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Productivity Coach's Corner: The ROI on Your Productivity
January 29, 2008
By Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA, and Jodi Womack, MA
One key to increasing your productivity is to streamline repetitive behaviors. During your workday, make a tally sheet to inventory all of the activities you do multiple times per day. Some examples of these most common tasks are sending e-mails to your team and taking notes after meetings.
After you have your quantitative list, make an effort to streamline the items you do most often. By streamlining, I mean remove any unnecessary steps or features that slow the process down. By starting with the activities you do most often, you'll experience the greatest return on investment (ROI) for your time, focus, and effort.
Here are a few easy steps to take: Most e-mail programs have a speed key to make a new e-mail. In Outlook, the speed key for making a new e-mail is Control-Shift-m (for message). Speed keys are proven to be faster than clicking the mouse by about three seconds. That might not sound like much, but if you're sending 50-plus e-mails a day, that's a savings of at least 12 minutes per week for just learning one speed key. Over the course of a month, that equals 50 minutes, and more than 10 hours per year. If you're processing more than 50 e-mails a day, your time savings is even greater.
Another activity to streamline is note-taking on the run. I replaced my old digital (tape) recorder with Jott.com, a free service that I call and leave a verbal message of my meeting notes. Within 5 minutes, I receive an e-mail with the typed transcription of my message. This process cuts out many of the redundant steps. I no longer need to re-listen to my recording and transcribe it.
When I receive the e-mail message from Jott.com, I can copy and paste it into a new e-mail to a client, into my customer relationship manager (CRM), or into my to-do list. This process helps me debrief meetings more effectively because I've removed the barrier of sitting down to type up a report.
Now, I call Jott as soon as I drive away from a meeting and relate all of the key points, next steps, and deadlines into the message. The e-mail with my entire message transcribed shows up before I even get back to my desk. Then I open that e-mail, do some minor editing, and send out my report. This process has cut days off of my debrief time.
Once you start considering your investment into productivity with ROI in mind, even the smallest behavioral and system changes add up to hours of saved work.
Jason W. Womack, MEd, MA, and Jodi Womack, MA, founded their personal development education company, which enhances organizational performance through customized training and coaching. For more Workplace Performance tips, visit www.JasonWomack.com.
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