- Use “The 15 Minute Check-Point” – Write Down Your Achievements Every 15 Minutes
We know what you’re thinking – it may seem a little counterproductive to spend time evaluating your ability to manage time, but believe us, taking 10 seconds to scribble down your utilisation of the last 15 minutes will be the first steps to identifying flaws in your time management.
Perhaps you spend an extra 4 minutes pasting email signatures which could be static, or you hang up and dial instead of transferring calls. Commit to this time-saving exercise for a week, and your productivity barriers will become clear, form there, assign yourself the future task of finding solutions for anything chewing through your time unnecessarily.
2. Find Satisfaction in “Drag and Drop” Efficiency for your Project Management
Are you a delegation extremist? How much time do you spend communicating tasks to your team, confirming deadlines and re-assigning action points?
The rapid rise of the “Project Management System” has most likely infiltrated your facebook news feed, but what does it mean for the productivity of your work place?
Systems like “Monday.com” (formerly Dapulse) are giving you the freedom to bust out your task delegation with sophisticated efficiency analysis and can be integrated with your Dropbox, Google Drive and Mailchimp.
For a task manager a little less complex, “Trello” is a live task card swim-lane style dashboard which simply acts as an electronic drag and drop checklist so that you know who is doing what, when.
3. Learn to Sign Your Documents Digitally
How many terms and conditions have you agreed to with the click of your mouse on a sign-up page lately? When was the last time you watched the person in front of you “sign” an EFTPOS receipt for their coffee? How many trips to the scanner have you made in the past week and why are you still doing this?
If you are a Mac user, simply save your document as a PDF and open it in Preview, use the toolbox icon to write your signature with your mouse and save it for instant “signature dropping” on any PDF. Yes, it is that easy.
The same can be done on Windows using Adobe Reader. Open your PDF and click “fill & sign”.
4. In fact, Reduce Your Paper Use All Together
Signing is inconvenient, paper and ink is expensive and printers often malfunction. The Inquirer have just called it: the printer will become obsolete by 2021.
It won’t be easy at first. There will need to be the odd phone call to an external party proposing a new delivery scheme, and you will need to invest some time to find the suitable document management systems for archiving paperwork. But the minute you do, you will watch your filing and storage areas diminish, your time return and your productivity deepen, as you move one step closer to streamlined innovation.
5. Make Sure the FUTURE is the Star of all Work Place Discussions
Whilst it is important to continually evaluate the errors of the past and use them as learning tools to shape development, be cautious of just how heavily the “problems of the past” feature in your meetings.
A recent “CRM Learning” article found that 80% of “progressive workplace discussions” are focused on the problems of the past and assigning blame. Just how progressive can that be?
Set a new rule for your meetings, the past shall not be mentioned unless it drives positive revision for the FUTURE.
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By Bradie Rachael
