Work Productivity Introduction
In our first post, Productivity Secrets 1: Love Extra Time for Your Business, we established that productivity equals work divided by time, P=W/T. We also squeezed time tighter than a carry-on suitcase after visiting Grandma for Christmas.
Time had its time. Let’s work on work. Puns intended. Follow these productivity work strategies for additional gains.
Task Management
To manage tasks, pick a task management application and compile and break down all tasks. Captain Obvious tells us that step one is to choose a task management tool. In order of complexity, your options are:
- Handwritten
- Productivity Suite
- Spreadsheet
- Project Management Software
When selecting an option, you must balance features versus complexity. Choose the system that saves the most time. Don’t forget to account for the time spent maintaining your choice.
If a spreadsheet works for you, try our Weekly Calendar and Task List. Sign up for our newsletter and it’s free.
Whatever tool you pick, it’s crucial to load every to-do into it. Compiling a comprehensive list guarantees task completion and relieves the stress on your memory. Plus, who doesn’t love crossing tasks off a list?
Vague tasks degrade the value of a task management system. Break items into subtasks to add specificity. Continue this process until all tasks take between thirty minutes to four hours. Appropriately sized tasks prove manageable and reduce the temptation to procrastinate. For more thoughts on beating procrastination, visit Stop Procrastination: Break Free to Unlock Your Hidden Potential.
Effective Schedule
For both work and life, track time-bound tasks on a schedule. To regain control of work-life balance, check out Whip Work-Life Balance: Proven Ways to Win in Both Worlds. Effective schedules include time blocking, energy management, and short and long-term adjustments.
Time blocking begins with reserving time for routine tasks. Next, add appointments and critical tasks. Finally, fill the rest of the schedule with regular tasks. Time blocking supports priorities and ensures essential task completion.
Energy management assigns tasks to times of day based on your energy cycle. Suppose your energy peaks early and wanes late. In that case, schedule high-energy tasks like brainstorming, writing, calculating, and creating early. Later, focus on low-energy assignments like schedule and website updates, email, social media, organization, and research. Aligning your energy cycle with tasks boosts productivity.
Adjust your short-term schedule in daily and weekly increments. Daily and weekly reviews are about making tactical adjustments. Adjust for new requirements or tasks that take shorter or longer than predicted.
Long-term reviews are monthly and quarterly. They are strategic with the purpose of identifying where and how you spend your time. Calculate the time spent on projects and ask yourself the following. When were you most efficient, and what were you working on? Is your time allocation in line with your goals? Apply these insights to restructure your long-term schedule.
Office Setup
Transform your work-at-home office into a productivity palace by considering location, lighting, ergonomics, and aesthetics. Dedicate a room for your office location. Can’t spare a whole room? Pick a spot without temptation—a view of a TV, the kitchen, or the pile of laundry you’ve been ignoring. Face your desk to avoid distracting site lines such as entrances and walkways.
Everyone, besides vampires, underestimates lighting. Control sunlight with shades and blinds. For overcast days and nights, choose bulbs that mimic natural light. Protect your eyes from blue light with filtering screens or glasses.
Office work often leads to a sore back, neck, or wrist. Ergo ergonomics. Purchase an adjustable chair that allows your back to remain upright and your feet to rest flat. Select a desk capable of organizing your belongings while maintaining proper angles: 1) monitor to eyes at slightly below ninety degrees and 2) keyboard and mouse to body at a right angle.
Address aesthetics for further gain. Clean and declutter your office at the end of the workday. Don’t go hoarder-style with knickknacks. Select a room color conducive to work productivity. Control your thermostat to stay comfortable.
Design your home office as a place where ideas flow, and successes grow. Your office is not a room—it’s mission control. With a correct office setup, launch your business to the stars. Need more office tips? Join my email list for the essential home office checklist.
Communication
Picture communication as an umbrella that deflects drops of interruption from hitting your head. Stay dry by managing your inboxes, being consistent, using communication tools, communicating spoken and unspoken cues, and prepping for on-call situations.
Review your SMS history and email inboxes. Block and unsubscribe from unwanted message sources. Turn off your phone’s notifications and alerts. Log into social media accounts and shut down messaging.
