- April 29, 2022
- Posted by: Adviser Leads
- Categories: Innovation, Productivity, Sales
In this article, we’re going to show you how to supercharge your productivity. This is a topic that is very close to our hearts, as running an agency and managing lots of different accounts mean we have to be not only organised, but on top of our game to be able to deliver the results our clients expect us to.
Productivity is a powerful but elusive beast that managers around the world, throughout history have chased; often to little or no avail. It becomes like an addiction for those that need to see more of it and the hardest thing in the world to produce when you need it. The good news is that productivity can indeed be produced and increased with a simple understanding of the process. Today we’re going to give you 5 secret ways to supercharge your productivity, so make sure you pay close attention.
What Is Productivity?
Productivity is generally measured in a business output sense. Unfortunately this means it is usually equated with industrial levels of output and mapped onto people. How much work can they produce within a certain time and what level of profitability does it provide. Bad news for your average employee as it means people only focus on the volume of output which has a knock on effect on a number of areas, including personal and physical health.
In reality your productivity is broken down into three main areas:
- Quantity (volume of work)
- Quality (excellent product)
- Efficiency (time wasted)
When we think of productivity in this fashion, we are better able to make sense of how we can achieve the highest and most optimum levels of productivity in the workplace.
Why Is Productivity Important?
When we consider that productivity is in itself a product it makes a lot more sense to be as effective as possible. In the short term being able to supercharge your productivity means you are able to produce a higher quality of work in a shorter amount of time. This in turn means you are able to spend more time focusing on what you are supposed to be doing, instead of simply doing to complete.
In the longer term, having low productivity actually costs businesses money. Why? Well, by having to return to a task that was thought to be complete and either partially or fully redo it means that all the work put into it the first time around was wasted. Let’s say you spend 10 hours one week on a project, only to find that it all needs to be redone. That’s 10 hours wasted, or a day and a bit in week terms. Literally nothing was done but you spent a whole day doing it. Talk about spinning your wheels!
This has an effect on your mental state too. You have to return to a task that you thought complete, which makes you feel as though you haven’t done anything, which in turn makes you feel stressed about being able to complete all the work you have ahead of you. Stress brings down your mood and this leaks out into your personal life. Without wanting to sound all doom-and-gloom, there is the potential for a vicious and harmful cycle to appear that can cause great damage to you as a person.
Research has shown that all people, and it doesn’t matter who you are, have only 55 hours of productivity per week. After that it really is pointless trying to do anything else and will actually have a detrimental effect on any work you do try to do. Often you will have to redo the work and the cycle of stress and unproductiveness begins.
How To Recognise Burnout
Before we can get into the secrets of how to supercharge your productivity, we need to look at how we can recognise and prevent burnout. Once we know what we are looking for and what burnout feels like, we are able to stop it in its tracks.
The first thing we want to be mindful of is our performance and productivity. This is the first thing to take a hit and many people simply think they just need another cup of coffee and to power on through. The reality is that this is the first and most obvious sign you’re reaching your limit. Alongside this you are likely to feel physically and mentally drained. Exhaustion is another one of those symptoms that people feel can be relieved with coffee. Rest assured (excuse the pun) your body is telling you that it needs a break. There are other signs that you may be at burnout point such as:
- Sense of failure and self-doubt
- Feeling helpless, trapped, and defeated
- Detachment, feeling alone in the world
- Loss of motivation
- Increasingly cynical and negative outlook
- Decreased satisfaction and sense of accomplishment
If you start to feel any of these symptoms then it’s time to step away from the computer and stop what you’re doing. Quite often you will find that the second you recognise this you are immediately able to release the pressure you have put on yourself. In doing so you begin to create a pattern of understanding which in turn leads to being able to supercharge your productivity.
How To Supercharge Your Productivity
At last! On to the good stuff. What we will be sharing with you here is not an exhaustive (sorry for the pun again) list and there are many different ways to boost productivity. What may work for us may not be as effective for you, so it’s very much a case of being able to built routine into what works for you. So, without further ado, here are our top 5 ways to supercharge your productivity.
