HIGHLIGHTS:
1. PRODUCTIVITY:
- Set two alarms: one to wake you up and one to get you out of bed. Use the time between the two to reflect and mentally prepare for the day ahead.
- Save longer online articles for your downtime.
- Whenever you do anything productive write it down. By the end of the day, you’ll have a long list of accomplishments to celebrate, even if some of them weren’t things you originally set out to do.
- Make a timed playlist to use when completing certain tasks. Instead of using a timer or clock to keep track of the time, use music to make things more enjoyable and to avoid continually looking at the clock while you work.
- Use different computers for your personal and work use.
2. CALENDAR;
- Use your calendar to block off time for projects, just as if you were scheduling a meeting, so you have a clearer grasp of when you have time for new tasks or meetings.
- Schedule your errands based on location.
- If you have frequent meetings outside of the office, having a dedicated “out of office” day for meetings can come in handy.
- Make sure your daily to-do list includes a step toward a larger goal. This way you’re doing something small in the moment, but you’re also setting the stage to complete a much larger project in the future.
3. EMAILS:
- Set up filters so emails from regular business contacts and colleagues go to their own priority inbox.
- Having a preset response lets you answer those emails more efficiently and can guarantee that you don’t accidentally leave out key details.
- If you restrict your email use, you avoid getting sucked into responding to messages throughout the day.
- Clean up your email inbox, or draft responses to emails you haven’t had time to respond to.
- An email can serve as a nice recap for everyone and will keep the meeting fresh in their minds—and their inboxes!
4. HEALTH:
- Take a quick lap around your office building. The physical activity will help your brain reset.
- Stand up. If you get stuck in a conversation with a colleague that’s taking up too much of your time, an easy solution is to simply stand up. Standing up gives the other person the impression that you’re about to head out to a meeting or some other engagement, and it will encourage the person to wrap up her thoughts and move along.
- Cold showers are known to increase your alertness and improve your immune system and circulation while also easing stress.
- Take a vitamin C supplement before you fly.
5. COMMUNICATION:
- A phone conversation can be much faster than email and can eliminate the back-and-forth that often comes with digital communication.
- If you have a disagreement with a coworker, address it with her as soon as possible and involve a mediator if need be. Be polite and respectful, and try to understand the other person’s point of view.
- Send your boss an end-of-the-week update. While it’s great not to have your boss looking over your shoulder all day, she also doesn’t really know how you spent your time. Let your boss know on a weekly basis what you’ve accomplished during the week and what you hope to complete the following week.
6. TRAVEL:
- Before you fly, make sure you have everything you need to get your work done downloaded to your computer and available to access offline—that way if the Internet is down on your plane, your productivity won’t take a hit.
- Log out of your company’s chat programs on your phone while you’re on the road.
- If you have a long layover, buy access to the airline’s lounge. Airline lounges have places to sit down and work, decent free Wi-Fi, and free drinks and food.
- Keep a piece of paper on you with the name and number of your hotel and the address of your business event.
- Turn your phone off to conserve battery power during your flight. Leaving your phone on during the flight, especially if you forget to put it in airplane mode, will drain your battery.
7. MEETINGS:
- Start every meeting by stating its point to the group. By stating your goal to the group, you’re ensuring that everyone is on the same page.
- When you start a meeting, set a timer that rings when the meeting is scheduled to end.
- Compile a “required reading” list. Rather than waste time in a meeting listening to people give updates on where they are in a project, ask everyone to email you their updates. You can then create a single document that is sent out to all of the attendees prior to the meeting.
- Tailor your attendee list to include only the people who need to be part of the decision-making conversation.
- Establish why your attendance is important.
- If there’s a compelling reason for you to attend, your colleague will be able to explain why she thinks your attendance will add to the meeting.
- Ask people to write down any questions they have at the beginning of the meeting. Saving the question portion of the meeting until the end is the fast track to a long meeting.
- Identify all action items at the end of the meeting. This rundown makes sure everyone is on the same page and has a clear idea of what their next tasks are.
