If you wish to be more productive at work, then you need a more productive you!

Thanks to our creatives at https://tappable.co.uk/

In our ever diversifying job roles, it’s easy to feel overloaded, overwhelmed and dare I say; stressed… whilst there is an infinite list of productivity advice available the truth is; there is not a one size fits all solution — productivity is subjective; We’re not all night owls, we don’t all want to eat the frog (whatever that is) and Pomodoro timers to me feels like creating admin for admin sake…

But that’s me, so here’s a short list of the different techniques where a mix match helps you find your productive self.

1) What’s your personality, work & life environment and how can you be more productive?

Productivity is not about spending more time working, but rather accomplishing more work in less time.

What’s your baseline? We need to find where you’re at now so you can track your progress, leading to further motivation and productivity.

· When do you feel most energised — early morning, after lunch or in the evening?

· What percentage of your to-do list do you accomplish each day?

· Do you put an estimate of time against each of your tasks — so you know if your day to-do list is actually achievable?

· Do you take into account meetings/unexpected events which could de-rail your to-do lists?

· Do you take 10 mins at the end of each day to evaluate yourself? Giving scores out of 10 for;

• Focus
• Amount of work done (either on to-do list, or recognising and awarding for ‘unexpected’ work done)
• Energy and how you feel
• Number of distractions — so you can evaluate how to minimise them

· Do you take an additional 5 minutes per day to plan for tomorrow, so you’re listing out priority tasks before that inbox fills up?

· On the subsequent morning do you review this plan, or do you dive into that inbox, or have morning meetings which could distract from this plan? You need to create a system which works for you.

2) Now you have a sense of you, which of the following productivity techniques calls out to you? This can and will most likely be a combination of them.

Start by testing out the ones which most resonate with you;

• Waking up earlier
• Working at night
• Reducing your caffeine intake
• Using Pomodoro timers
• Or simply taking water breaks every 60 mins — moving away from your desk
• Working with ‘known’ background music — songs you like and know, so you’re not paying attention to them… or more chilled out audio like simple static or Classical music
• Standing while working
• Working out in the middle of the day
• Starting the day off with your hardest task first — eating the frog
• Tracking your time
• Only checking emails at specific times of the day — once in the morning, then once again after lunch

3) Evaluate and change

So, you’ve eaten the frog and have become an early bird… but were you actually more productive?

Settling into a new routines and success doesn’t happen overnight. Give yourself a fortnight, or a week at least (if you think the routine really isn’t working) and then score yourself against your baseline and tweak — reviewing what worked well and what didn’t feel quite right — to highlight which of the other techniques to best trial next.

4) Tools for success

When you have a working pattern that fits, you want to drive this productivity forward so it simply becomes habit. Whilst I’ve hinted towards the Pomodoro technique above, there are others to ensure you remain focussed, and squeeze every minute of productivity out of your day;

Document, document, document

Ever been to a meeting, which felt super positive yet a month later nothing has changed?

Taking meeting minutes isn’t enough, tangible tasks need to be formed and delegated to ensure that the meeting is the springboard towards the success it was meant to be, the GTD (Get Things Done) framework is a great tool to assist here.

The GTD idea is simple — clear your mind/planner/working day for important things by capturing and organizing all the tasks that need to be done in a logical system.

This allows you to evaluate and take control of what needs to be done, avoiding any mental distractions so you productively execute. It is effectively made up of 5 steps;

1. Capture everything! Your ideas, recurring tasks, long emails responses, meetings, everything. If it takes more than 5 minutes and needs to get done, create a visible task for it.
2. Clarify the things you have to do. This is the time to decide if that text is simply information, or whether it’s a task which needs to be actioned.
3. Organise those action tasks by priority, time required and type (admin/sales/etc). Assign due dates where possible.
4. Reflect on your to-do list. This is when you review your system and pick what your daily & weekly to-do tasks should be.
5. Get it done. At this stage, all your tasks are organized by priorities and broken down into actions. You know exactly what you should be doing.

Confluence and Jira are great tools for GTD, confluence allows you to document all those meeting notes, creating Jira tasks for a specific person (can also be you) to track when to get it done.

Pomodoro Technique

No productivity post can ever be created without touching on the Pomodoro technique — whilst it isn’t for me, I shall remain impartial and give information on how it can be utilised as it could very much be for you.

Effectively the Pomodoro technique was set up to reduce task hopping. The idea of choosing and not flinching from 1 task for 25 minutes, followed by a break of 5 minutes and then repeat; 4 times… before you give yourself a break of 30 minutes… to then repeat that one cycle (Four 25 minutes of focus, with 5 minutes break) again, and again, until you reach the end of your day.

It’s an ideal world technique of no interruptions or meetings… but whilst the format isn’t to my liking, it’s the fundamental teachings of;

• Don’t be easily distracted
• Focus on a task until completion
• Come out of inbox/slack notifications for a period of time
• Resonate and allow you to productively accomplish tasks, so if you’re a person who likes strict structures — then Pomodoro could be for you

Eisenhower Matrix

I love a good Matrix, and the Eisenhower Matrix has been a really powerful one for me to re-align focus, prioritise and delegate.

The Eisenhower Matrix effectively it allows you to;

• Do
• Decide
• Delegate
• Or Delete — get rid and stop being distracted

By simply asking yourself 4 simple questions;

• Is this Important/Urgent?
• Is this Important/ but Not Urgent?
• Is this Not Important/ but Urgently Needed?
• Is this Not important/ and also Not-Urgent?

This is what it looks like;

Visual courtesy of expertprogrammanagement.com

As the great man said; What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. The key to improving your productivity by using this technique is to reflect and identify which quarter you spend most of your time in. If your time is spent doing urgent but not important tasks — you should be delegating that out, as you’re not doing the elements that you’re responsible for to drive your business forward.

Say No

Which leads me onto my last and most controversial technique — learn to say “No”!

I get it, this was the hardest technique for me to swallow… we’re all good people and we all want to do our best/help/assist wherever possible. Likewise, we struggle to show weakness — be it asking for help or sharing tasks out.

But by saying no to instances like last minute meetings which don’t have a clear agenda or doing that quick task for someone else straight away… allows you to focus and to stay true to what is important to you that day.

That last minute meeting should have a clear agenda — by attending it you’re saying no to the tasks you had planned that day, whilst inevitably wasting time in a meeting which is fumbling through and running over time.

By saying no to that ‘quick’ task puts your priorities on the back foot, why? Your tasks are important, you can’t create more time… you won’t be thanked for when your priority tasks are now delivered late — quite the opposite.

The key learning here is that by saying “Yes” to these tasks — you’re effectively saying “No” to your other tasks — and why should you be doing that? Surely your tasks deserve a conversation to be raised in their defence, i.e even if it’s your MD asking you for that quick task, then of course it’s hard to simply say no, but by saying “If I do that task now, it means these (state out loud your important tasks) are now going to be delayed… so what’s the priority?” Allows for an open and honest conversation to be had.

Thanks for reading