The goal to increase productivity is never complete. Instead, it’s a continuous journey where there will always be room for improvement no matter how intelligent, experienced, or senior you are.
To begin to increase productivity, first, you need to understand exactly what it is that you’re unproductive at. Then you can delve into the details, picking apart why the inefficiencies occur. Let’s explore this further!
How do I identify what I’m unproductive at and why?
Surely it’s a simple thought process?
“I get caught up in too many emails, so I’m unproductive with emails… I need to reply to emails more quickly!”.
“I work on 10 tasks at once, so I’m overloaded and can’t make significant progress on any one task… I need a to-do list app to help prioritize my tasks!”.
Unfortunately, it’s far from this easy, because although it might be a starting point, those statements are incredibly broad. There are very likely many different elements within “too many emails to read” and “10 tasks to do at the same time”, which need to be broken down and analyzed.
Ask specific questions to highlight problem areas
Understanding the “ what “ can be a deep process in itself, which needs to take into account many other factors that may or may not be impacting the speediness of email or task management.
To begin, ask yourself specific questions about email or task management. This will help further distinguish the productivity problem areas.
Examples of productivity-related questions to ask yourself
- On average, roughly how much time do I spend reading and sending emails every day?
- On average, roughly how much time do I spend putting meaningful effort into completing non-email-related tasks every day?
That’s great, but is [X] amount of time too much? Do emails consume the majority of my working day, to the extent that I fall behind on other important activities?
Increase productivity by digging deeper into the problem areas
Go into things a little deeper. Could you increase productivity in other areas of your day by reducing the amount of time you spend on emails? The vast majority of people will answer yes here, but then what exactly is it that keeps you locked into emails? Get more specific with the questions.
Examples of more specific productivity-related questions to ask yourself
- Do I respond to certain types of emails that I don’t need to respond to?
- Does my inbox have a lot of noise with emails I end up reading that I don’t need to read at all?
- Do I spend too much time replying to certain emails, when I could give the intended recipient a call and explain the topic within 2 minutes?
The questions can go on of course, but it’s at this point that you begin to comprehend the “why”. Then you can start looking at implementing solutions.
I don’t know what questions to ask that highlight issues with my productivity
It’s a common challenge, and no one said it’s easy to unfold your workplace habits preventing you from increasing productivity.
This is why we developed the LessBizy Productivity Quiz. You can take it now and get your results for FREE!
What’s the Mx4 Productivity Quiz and how will it help me increase productivity?
The quiz was created to help people who are exploring ways to increase productivity in the workplace. It offers a solution to accelerate the process of identifying your productivity-related problems, and then get a head start with fixing them.
36 productivity-impacting statements grouped across 4 productivity zones
- Mindset
- Meetings
- Messaging
- Managing the Day-to-Day
Each statement represents a question on a test, requiring you to rate your level of agreement with each question on a scale of 1 to 5 (using a Likert scale). 1 means you “Strongly Disagree” and 5 means you “Strongly Agree”.
All statements/questions target certain topics in the workplace domain that often slow people down and make it difficult to increase productivity. The result is 36 answers submitted, which are then analyzed to generate an Mx4 Power Rank and Power Score.
What do I do after getting my Mx4 Power Rank and Power Score?
With the help of the productivity quiz, you’ll identify at least some problem areas (i.e. the statements you “strongly disagree” or “disagree” with). Or, you’ll identify areas that you might be reasonably productive in already, yet there will still be room for noticeable improvements.
Such details are critical to highlight before you can start increasing productivity. Once identified, it becomes a more straightforward process to begin tackling those specific areas head-on, whether you decide to do it alone or with assistance.
With the targeted statements in the quiz giving you a big nudge to provoke meaningful curiosity, you’ll be on the path of exploring and implementing changes.
Things won’t improve overnight because remember, it’s a continuous journey — a gradual process where you’ll need to factor in small changes and stick to them, as well as build upon them.
We can also help you directly by discussing your Mx4 Productivity Quiz results. We’ll investigate not only the “what” and “why”, but also the “how“, from the perspective of recommending purposeful changes to increase productivity in the workplace.
Feel free to contact us to discuss more!
Originally published at https://www.lessbizy.com on February 28, 2021.