- Instead of doing the brainstorming in a meeting, have everyone come up with a list of ideas on their own to send to you. Compile the best ideas and then use a meeting time to discuss only those ideas and how to execute them.
- Stick to five (or fewer) specific agenda items. When your meeting is overloaded with topics, you’ll either have a very long meeting or won’t be able to give every topic the attention it deserves.
- Have your meetings in the afternoon.
- An afternoon meeting—specifically in the middle of the week—will result in a more engaged and better-prepared group than if you had the same meeting at nine a.m. on a Monday when people are still recovering from the weekend and catching up on work they didn’t finish the week before.
- Hold creative meetings outdoors.
- Opt to have meetings longer than thirty minutes in person rather than over a conference call.
- Before every meeting pick someone to serve as the meeting’s monitor to keep everyone on topic.
- Disperse the more outspoken people throughout the meeting room.
- Provide a “six-pager” document. provides all of the background and context that people will need to understand the proposal, design, or update being discussed. The six-pager is especially great when you’re going over a more complex topic.
- One easy way to ensure everyone’s on time is to have a negative consequence for showing up late. The consequence can be something simple, like requiring the last person who arrives at the meeting to be responsible for taking meeting notes, or something more complex, like giving that person the last pick of assignments for the next big project.
- If you want to keep your meeting fast and on topic, don’t offer food and ask others not to bring their own.
- A regular audio recorder will get the job done, but you can also use the Otter Voice Notes app to create a written transcript of your meeting in real time that can be shared with attendees and others. Otter also has a search function, so you can pull up a specific part of the conversation in a snap.
- Having everyone at your meeting on time will help you move through your day much faster, so reward those who are helping you get there!
8. By accomplishing personal tasks ahead of time, it will be much easier to focus on your work while you’re at the office, and you’ll be able to do more of what you want once you’re off work for the day.
- When you’re at home trying to relax or focus on a personal project, turn on your device’s airplane mode. Airplane mode will enable you to really tune out all that “noise”
- Keep work-related chat and email apps off your phone!
- Add phone numbers to the list for people you need to call so you don’t need to hunt down the numbers when it’s time to tackle that task.
- Find some music that gives you energy, and then break it out whenever you’re starting to fall into a slump.
- Keep a list of things that you don’t want to do. Having a list of things that you want to avoid is a simple way to remind yourself to cut back on those things. Things that are wasting your time and sabotaging your productivity belong on this list.
- When someone has only your work contact information, then he can contact you only at work.
- Change clothes when you get home from the office to mentally help you change gears.
9. Be the “power user” for all of the software tools your office uses. If you don’t take the time to learn how to use a new tool, then you’re likely to waste more time trying to figure it out down the line than you would have if you just did some training earlier. Plus, when you don’t learn a new tool and everyone else does, you’ll find yourself trying to catch up when others are able to accomplish the same work faster.
10. Find someone a few steps above you on your desired career path and ask that person to be a mentor. A mentor can help make suggestions on what you should do next so you’re not wasting time doing things that don’t get you to your ultimate goal.
TOOLS:
- Don’t waste time printing, signing, and rescanning a form. HelloSign
- Use the Gmail canned response feature to send emails that you type often.
- Filter your emails with Astro. Astro is an AI-powered assistant that works with Gmail
- Rename a file by highlighting its name and then pressing F2.
- Combine your calendar and your to-do list with Sunsama. Described as “if Trello and Google Calendar had a baby,” this app allows you to create to-do lists that are tied to a calendar.
- Download Dayuse for a temporary office or relaxation space.
- Add a period to your Gmail address to filter unwanted emails. For instance, you can give your close friends jane.doe@gmail.com as your email address and give others janedoe@gmail.com. Both emails will still be recognized as yours, but you can filter messages by the address the sender used, allowing you to focus on the emails that matter rather than having to wade through emails that don’t.
- Google Voice gives you a special number on top of your existing number to associate with your cell phone or to forward to another phone or even your email account.
- LoungeBuddy can score you access to one at the airport for as little as $25. Airport lounges can offer you access to fast Internet to do a little work, outlets to charge your gear, and snacks to keep you energized.