We can probably all agree that there’s a big difference between “staying busy” and “looking busy,” and that the first option is generally the better one in the workplace. The big difference is how productive you actually are.
Let’s go over some simple-to-implement ways you can help your team boost their productivity without even thinking about it.
We’ve all been there—schedules or to-do lists longer than the most deranged coffee order. Sometimes, it seems that the busier one is, the better off they are.
However, being consistently busy can foster many less-than-productive habits, defeating the purpose of taking on so many tasks in the first place. It doesn’t matter how much pressure you’re producing under if what you’re making isn’t of a requisite quality, or if your output doesn’t actually increase.
Fortunately, the opposite is also true: by adopting productive habits and tools into our daily tasks, more can be accomplished without the pressure that being “busy” inherently brings. It’s the practical application of work smarter, not harder.
It’s a lot easier than you’d think to shift from “busy” work to “productive” work. For instance:
Did you know that the modern QWERTY keyboard, designed back in 1870, was initially designed to slow typists down?
The mechanical typewriter tended to jam up if its keys were pressed too quickly. The first version of the QWERTY layout (or QWE.TY, at the time) was initially developed by inventor Christopher Laytham Sholes, printer Samuel W. Soule (replaced by financier James Densmore after Soule’s departure), and mechanic Carlos S. Glidden to solve this very issue. Upon its purchase by arms manufacturer E. Remington and Sons in 1873, the layout was tweaked to become the QWERTY keyboard we know and use today.
This revision was primarily for marketing purposes, as it allowed users to type "TYPEWRITER" using only the top row of keys.
Knowing this history, it seems somewhat ironic that we now implement special key combinations to speed up various tasks, from formatting the text we type (Ctrl+I was used a few times when composing this very article, including just then, wherever you see italics) to interacting with different programs, like reopening a prematurely-closed browser tab via Ctrl+Shift+T.
There are far, far too many to list here in their entirety, so we recommend identifying which will be most helpful for your most frequent workplace tasks.
Email, whether you use Outlook or Gmail, can be a real time sink to keep organized, unless you implement rules that automatically sort different messages on your behalf. In Gmail, this is as simple as clicking the Gear icon to open your Quick Settings, selecting See all settings, and navigating to Filters and Blocked Addresses to create all the filters you need.
In Outlook, you can create these kinds of rules by right-clicking an existing message, hovering over the Rules option, and selecting Create rule when the option pops up
By creating some thoughtful and strategic filters and rules, you can easily clean up your inbox to make it much more user-friendly..
Passwords are hard to remember, by design, and if you’re abiding by accepted password best practices as you should be, you’ll have a frankly ludicrous number to memorize. This is precisely where a password manager shows its value.
A password manager is essentially an encrypted vault that securely stores all your existing passwords for you, protected behind a single master password—the only one you need to remember. Let’s be clear: this is the only secure method of writing down your passwords, and even then, you need to be selective about the password manager you use. The one built into your web browser won’t suffice.
Modern operating systems are designed to help users stay focused on their tasks, especially when they intend to dive into their work fully for a set period. Built-in features will silence notifications for this duration, minimizing the chance of an errant alert pulling their attention away from their task.
Similarly, many collaboration tools allow users to set a status so that their coworkers can see how receptive they are to messages at a given time. It’s a great way to manage expectations about when a response may be expected, or even whether a message is necessary at the moment.
One of the most effective ways to kill productivity is to have your team members all working separately on the same project. Instead of maintaining multiple users’ versions and renaming these files to things like “Expected-Inventory-Changes-v2-v6-FINAL-use-this-one-FINAL-FINAL-Susan-version-THIS-ONE,” cloud platforms allow all your users to work collaboratively on a single document, complete with saved past versions and records of who changed what and when.
While these tricks are certainly handy, they will only provide their real value if they become your standard operations. This means you also need a technology infrastructure built to support these processes.
First Column IT can help with all of the above, from maintaining the hardware and software your business relies on to supporting your team with all of their technology questions and needs. Just imagine how much time having someone to turn to for help can save!
Or, if you’d rather experience these time savings and productivity boosts for yourself, give us a call at (571) 470-5594.
