By Andrew May
LET'S face it, for many people, the way they are working just isn't working. Life as we know it is getting faster and we are constantly asked to do more with less at work. The obvious solution seems to be putting in more hours, but this rarely solves the underlying problem.
The Ernst & Young Productivity Pulse surveyed 11,500 people and found lack of productivity was costing Australian businesses more than $41 billion a year in wages alone. The survey found one in three Australian workers wasted almost a quarter of their day at work and the top time-wasting activities were waiting for approval from a higher authority, reading and responding to emails and technology issues/distractions.
Start each day with a mindful approach and prioritise important work.Credit: Louie Douvis
It found that unproductive workers took fewer breaks, spent more time travelling to work and less time on leisure. In contrast, highly productive workers spent two-thirds of their time on meaningful work, they took longer breaks, spent less time travelling to work and allocated more time to leisure.
My productivity theory is simple: do more of what really matters at work and then have a buffer to have a life outside as well. Here are some tips to do this:
Daily warm-up: Start the day with a mindful approach and work out the best way to invest your time. What are the important tasks you need to accomplish? Who do you need to speak to? What reports or proposals do you need to finish?
Tame technology: Turn off email pop-up alerts. Don't let email control your day, check email five or six times a day rather than every three minutes. At night, turn off digital devices and connect with family and friends.
Compress meetings: The reason most people meet for 60 minutes is because Microsoft Outlook has 60-minute appointments. Compress the majority of meetings to 45 minutes.
Pick up the phone: Get out of the habit of long games of email tennis. Follow the two email rule: if you're still unclear after two emails revert to picking up the phone.
Forced isolation: At least once a week turn off all electronic devices, remove distractions and work on high-end cognitive tasks such as reports, thinking, strategy, writing, etc.
Work in waves: The human body is not a machine and we work best when we oscillate between periods of high concentration and rest.
Change expectations: Take the time to talk to colleagues, customers, family and friends about your new productivity rules. If you suffer from Noddy syndrome (always saying yes to everyone) you need to train yourself to start saying ''no''. The old notion ''great managers are available 24/7'' needs to be rewritten to ''great managers are available at certain times during the day and work smart the rest of the day''.