18 Productivity Tips to Help You Fulfill Your Commitments

One of the core metrics for success at work is how good are you at fulfilling your commitments, the so called "Say: Do" ratio. Always looking for ways to improve, I decided to interview a handful of successful coworkers and compile a list of productivity tips. A few of these tips and tools are now part of my daily workflow and have already led to improvements so thought I’d share them with you.

On Where to Start

Tip #1: The Kickoff Meeting

My company develops business software and the release managers facilitate the development of our products from start to finish. They work on many features at once, with many teams all over the world and have to please many anxious stakeholders. The two I spoke with both said the most important meeting is the kickoff. 

In this 1-2 hour meeting they are recording ALL the details the team can think of including things like customer needs, dependencies, risks, team schedule, approval paths and many more. They use a template Word document that has line items for all the things they have learned from past projects. If they miss anything here it is usually the thing that makes the project hiccup. 

Tip #2: Working Backwards

"A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step." 

However, one of our project managers suggests starting with your due date and working backwards all the way back to your first step then break that timeline down with checkpoints or milestones. By doing that you can manage a large task by doing small sequential tasks that will keep you on schedule. They also recommend adding padding to the timeline to allow for the unforeseen. This technique works well for both business and personal goals. Use a spreadsheet to list the milestones with dates, owners, dependencies, status and notes.

On Time Management

Tip #3: Time Blocking

Once you have your milestones, place time on your Outlook calendar, or calendar of choice, to block off time. This protects your most valuable resource from the problem of multitasking with the added benefit of built-in reminders. Many of the people I spoke to use this technique so that ‘time bandits’ can’t steal their precious time.

You can mark your calendar events as ‘busy’ so people are warned when scheduling a meeting with you. The downside to making everything blocked though is when people really do need to meet with you, it appears you are completely booked. I suggest marking some of your time as free if possible.

Tip #4: Zero Inbox

By inbox I don't exactly mean your email inbox but rather any type of a "to do" list that you can zero out at the end of the day, week or month and keep re-prioritizing. 

Less people use paper to create To-do lists these days but the ones that do it successfully have a system that allows them to track their items using symbols and it can be helpful in meetings when devices are frowned upon. It also allows them to physically cross things out, which is very satisfying. 

More common today are software tools like WunderList, Outlook's OneNote or Evernote. See "Tools of the Trade" below where I go into more details.

Whatever the tool you use, most of the people that I interviewed spent time at the beginning of the week or each morning re-prioritizing and managing the list.

Tip #5: @Today

One way to organize your inbox or "to do" list is to create categories such as @today, @week, @month or @read-later. One project manager I spoke with won't go home until the items on her @today list are complete. This system can apply to your Outlook Inbox, just create folders titled this way and drag emails to them as required.

Tip #6: Say No

A Director I spoke with said she has learned to say ‘No’ to additional requests. This helps her, and her team, from over committing. The old adage is ‘under promise, over deliver’. So don’t worry about the people you said ‘No’ to, chances are those same people will appreciate you saying ‘no’ to outside requests when you are working on their project.

On Motivation & Maintaining Momentum

Tip #7: Fun is Contagious

When the team is laughing and kidding around it takes you out of that stagnant place where dreams go to die. Let your guard down every once and a while and free up your creativity. 

Tip #8: Take Pleasure from Helping Others

When you lend a hand or step forward to lead in a selfless manor, the pleasure is amazing. If you are not overtly praised or thanked for your efforts, don’t take it as negative as you know what you did and you can take solace in that.

Tip #9: Pride in the end product

Seeing what you have been working feverishly on for months finally come alive and have customers comment positively on is the ultimate reward for some of us that make things. I imagine this takes a different form when the end product is less tangible than a product release or a website however try to find a way to make what you do into a type of deliverable so that you can get a visceral feeling when it’s delivered.

On Avoiding Common Pitfalls 

Tip #10: What you don’t see can hurt you

If it's not on the list it doesn't get done. Notes on paper need to get to your "to do" list. If you are in a meeting and have jotted something down on paper, don’t forget to add it to your master list when you get back to your workstation.

Tip #11: Know who needs to know what

Not identifying key stakeholders in the kickoff meeting mentioned above or at the start of any project. For example, don't get to the end a project and realize you still need approval from the legal team.

Tools of the Trade

Tip #12: Slack 

A powerful chat tool, Slack allows you to communicate quickly with team members and allows you to make channels that you can isolate or broadcast a conversation to a team. Conversations are tracked or threaded which allows you to look back on the history and find links that you need. Even though I prefer to walk up to someone's desk and have a conversation with them, the benefit of Slack is the threaded conversation. One cool thing is when someone joins a thread, it lets them see the history so they can benefit from resources or discussions that are ongoing. There is a Reminder tool an other time management plugins. BUT the coolest thing, for some, is the GIPHY or animated GIFs feature where you can not only express your feelings in strange Internet memes but it also allows you to have a good laugh with your teammates. Beware, some animated gifs are NSFW. 

Tip #13: WunderList

Hearing a ding sound when you close a task will make you crave completing a task. It's also a cross device app and comes with reminders and time tracking. One of our project managers uses it for the @Today system I mentioned above.

Tip #14: Outlook & OneNote

These apps have many time saving and organizing features, too many to mention here. Since Outlook is ubiquitous with most companies, knowing all the shortcuts can really give you a let up. I taught many coworkers how to book conference rooms, set up team calendars and how to create tasks from emails by drag/dropping them on the Task folder.

Tip #15: COTA System

Some teammates liked Mike Song's system for organizing files by Client, Output, Team, Admin. This could be applied to you file system or inbox. Clients are the people you are dealing with outside your team. Output are documents that you share like reports, project files, notes and updates. Team are the people you work with on a daily basis. Admin are all the things you may need again or where you store the miscellaneous items.

Tip #16: Notepad 

Most computers come with a basic text editor. Create a file and save to your desktop and name it todolist.txt. You'll see that a simple text list can be very powerful.

Tip #17: Bullet Journal System

One of my teammates showed me this journaling system which uses symbols that indicate types of entries. Symbols are easy to use and see, and are hollow when created and filled in when done. There is a monthly, weekly and daily view. It allows you to doodle and add fun physical items to personalize it. Sometimes items need to jump from the note book into electronic format, but try not to duplicate everything as that would be too time consuming. Having written notes in books are great to look back at but when you run out of pages you will have to get a new one. Thankfully the process of transferring from old to new book allows you to make improvements, reassess your priorities and make changes to the process.

Tip #18: 15Five

Our team requires the use 15Five.com, and I have found out that some coworkers are using it as a way to ‘hit’ their weekly commitments. They answer the question “What do you intend to accomplish between now and your next report?” with a list of items they intend to follow through on and because of the transparency with their manager they are held accountable. This tool also allows you to set reminders during the week.

Big Thanks

I have already improved my SAY:DO ratio by using WunderList to track my To-do’s and applied the Work Backward technique to create my next project timeline.

Interviewing co-workers and colleagues was fun, and as you can see very valuable. I suggest everyone takes time to talk to their teammates or even people from other parts of the company and ask them “how and why” they are successful, you won’t regret it.

[drawing © Mark Mclychok]