Last updated 12 August 2022 ·
The business world is evolving faster than ever, so you must find ways to keep up to be successful. If you manage a business, work for an organisation, or are a freelancer, it’s vital to keep a high degree of productivity, efficiency and effectiveness to keep up with the demands of the industry.
The current generation is busier than any other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we are being productive enough. Productivity is more than just ticking items off your to-do list and doing more. It is about focusing on and prioritising the most important things in your schedule and aligning people in the business towards some common goals.
Being primed for productivity is one thing that most employees and business owners ignore, even though the road to getting there can be long. If you’re struggling to stay on task and end the day feeling unfulfilled, here are some simple productivity hacks to get you working progressively and efficiently.
Plan your day ahead
Productivity requires thorough planning, including creating the day’s schedule early. This may seem standard, but most people struggle due to a lack of a plan. To avoid time wasting, planning is crucial. Without it, you’re likely to miss out on essential tasks, spend too much time on unimportant tasks, or procrastinate.
Ensure you write down your goals and revisit them regularly and then write a detailed action plan for each day the night before or early in the morning. This is critical, especially if you have meetings to attend, as it will remind you to prepare adequately. OKRs, objectives and key results can help provide a highly focused and effective structure as they break down bigger goals into manageable actions and are created according to a particular timeframe. OKRs can help set you up for success by enabling you to focus on tasks that will move you closer to achieving your goals. They help you decide what to work on each day and allow you to record your progress, performance and achievements as you go.
Create meeting agendas on time
It’s essential to create and distribute the meeting agenda amongst all attendees beforehand to communicate the objective of the meeting and the anticipated outcomes. This will enable employees to know why they need to be at the meeting and what they need to prepare in advance so they can benefit from the investment in their time.
Going into a meeting unprepared can leave you unable to contribute; however, there are systems which can help you prepare quickly and get up to speed with team performance. For example, if you work with OKRs and use an OKR software system, that should show you an instant and accurate view of the whole team’s progress, performance and achievements at any given time.
Prioritise
Before doing anything in the workplace, ask yourself if you must do it and if it will help improve your productivity, efficiency and effectiveness. For example, it would be worthless to disrupt employees’ schedules with meetings about issues that could be communicated effectively via a quick telephone call, an email or a simple newsletter.
Your co-workers probably already have a lot on their plates. Therefore, it’s better to focus on alternatives to help you keep up with the progress instead of using time consuming meetings for updates and information dissemination.
Start and end precisely
Be sure to start meetings on time and get straight to the point, as this will save employees valuable time that they could use to accomplish other tasks.
End on time and sum up what has been discussed. Ensure there are specific, actionable tasks and assign them to those responsible. This further eliminates the need to hold follow-up meetings. For more information on this, check out our blog detailing the 7-step morning briefing that gets your team fired up.
Productivity hacks for faster results
Productivity means everything to the success of a business. At Reclaro, we work with ambitious business leaders to help maximise their team productivity by providing a focused strategic OKR plan that will help their teams know where to best direct their efforts daily to achieve faster results. With these hacks, you have a better chance of working effectively and focusing on tasks that move you closer to your personal or organisational goals.
If you want to learn more about improving productivity, efficiency and effectiveness in your business, have a go at our Productivity Calculator™. It may shock you as it reveals how much you could be losing every year in lost productivity but also provides help and guidance on how you can minimise this cost and enhance your business.
