The COVID-19 pandemic has put major aspects of our lives on hold. However, what needs to keep on keeping on is work. The stay-at-home order has kept many agencies, including ours, to consider arrangements where our employees can work safely from home. For our part being content producers, a strictly skeletal team following strict preventive measures handles content production safely in our HQ.
COVID-19 has distorted how Filipinos work. Indeed, it’s changing the way we work every day. It’s a challenge that every company must face head-on. In today’s post, we are looking at how we can keep our work in mint shape as professionals so that we can deliver our best work regardless of a global pandemic.
Finding a productivity framework that works
Productivity frameworks guide your daily work. Famous examples include David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method, which teaches to document outcomes and break down bigger projects into actionable tasks. It’s detailed on Allen’s book of the same name, which you can purchase via Amazon here.
Other examples include the 1-3-5 method, which tells us to keep our daily to-do at a maximum of:
- 1 priority “no-matter-what” task,
- 3 valuable but doable tasks,
- and 5 quick-win tasks.
The time-blocking method recommends blocking your time ahead to keep your time focused on one specific task at a time.
It’s worth noting that no singular framework will work for everyone. You’ve got to find what works best for you.
I don’t subscribe to just one; I take what works from each and integrate them into my process, which takes after the TEA principle. I’ve written about it at length on my blog, but basically, it reminds me that productivity is made up of exhaustible factors—time, energy, and attention—and is therefore finite. It’s up to me to allocate these however I see fit throughout the day.
Becoming monogamous with one tool
The bevy of productivity apps these days leads people down a spiral of choosing which one works best for them. While it’s always good to experiment, so often it comes down to what we make of our chosen productivity tool and optimizing it to fit our work styles.
Meaning, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a fancy-schmancy project management software or a humble Excel spreadsheet or even a post-it note. What matters is how you use them to move the needle forward with your work.
For my own work, I use Notion. It’s a free tool designed to serve multiple purposes for your work. You can use it as a note-taker, a to-do list, a project management tool, or a digital journal—the list goes on. I personally use it to manage projects where I’m to collaborate with other people.
Here’s what my Dashboard looks like for my work here at Arsenal.
While Arsenal, as a team, doesn’t use Notion (we use Workplace!), I decided to build this out for my own use. As a big fan of work transparency, I made my weekly task list visible to all my colleagues. They have access to my ongoing tasks and projects and can track my progress in real-time.
Spending time to understand how a productivity tool works enables professionals like you and me to empower our work as well as those of our colleagues.
Normalizing asynchronous communication
Your team will most likely have their ways set in terms of team communication. While it’s important to honor that, it’s just as crucial to communicate the way you do it most clearly. For me, that’s what productivity-ists call ‘asynchronous communication’.
Put simply, asynchronous communication is a way of communicating where the recipient is not required to respond immediately—unless the matter at hand is urgent. It also promotes saying your point concisely, which is well and good in that we’re all enslaved to speech bubbles and notification pings.
The wrap-up
Staying on top of your personal productivity is ever more critical, especially in a world where COVID-19 seems to persist. By employing processes even on a personal level, you’re setting yourself (and your team) up for success.
How do you handle productivity in your team? Chime in the comments and let’s discuss.