Productivity is a popular buzzword. Everyone seems to be talking about it. But it’s much easier to talk about productivity skills than actually sit down and be productive. It’s tempting as well to confuse busyness with productivity.
After all, the doing of many tasks seems like an accomplishment. And if that’s what it takes to be good at your work, then that’s what you need to do. But many of us have confused output with outcome.
As we learn productivity strategies, keep in mind that productivity alone is not valuable unless it is used to do work that matters. Productivity cannot make a task meaningful—but it can help you have the time to do more meaningful work.
Understanding Productivity Skills
When we can accomplish tasks efficiently and consistently, then we are productive. But productivity is a habit and a skill that must be developed. Like push ups for the body or advanced mathematics for the mind, productivity skills are a form of self-discipline.
Our minds default to easy mode whenever possible. But real productivity demands actually practicing what we preach. What do the most impactful people in the world have in common? They actually got something done.
Let’s take a look at the skills you can learn to become more productive.
20 Productivity Skills
A. Time Management
Time management is the ability to prioritize different actions, divide projects into smaller pieces, set aside time, and then keep working until those tasks are done, without letting other things intrude.
Prioritization Techniques
Before we dive into work, we must know what’s most important, essential, or impactful. We must prioritize what we have to do. Urgent tasks often get sorted to the top of our priority list by default. But not every urgent task is also important.
Cal Newport, popular author of books such as So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work, recommends focusing on a small number of key inputs that will actually make you better at your work—or ”so good they can’t ignore you.” Identify what is most important and then compare your upcoming tasks against that standard.
Ask questions like: What is most urgent? What is most difficult? What is most complicated or frustrating? What will have the most effect toward the goals I am trying to reach?
Effective Scheduling
Once you have prioritized your activities, lay out your schedule.
Not scheduling may lead to frustration or panic as you realize that you can’t keep up with your work, or find out that you have been unrealistic in your expectations. Making up the difference then requires overtime work, which leads to burnout.
Here are a few tips for effective scheduling:
- Schedule on paper, not in your head.
- Put your schedule where you will actually use it. A schedule is no use if you don’t look at it, don’t update it, and don’t abide by it.
- Schedule realistically. Don’t underestimate the time things take—and the energy. Not all 16 waking hours can realistically be spent accomplishing tasks.
- Schedule downtime and flexibility. Make space for transition, travel, delays, and rest.
Setting Boundaries
Once you have set your schedule, keep it. Some flexibility is necessary in life. But giving in to flexibility all the time can end in chaos.
Too many people see boundaries as a negative thing, as a way of saying no. Instead, think of boundaries as a way to say yes to what’s really important.
What are some ways to set effective boundaries?
- Set physical boundaries: Go to a different location. Place a distraction out of reach.
- Give yourself permission—out loud or in writing—to say no.
- Communicate ahead of time with your team, clients, bosses, and others. Set expectations. Let them know when you will and will not be available.
B. Productivity Skills for Goal Setting and Achievement
Without a robust set of goals, your efforts to increase personal efficiency may be accomplishing nothing in particular. You may be increasing within-task efficiency but losing time in transition while you decide what to focus on next. Or you might know what your next goal is, but have no way of evaluating whether what you’re doing is actually making progress toward that goal.
SMART Goals
The SMART goal framework is a method to develop actionable goals, ones that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. If your goals are too abstract, you will waste a lot of time along the way figuring out exactly what to do and wondering how to actually achieve those goals. Instead, you can spend a little more time at the front end to make your goal effective from the beginning, and save time overall.
In practice, you might take a vague goal to “get more work done early in the morning and expand our client list” and apply the SMART framework. Now, that goal becomes: “Each morning until December, I will work for one hour from 6 AM to 7 AM, tracking the number of cold emails I send and the responses I receive, in order to increase the number of new client sales calls by 20%.”
Tracking Progress
Track your time in detail over time so that you can go back and analyze the results. When are you most productive? Do you hit a slump during the sleepy time after lunch? Is your mind most on fire with ideas during the exact time of day when you’ve been scheduling all your meetings? Do you work best in uninterrupted stretches of two hours or more?
Adjusting Goals
We must all adjust our goals from time to time.
If you’ve been tracking your progress, you’ll be able to see what’s not working—and what is working. Maybe those morning focus sessions really do influence the productivity of your whole day. Or maybe those team brainstorming meetings do drive innovation.
Make time to look back and re-evaluate your goals.
C. Delegation and Team Management Productivity Skills
Delegation can be a powerful tool. Working with a team expands your productivity beyond what you can accomplish directly. At times, we all wish we could just hand our responsibilities off to someone else and let them handle it. But effective delegation requires more than this.
Effective Delegation
Effective delegation requires you to correctly prioritize tasks, match them to the people who have the correct skills, communicate the parameters for success, let your team work, and then check back in.
It does no good to hand work off to someone else if that person can’t do the job well. You may end up coming behind that person and doing the job yourself. But even if they are capable, make sure that you’ve established standards and standard operating procedures ahead of time.
Though you may be tempted to personally oversee the work your team is doing, keep in mind that micromanaging makes more work for you and interrupts people in the middle of their work process, slowing them down. If you have built a good team, you can trust them. Check back in at key intervals to make sure that project goals are clear, the task is on track, and communication is maintained.
