you will be far more successful at the previous point. Altman said, “When I was running a company, I used to make a list of everything I got done at the end of the day. It was remarkable how I could feel like I had a really busy day and realize that night I got nothing done. Similarly, I could have a day that felt only somewhat busy, but accomplish three or four major things. …”

Teachers do this constantly for their students—grading each assignment, grading each occasional test, and handing out a grade at the end of the weeks-long grading period. This is what you have to show for your involvement in the class. We can assess our lives in a similar way.

We can do this daily through our prayers. Talk to God about what you’ve accomplished and what you would like to accomplish. Was I just busy, or did I produce something? Did I achieve a forward step along the path to my goal? Did I add value to those I was working for (whether boss or parents)? We can do this weekly through a journal or some other method of recording or assessing our accomplishments.

Christ related another story of a wealthy man who demanded a return on his investment. He owned a large plot of land and had a fig tree on that land. That fig tree should have been producing for him—essentially, making him money. But it wasn’t. For three years it produced nothing. He asked why it was using up the ground, and then told his vinedresser to cut it down (you can find this in Luke 13:6-9). The vinedresser convinced the owner to give it another year to be sure it was unable to produce fruit. But the owner’s initial question to the vinedresser is a valid one: “Why cumbereth it the ground?” That is: Why does it use up my soil? Elsewhere Christ says that if a branch isn’t bearing fruit, He cuts it off. He, like the owner of that fig tree, knows if something is taking up resources and there’s nothing to show for it—no good fruits—then we have to do something about it. Sure, give it ample time and care to rectify it if necessary. But still, if nothing happens, cut it down and regroup. We should be getting so much more out of that soil!

4. Be found doing!

Though we don’t want to be just busy, we certainly must be busy in order to be productive.

Success, wrote Herbert W. Armstrong in The Seven Laws of Success, “is accomplishment. It is doing. They say any old dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim up. An inactive person will not accomplish. Accomplishment is doing.”

Matthew 24:45-47 reads: “Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household …? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.”

The person who is found “so doing” will be given rule over “all his goods” because he can be entrusted with goods—whether money, or time, or whatever the resource.

The word for “doing” means to make, produce, construct, form or create. It can mean to author something. This person is not just “busy.” He is actually producing, constructing, making and authoring things.

5. Do with your might!

I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase before and read the verse in Ecclesiastes 9:10: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.”

As often as you may have heard that, did you know that one of the meanings for the word ”might” in that verse has to do with producing fruit? So you could read that verse, Whatever your hand finds to do, use it to yield, or produce, fruit!

Mr. Armstrong wrote about this verse in The Seven Laws of Success: “If you are motivated by God’s Word, you’ll have drive. God commands that you do what you do with your might. Apply yourself! Whatever is worth doing is worth doing the very best you can! Nine biblical passages command that you apply yourself with diligence! Ten other places in the Bible command us to be diligent. And 36 scriptures command, or show the example of, acting diligently! Many of these instruct us diligently to seek God’s guidance and help, several diligently to keep His commandments. … The Bible does not condone laziness or shiftlessness. It counsels us to consider the ant and be wise. The Bible commands industriousness!”

This relates to the fourth law of success in that booklet: drive. “You will always find that the executive head of any growing, successful organization employs drive! He puts a constant prod on himself. He not only drives himself, he drives those under him, else they might lag, let down and stagnate. He may feel drowsy, and hate to awaken and get up in the morning. But he refuses to give in to this impulse.”

In 2 Corinthians 9:6, the Apostle Paul wrote: “He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.”

We have to push ourselves to produce. Even young people certainly know that if we put barely any effort into something, we’ll get barely anything out of it. But if we put our bounty into something, then we will reap bountiful fruits. The extent to which we invest ourselves into something directly relates to what we get out of that endeavor.

Finally, on top of all this—on top of all our efforts—God promises to bless those. He promises to multiply our yield. Here in the same passage of Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, he writes: “He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness” (English Standard Version).

God can make what we are doing double, triple or more!

For example, God made what few men Gideon had an insurmountable force against the army that outnumbered them.

What a small stone the teenager David accurately hurled at Goliath, and God assuredly aided its flight and effectiveness! Taking down one man essentially took down the entire army. Talk about a multiplication of effort!

God wants us to be producers. He is the greatest Producer. When He sees us trying to make the most fruits, to reach the best bottom line with everything we are given, He steps in and multiplies it even further—no matter what your age!

“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

Strive to be even greater producers! Bear real fruit in everything you set your hand to do. Multiply what resources God has given you, and He will even more greatly multiply your yield.

Be productive! Produce!