How to Be More Efficient at Work

In this episode of Business Systems Explored, we talk to Zachary Sexton, host of The Productivity Show for Asian Efficiency.

Whether you’re a maker or a manager, you could use a little more efficiency at work. It’s not like you’re choosing to goof off and doing a Homer Simpson, but you might be spending way too much time on email or less important work.

But how do you know? What really is the most important task for today?

We’ve looked at this topic a lot on the Process Street blog, but today it’s a focus on improving efficiency at work from the perspective of building a culture of productivity in your workplace.

Zachary tells us the tools, systems and methods he’s learned while running Asian Efficiency’s Productivity Show and the Buckets consultancy.

Listen to this week’s episode to supercharge your productivity, and find out what to do when you have a few bad days in a row.

Links to listen

• Listen on iTunes (iOS)
• Stitcher (Android)
• Listen on Business Systems Explored website

And remember, if you like the show, please leave us a review and rating.

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Quote to tweet:

“Productivity applies to everybody. There’s no person out there who doesn’t want to do more” (tweet this)

Show notes:

• How would you go about assessing your productivity?
• How to become more efficient and do more with your time
• The importance of writing down standard operating procedures
• Creating engaging standard operating procedures for your team
• Running a competition to see who can write documentation the fastest!
• Hiring based on personality tests
• Getting the best idea of what your team’s doing day to day
• Why improving your productivity is a self-perpetuating system
• The biggest time wasters you’re falling prey to
• How to start every day off in the most productive way
• The #1 thing you should never spend too much time on
• Using JIRA for non-development projects
• Storing documentation in Confluence
• How to spend drastically less time on email
• Tips for working within email
• Knowing what time of day to do which tasks
• Why people spend 6 hours a day in email, and how to avoid it
• The 2-minute rule of email processing
• Tips for managing incoming emails from clients
• The quickest way to batch-respond to emails
• Using a CRM to supercharge your communication productivity
• Building emails out of snippets
• Growing a team based on each individual’s productivity strengths
• Deploying a culture of productivity in your team
• Getting 100% of your team on board with new initiatives
• Tips for productive meetings
• Using the MAPS system for better meetings
• What do you do if you have several bad days in a row?

Tools & mentions:

• Standard Procedure: http://www.tonylbrown.com/book
• I Done This: https://home.idonethis.com/
• HipChat: https://www.hipchat.com/
• Asana: https://asana.com/
• JIRA: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Confluence: https://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence
• Contactually: http://www.contactually.com/
• Inbox by Gmail: https://www.google.com/inbox/
• SaneBox: https://www.sanebox.com/
• Airtable: https://airtable.com/
• Jing: https://www.techsmith.com/jing.html
• Audacity: http://www.audacityteam.org/
• Followup.cc: https://followup.cc/
• Boomerang: http://www.boomeranggmail.com/
• Close.io: https://close.io/
• SalesforceIQ: https://www.salesforceiq.com/
• Help Scout: https://www.helpscout.net/
• Bonusly: https://bonus.ly/
• Asian Efficiency #87: http://www.asianefficiency.com/podcast/087-john-poelstra/
• Habitica: https://habitica.com/

Contact:

• Twitter: @zwsexton
• Buckets: http://www.buckets.cc/
• Asian Efficiency: http://www.asianefficiency.com/