Spend a week or two playing Sherlock Holmes. When you get unwanted messages or alerts, investigate the source and remove them.
Consistency is an overlooked form of communication. Following regular times for activities allows others to learn to work within your timeframes.
Like a mood ring, share your status through communication tools. Place activity times within status updates, voicemails, and email signatures. Set up email autoresponders to send activity times when offline. Share an electronic calendar with essential people. You can’t overcommunicate availability.
Reinforce the previous methods with spoken and unspoken cues. Avoid interruption and confrontation with nonverbal cues. Post visual indicators like a sign or red light to show roommates you’re busy. When walk-ins happen, act like a cat that just woke up: scowl and squint. Then, slowly turn your head toward the intruders. Purr, “Yesss?”
Use verbal cues when people need a proverbial brick to the head to understand you’re busy. When that happens, be direct and say, “Sorry, I’m busy. Can we discuss later?”
On Call Situations
You can’t delay or ignore every communication—large customers, schools, childcare, medical emergencies. But you can design a process to handle them. Prepare for on call situations—utilize technology, define emergencies, mitigate transitions, and share coverage.
Utilize technology for special circumstances. Buy a President’s Red Phone—a dedicated phone line or application for emergencies. Another option is to choose an application and set up its “Do Not Disturb” feature to allow exceptions.
Define emergencies for the people who may contact you. Document your actions when interruptions occur to ease the transition back to work. Devise a coverage plan with your partner, spouse, and business associates.
Managing communication is like finding a keyhole in the dark. It requires feeling, touch, and experimentation. Fumble away until you lock the door on distraction.
Organize for Efficiency
Think of work as a digital garden. Organizing work is akin to killing weeds, fertilizing, and pruning. Find your Zen Garden by organizing emails, files, and folders and adopting an organized mindset.
Email is like a two-way street with inbound and outbound lanes. Direct incoming emails into these folder structures: 1) priority messages, 2) regular correspondence, 3) subscriptions, and 4) automated reports.
Example Email Folders
Use rules (filters) to move messages automatically into folders, reducing your inbox to one-off emails. Visit these links for instructions on how to set up rules: Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail. If you need additional help, pick a YouTube guide for your email application.
You organized inbound emails. It’s time to cross the street and streamline outbound emails. Accomplish this goal with generative AI and email templates. Whenever you write a new type of email, employ generative AI to develop a rough draft.
Generating an Email for a Credit Report Dispute
| I needed to email a dispute for my credit report and asked AI to generate a template. My prompt was—I need to dispute an incorrect charge on my credit report. Develop an email template for contacting the three credit reporting agencies to initiate the issue resolution process. The tone of the email should be firm and direct. |
Design a template for recurring email topics. Templates boost work productivity, deliver consistency, and accommodate future automation.
Next, stop treating your files like a game of Where’s Waldo? Name your files so even a goldfish remembers their purpose—description-date-version#—WorldDominationPlan032924v69. Remember to rename computer-generated files. No more 1234thismustbeitihopeso.docx.
After files, address folder structures. Name folders based on content. Group folders into categories—Financials: Invoices, Budgets, Tax Documents. Develop hierarchies—2024 > Projects > Project X. Folders are for active files only. Move old files into an Archive folder. Your folders should look like:
Business Website Website Setup About Me
Adopt an organized mindset to integrate previous strategies into a ritual. Finish tasks in a way that simplifies the following step. Allocate extra time to avoid rework. Schedule me time to organize tasks, files, folders, and emails.
While reviewing items, ask yourself, “How could I have avoided reorganizing?” Plant the seeds organization today and reap the harvest of work productivity tomorrow.
Standardize Outputs
Standardize outputs to lock in your best practices. To standardize: assess all repetitive tasks, apply the correct level of specificity, and devise a maintenance system.
Assessing repetitive tasks begins by listing current activities. Estimate the annual time spent per task. Prioritize standardization from longest to shortest.
Next, determine specificity by categorizing tasks as independent, delegated (outsourced), or automated. One person (typically yourself) works on independent tasks. They require the least amount of detail. Don’t bother with detailed SOPs. Just construct bullet point checklists to jog your memory. Develop templates to avoid having to recreate similar work later.
Delegation candidates require a medium level of specificity. In addition to the tools mentioned above, write SOPs and FAQs, design flow charts, and record videos for reference and training materials.
