3 actionable productivity tips from startup founders to rock your days 🔥
It’s funny how each person has a different way of being productive and what really matters is finding what works for you.
So welcome to episode #1 of the Kairn series “3 actionable productivity tips for a [specific job]” from inspiring people to help you build your own hacks.
Feel free to comment, share, and of course give feedback. We love to hear how you‘ll build and master your productivity.
Thibaud Elziere - @eFounders & @Folk
Thibaud is a serial entrepreneur, co-founder of Fotolia (sold to Adobe), Zilok (sold to OuiCar), eFounders and Folk. Through his experiences, Thibaud has developed some must-dos to boost his productivity and now organising and planning has no secret for him.
Here are Thibaud’s 3 productivity tips👇🏼
🧠 ️Dump everything in your task manager as soon as it takes up too much brain space 🧠
Thibaud frees his mental load from tasks to get things done by writing everything on Kairn.
💌 Forget inbox zero, stick to read/unread 💌
Inbox zero is not synonymous with sorting and prioritising for Thibaud. When it comes to his emails, Thibaud sticks to read or unread. When he leaves an email unread and doesn’t want to forget to go back to it, he usually captures it as a task on Kairn to make sure it’s on his to-do list.
💡 When looking for new business ideas, put yourself in the other people’s shoes 💡
Thibaud spends a lot of his days looking for new business ideas. His process? Putting himself in another person’s shoes (whether it be sales, marketing, product etc), and mentally picturing their entire workday: what tools do they use? What processes do they put in place? What tasks do they get done, etc. In order to find ways to improve the day-to-day lives of these people, he seeks to identify their pain points & subsequently find opportunities.
Jean-Charles Samuelian — @Alan
Jean-Charles, co-founder and CEO of Alan, wrote one of our favourite articles about organising your time. He places a particular emphasis on notifications and his weekly organisation and at Kairn, we were super inspired by his article. That’s why we decided to share a quick summary for this series dedicated to the founders.
Here are Jean-Charles’ 3 productivity tips👇🏼
🛎 Keep notifications to a minimum 🛎
JC is always trying to have his notifications in as few places as possible. To do so, he has selected only his email inbox and Slack and doesn’t check notifications anywhere else.
🧠 A very structured calendar to have time for unstructured thinking 🧠
- No meetings in the morning with time instead allocated to focus on deep topics
- Dedicated time to check emails, Slack, and contribute to issues
- Interviews and discussions happen in the afternoon
- Lunch with the team as often as possible
📝 Organise your To-Do list 📝
Every morning: check the list of tasks of the day and rank them by priority
Every evening: check what has been done today or not, and either re-allocate the remaining tasks to another day, change ownership or cancel them.
Every Tuesday evening, have a backlog and sorting session, check:
- To-do list for the next 7 days and re-organise it: “Do I really want to do that this week?”, “Should I postpone it to another week?”, “Am I the right owner?”, “How many tasks should I have per day?”
- Calendar for the next 7 days
- OKRs to check if something is missing
- Organisation for next week
Patricia Bernasconi — @Kairn
Patricia is an ex-investment banker, turned entrepreneur who launched Kairn to help users get things done, better, stronger, faster. So what’s better than discovering the productivity tips of the productivity addict in question?
Here are Patricia’s 3 productivity tips👇🏼
🐸 Have one must-do task per day and stick to it 🐸
I over-crowd days with tons of tasks. So to make sure I feel great every day, I set 1 task per day I absolutely commit to doing. If I only do that one, I’ll still feel happy. And no cheating, it’s a task, not a huge project.
Set a recurring daily task called “🐸 Big frog — [task name]”
🙏 End the day with an easy and short task 🙏
Feeling good at the end of the day matters A LOT. That’s what makes you go to sleep and then wake up feeling you’ll accomplish great things. So my hack is to always finish the day with an easy and short task that you are sure to complete before ending the day.
✍️ Add a verb to all your task names ✍
Be specific about your tasks, it makes all the difference. First, it makes it quicker for you to grasp what you meant, second, it puts you in action mode as soon as you read it, and third, it’s more empowering when you send it to someone and they receive an action to do.
We hope you get inspired by those tips from founders. Remember, it’s all about discovering what makes you most productive, so try those out and let us know which ones worked for you!
Our North Star at Kairn is to help you reach that feeling of fulfilment after being extra productive every single day. So Kairn is made with built-in productivity tips to help you discover your ideal flow. To get started on Kairn sign-up here 👉 http://kairn.app/
Cheers,
The Kairnies 👋 Mathilde & Pat
