Productivity Tips from Professionals
· 2 min read
MIT surveyed nearly 20,000 professionals from around the world - 50% from North America, 21% from Europe, 19% from Asia, and the rest from Australia, South America, and Africa. Takeaways are ...
1. Sort tasks by importance and act with a clear goal.
- Before writing anything of any length, prepare an outline in a logical order to help you stay on track.
- Revise your daily calendar the night before to emphasize your priorities. Next to each agenda on your schedule, write down your goals.
- Send a detailed agenda to all participants before any meeting.
- When embarking on a large project, sketch out preliminary conclusions as soon as possible.
- Before reading any lengthy material, determine your specific purpose for it.
2. Dealing with information & task overload.
- Skip most messages by looking at the subject and sender.
- Make daily processes, like getting dressed or eating breakfast, a routine so you don't spend time thinking about them.
- Check your device's screen every hour, rather than every few minutes.
- Break large projects into sections and reward yourself when you complete each section.
- Delegate tasks that don't interfere with your top priorities, when feasible.
- Set aside time in your daily schedule to deal with emergencies and unexpected events.
3. Your colleagues need short meetings, responsive communication, and clear direction.
- Respond immediately to messages from those who are important to you.
- To capture the audience's attention, speak from some notes rather than reading a prepared text.
- Limit any meeting to 90 minutes or less, but preferably less. At the end of each session, delineate the next steps and responsibilities for those steps.
- To improve your team's performance, establish procedures to prevent future mistakes instead of playing the blame game.
- Establish clear goals and success metrics for any team effort.