Prioritise and create a daily to do list
Everyone has a million and one things they need to do but not everything has the same level of importance during the day. Is there a hot prospect you need to close today? That should be a high priority. Need to change a light bulb in the bathroom, perhaps that can wait or even be delegated.
Humans thrive off achieving things. This is why we love sending emails as it lets us think that we have actually achieved something, when in reality, sending an email is mostly a distraction, but we will get to that bit later. Creating a daily, and most importantly, achievable list of priority items for the day will help to keep you focused on the key tasks at hand and not get distracted by side tasks. This does require a bit of discipline but creating a routine around this will make it easier as time goes by.
Work in sprints
It’s easy to get stuck staring at your screen and move from task to task once completed. However, research shows that we work better under pressure. Now, we aren’t suggesting that you leave all super important projects until the last minute and hope that your survival mode kicks in in time to save the day. What we are saying is that if you give yourself a time frame within which to finish a task this can create a scenario where you become more focused, leading to work being completed to a higher standard.
You’ve probably heard of the term, ‘power hour.’ Where all the sales team will stand up and do nothing but make sales calls for a solid hour in an attempt to boost meetings, sales or results. Funnily enough, these time sprints do actually help teams to produce better results. It forces you to focus on the task in hand with no distractions helping you to fully engage on the end result.
Not everything has to be as high pressure as a power hour, and you will generally find that 90 minute work sprints are the optimum amount of time to deliver your best work.
Stop checking Whatsapp and emails
We mentioned earlier about how emails make us feel like we are achieving something? Emails, whatsapp and social media are all forms of distraction that take your focus away from completing the task in hand. In fact, it actually takes you, on average, a full 25 minutes to refocus once you have been distracted. Imagine how much time you waste and how much productivity goes out the window every time you check your messages. There is something that we say at Adviser Leads, ‘Nothing that comes through is urgent, ever. The only time you stop what you’re doing is when someone tells you they have money waiting for you on their desk.’
Everyone thinks their request is urgent. Check your messages at selected points in the day. That way you will be able to bulk respond and update, get that dopamine hit from ticking things off your list and stay on track to completing the day’s priority tasks.
Take regular breaks
This is a pretty counterintuitive activity on the pathway to supercharge your productivity. However, all of these points are linked. If you are working in 90 minute sprints, you’re going to need to take a break, otherwise you’re simply just rolling through and everything else you are doing for productivity goes out the window.
15 minutes to get up, grab a drink, move around and give your mind a break is a critical element to being able to supercharge your productivity. You will find that you come to natural break points throughout the day when you work in time sprints. You have your priority work set out for the day, you have message checkpoints set up, so you know exactly when a break is due. It will start to feel a bit more natural the longer you do this.
Stop multitasking
Multitasking is probably the biggest productivity myth there is. People love to describe themselves as great multitaskers. It seems to be some sort of badge of honour that you are able to juggle multiple tasks at the same time. All that is happening is you are dividing your focus from one project to another and not giving one your full attention. Something that should only take you 15 minutes may end up taking 30-45 because you are splitting your focus. People who multitask are those who haven’t prioritised their work for the day.
It can be a tricky habit to stop considering we are so used to having multiple tabs on our computers open, messages dinging every five minutes and deadlines looming. As with all things, discipline needs to be implemented and you need to be able to recognise when you are falling back into old habits.
Supercharge Your Productivity
These are some of the top tips that we employ at Adviser Leads to be able to stay on track with all the client work we need to do, not to mention with all of the internal dealings we have with our own business.
As stated before, this is not the definitive guide to productivity and there are many other ways in which you can improve your own workflows. A really useful and helpful way of being able to supercharge your productivity is to ensure that you don’t have to spend all of your time looking for leads.
We’ve created this incredible 3-step guide that will help you to build your own lead generation funnel that will let prospects book themselves into your calendar. You can download it by clicking the link below.
