HOW TO MAINTAIN MOTIVATION AND PRODUCTIVITY (AND NOT GET DISTRACTED) ACCORDING TO SKOOT’S HEAD OF PRODUCT.
Mila Suankulova, SKOOT’s Head Of Product, chatted with us about what motivates her in the workplace and in a personal capacity. We asked Mila a number of questions on motivation and how to keep productive when you’re working from home. Here is what she had to say…
During the week Mila is most motivated around Tuesday or Wednesday as she has gotten past the Monday blues, and is into the work headspace. Once the routine of the week has kicked in, she finds herself more energetic and at the peak of her mental activity.
Mila feels that the better your routine is the more prepared you will be and hence are likely to have a more productive day. Before Mila starts work, she has to make herself a large cup of coffee to make sure she is wide awake for a normally busy day. Next on the agenda is a hot brew and some reading to get inspired. Mila reads the latest tech and product design news to see if anything new could benefit SKOOT. We see you, Mila, keeping our App innovative and interesting. 🙌
Working at home can be a challenge when there are lots of things around to distract you. We’re looking at you, snacks in the fridge. Mila likes to keep a balance between uninterrupted work and team interaction. She says it’s the life hack to get through a jammed day, with the help of some physical activity. Mila will block out deep work slots in the morning and afternoon to dedicate to tasks that move the needle, making sure all notifications are off so she doesn’t get sidetracked by other tasks. Mila still loves her social time so will purposely have meetings grouped in the late afternoon, with a lunchtime run to break the day up and restart her brain. It is key not to get trapped with loads of work and feeling like you can’t move from your desk till it is finished. We need breaks or our brains will get overloaded with information.
We all sometimes need extra motivation and Mila finds she needs it most when doing repetitive tasks. It becomes boring doing the same thing over again. When Mila finds herself in a position where she knows a task can become very repetitive she tries to come up with new processes to test doing things in a different way and perhaps improve her processes. Smart, right? This is why she’s our Head of Product!
Mila told us that she is heavily driven by incremental success. For example, in the Product Team, their success is measured by putting daily small changes into the app to improve the way it works and makes decisions.
On a more personal level, Mila loves to reflect and feels like success is a feeling you have at the end of the day when understanding you have grown as a person. You reflect on being wiser/more knowledgeable/patient/ attentive/wiser than you were at the start of the day. People underestimate the power of reflection to help you realise how much you can grow as a person in just 24 hours!
Next week we are talking to Sammy who is our Brand Promotional Manager. She has a lot to say about motivation because a large part of her job requires keeping whole teams of brand ambassadors motivated on a daily basis. She may just be the motivation expert of SKOOT.
Now stop reading this article and go and do some work. 😉