Tasks slated for automation call for the greatest detail. Write an SOP that is so detailed that someone without experience can follow it. Remember, automation requires programming every step, no matter how simple.
The final piece of standardization is a maintenance system. Establish a master list of files with modification dates. Review them at least once every 12 months. Adjust for new technology, regulations, or industry standards.
Keeping up with the Joneses
For entrepreneurs, Keeping up with the Joneses means more than envying the neighbor’s new car. It prevents you from working on the wrong things. How do you know your work matters? Track competitors and stay current within your industry.
Track Competitors
Major Obvious (his first insight flagged him for promotion) tells us to commence tracking competitors by listing them. Generative AI and search engines are your primary tools for finding and researching competition.
Let’s assume we moderate a PEZ website and want to scope out the competition. The column headings below provide a framework for analyzing competitors. I added one fictitious competitor below for clarification.
| Name | URL | Content | Monetization |
| PEZ World | www.pezworld.com | All Things Pez | 1) Google AdWords 2) Affiliate Marketing 3) Online Store |
| Keywords | Partners | Backlinks | Other Notes |
| PEZ dispenser, PEZ Collectors, PEZ Candy | r/pez subreddit, eBay, Amazon | PEZ.com, HARO, SourceBottle | Vintage dispensers for sale. |
Gather information with generative AI and search engines. While doing so, sign up for newsletters and RSS feeds, read reviews, and understand competitor offerings. For competitor website keyword research, visit WordStream’s free tools.
Automate staying current with competitors by visiting Google Alerts. The tricky part is understanding Boolean. If you need help with Boolean searches, see this article.
Because entrepreneurs often bootstrap, I’ve mentioned the no-cost ways of tracking competitor information. If you desire more detail and better functionality, buy a paid service like SEMrush or Ahrefs.
Stay Current Within Your Industry
To stay current within your industry, gather market information, communicate with customers, and find people within your industry. Gathering market information provides a competitive edge. Track trends on social media, industry news sites, and specialized forums. See shifts in the market and consumer preferences as they happen.
Moreover, consume industry-related material. Read books related to your field. Take classes to learn something new. Short on time? Listen to podcasts while commuting or exercising.
Communicating with customers is like a business GPS. Listen to customers to chart the best route to your goals. First, read online reviews for all industry-related products. Second, establish channels of communication with your customer base. Options include surveys, feedback forms, or social media. Cherish customer feedback. Your reward will be better products and stronger customer relationships.
Be a work-from-home entrepreneur, not a home-based hermit. Avoid isolation by reaching out to like-minded people. If you don’t know anyone, leave your office and meet someone in person.
Join a local club or group related to your business. Go even bigger and attend an out-of-town conference. As you encounter new contacts in these events, foster and maintain a network. Be careful. You may even find a friend or two.
Keeping Up with the Joneses Summary
Keeping Up with the Joneses is about harnessing the collective power of industry knowledge, customer insights, and professional networks to focus on the right activities. Position your work-at-home business to succeed and lead by staying informed and connected.
Keeping informed means avoiding common misconceptions. To avoid the top 9 myths around home-based entrepreneurship, read You Think Wrong: Insider Truths About Work-At-Home Myths.
Work Smarter Summary
Working smarter involves leveraging tools and strategies to increase productivity. Remember, it’s a journey requiring a commitment to personal growth. Never stop experimenting with new methods to reap the benefits of working smarter.
Work Productivity Conclusion
The first productivity post presented the formula for productivity, P=W/T, and focused on reducing time. You learned strategies like batching and outsourcing to save time. In this post, we concentrated on working smarter. You reviewed strategies like organizing and standardization to raise output for the same effort.
When you combine reducing time and working smarter, you will see a massive boost in productivity. Yet, improving productivity is not just about efficiency and personal development. It’s like a snowplow opening new roads through the blizzard of life’s obstacles. Whatever road you choose is entirely up to you.
I love recommendations and advice. Please leave them in the comments section or email me. Tell me your perspective on increasing productivity.
For background on the who, what, and why of remoteworkadvice.com, see our Home Page. Thank you for reading. May the patrons of productivity and self-help bestow their favor on you.