Building a Strong Team
With a great team at your back, you can multiply your impact. But how do you build a strong team? With time, patience, training, and clear expectations.
New team members will take a while to get adjusted to work routines and requirements. They may need teaching and training before they can accomplish what needs to be done to the standard that’s needed. This is normal. Set aside a generous timeframe for new members of your team to get up to speed—three to six months, for example.
If you’ve hired somebody with the right foundational skills, they will learn your methods in time. However, if you keep hiring and firing team members before they’ve gotten settled in the job, no one will ever fit your needs.
Providing Feedback
We all need feedback in order to improve in our work. Provide regular and non-judgmental feedback to push your team forward in their skills, and ask for feedback in turn. You will not always catch every detail. Ensure that your team members feel comfortable speaking up when they see something going wrong. A highly negative response will discourage them from continuing to do their best work in the future.
D. Productivity Skills that Support Communication
Make sure to practice good communication.
Clarity and Conciseness
When in doubt, say what you mean more simply. The best communicators know that the highest goal is not to sound intelligent—but to be understood, and to understand. If you can answer a question in one sentence, answer it in one sentence. Add the longer, more detailed explanation afterward.
Active Listening
Listen well. Don’t listen just to prepare your response. Listen to understand what the other person is saying.
While active listening may seem like an admonition for elementary school students, it is actually an effective tool to succeed in negotiation and accomplish your goals. In his book Never Split the Difference, top FBI hostage negotiator Chris Voss recalls time after time that actively listening and asking strategic questions defused dangerous situations with international terrorists. He later used the same strategies, which he calls “tactical empathy,” to dominate his counterparts in Harvard’s high-stakes executive negotiations course.
Handling Difficult Conversations
It’s best to handle difficult conversations with straightforwardness, honesty, and respect. No one likes to feel talked down to, be left guessing, or know they’re hearing half-truths and equivocations.
E. Productivity Skills that Help in Problem Solving
Making decision after decision each day drains your energy. This phenomenon is called decision fatigue, and the most effective way to combat it is to make fewer decisions. In the meantime, for decisions you must make, apply the following techniques.
Analytical Thinking
According to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “even very small-scale greening, including indoor green walls and potted plants, may provide effective help for stress relief.”
Exercise is also an effective stress reliever, especially aerobic exercise.
Creative Problem-Solving
Creativity is less often a function of pure originality and more often a result of two unrelated concepts unexpectedly coming into contact with each other. If you are stuck, look at the problem from another angle. Take a break and work on something else. Most of all, make a commitment to learn widely—because you never know where your next idea will come from.
Risk Management
Because we don’t know the future, every choice we make carries some level of risk. How can you mitigate risk in your decision-making? First, make sure you have complete and accurate information. Next, take a hard look at your biases and inclinations. Then, throughout the decision-making process, be sure to consider a range of input variables—what the corporate finance world calls a “sensitivity analysis.”
F. Productivity Skills for Stress Management and Well-being
It’s difficult to be productive when you are under too much stress. A little stress is okay—it often means that you’re pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. But too much stress can derail your health, your focus, and your effectiveness.
Stress Reduction Techniques
According to a study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, “even very small-scale greening, including indoor green walls and potted plants, may provide effective help for stress relief.”
Exercise is also an effective stress reliever, especially aerobic exercise.
Work-Life Balance
Effective boundaries are the key to work-life balance. Author and professor Cal Newport teaches college courses, publishes a high number of academic articles each year, and keeps his family time sacred. He blocks out time for each aspect of his life—and does not let work intrude on his home life.
Mindfulness and Mental Health
In the rush of busyness, it’s easy to bury emotions and say you’ll deal with your mental health later. But stressors don’t just magically disappear. They fester and then reappear. Make time for silence, rest, and mindfulness—actively paying attention to yourself and your environment.
G. Offloading Tasks to a Virtual Assistant
If you practice these skills consistently, you can gain more time and have less chaos. However, personal productivity can take you only so far. When you reach your limits, you may want to hire a virtual assistant.
Identifying Tasks to Delegate
Using the task prioritization strategies we mentioned earlier, evaluate what is most important for you to accomplish. Then delegate other activities. You may not need to respond to every email, schedule every meeting, or revise every document yourself.
Finding and Hiring a Virtual Assistant
How can you find a good virtual assistant? Look for someone who has experience working remotely. Someone may be a good assistant in person, but not have the skills it takes to succeed working from afar. A virtual assistant will also need a high amount of organization and excellent communication skills.
Managing the Virtual Assistant Relationship
Working with an assistant remotely, it’s important to communicate regularly—but also to batch your communication so the day is not eaten away with more emails. You may require fewer meetings than you think. Tools like ClickUp or Trello can help you assign tasks and communicate necessary information without having to go back and forth on a messaging platform.
Wing Assistant Helps You Hire Virtual Assistants with Top-Notch Productivity Skills
Developing your productivity skills can only be helpful in the long run. But if you’ve reached the limits of your own productivity, consider adding a virtual assistant to your team.
Wing Assistant has years of experience connecting high-powered professionals with high-quality virtual assistants. Let us help you make the most of your time.
Abigail is an internationally-based writer, editor and content strategist.
