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Uncover your own vision of productivity

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WORKBOOK

Uncover your own vision of productivitywww.everywoman.com i

CONTENTSAbout this workbook 1

Section I: Defining productivity for yourself 3

Section II: Your five ways to productivity 61. Arresting your time thieves 62. The Pareto Principle 133. Your relationship with email 174. Your productivity mindset 225. A team challenge 27

Your personal action plan 29Further reading 32Endnotes 33everywoman experts 34

Uncover your own vision of productivitywww.everywoman.com 1

ABOUT THIS WORKBOOKAt everywoman, we deliver a range of innovative products and resources that unlock the potential and talent of women in business globally. For those women starting out or looking to progress their careers, the everywomanNetwork provides a wealth of personal development resources, advice and inspiration to address the challenges faced at key stages in business.

We produce workbooks on topics that matter most to our members and we’re constantly listening to your views to give you the tools you need to propel you through your career, at a time and place that suits you.

Introduction

Working long hours, checking your emails during personal time, frantically multitasking, rearranging your to-do list to accommodate shifting priorities, not bothering with a to-do list at all… all symptoms of the busy, modern, technologically enabled workplace? Or signs that your productivity has taken a dip? We know this is an issue for many of our members – in a poll carried out during one of our regular webinars, 31% of participants said that they are actively working on their time management, while 55% are grappling with that core productivity-enabling skill: delegation1.

Productivity means something different to every individual and every team – for some it’s a question of never missing a deadline (something only 32% of participants in the same webinar say is true of them). For others (27%) it’s running meetings that are a great use of everyone’s time. For others still, it’s a combination of many different factors. That’s why you’ll start this workbook by defining productivity for yourself. What does a more productive version of you look like? Keep this vision in mind as you progress through the rest of the workbook, tailoring the exercises to your needs, so that they work harder and more efficiently for you and your team – after all, that’s what productivity is all about.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.”

American Businessman,Paul J. Meyer


There is much debate about how technology impacts productivity. There’s no doubt that email has changed the shape of communication in business, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. While technology can certainly aid your productivity, the wealth of apps and websites promising to take you from zero efficiency to productivity hero are only as good as their human input. Before you turn to a device or a download to enhance your productivity, it’s important you examine your own ‘productivity mindset’ to establish how your own belief system might be having just as much of an impact on your output as your messy desk or noisy neighbour has on your to-do list.

The internet is awash with articles promising to make you more productive if you do X, Y and Z. In this workbook, you won’t find a list of things you can do to make you more productive; instead, you’ll uncover your own vision of productivity and what you need to put in place, to make that vision a reality.

We’d love to know how you get on. Share your experience with [email protected]. Good luck!

The everywoman team

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SECTION I: DEFINING PRODUCTIVITY FOR YOURSELF

Let’s begin with a quick check of your confidence in different productive behaviours. In the exercise below, read each of the statements and indicate on the scale where you currently sit. 1 indicates that you strongly disagree with the statement, 10 that you strongly agree. For any that you score on the lower side of the scale, ask yourself how important improving that behaviour is to you, and make a note to focus on that area as you work through the workbook.

1. I delegate tasks efficiently and effectively.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

2. I understand my energy levels and organise my workload accordingly.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

3. I constantly evaluate my own productivity, to avoid falling into bad habits.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

4. I build good relationships with those to whom I can reach out for help when needed.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

5. I automate regular work, so I can spend more time on the important stuff.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

6. I am able to say ‘no’ if saying ‘yes’ means my productivity takes a dip.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

EXERCISE


7. I am able to focus on one thing at a time when necessary.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

8. I prioritise my workload by the tasks that will have the greatest impact on me, my team or my organisation.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

9. I have successful procedures in place to limit the impact on my productivity of regular office interruptions (e.g. email, colleagues, phone calls).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

10. I understand the role I play in the collective productivity of my team.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

What does productivity mean to you?

Spend ten minutes doing some reflective writing using the space overleaf.

Think about: 1. The characteristics of someone you know who you’d describe as highly

productive.2. What does a productive working day look like for you?3. What does an unproductive working day look like for you?4. What does productivity look like in your personal life?5. Delving deeper into your productivity measurements from the previous

exercise. What needs urgent addressing? What would be the impact of moving up one notch on each scale?

EXERCISE


What does productivity mean to you?


SECTION II: YOUR FIVE WAYS TO PRODUCTIVITYIn this section, we present five different ways of thinking about your productivity. We suggest spending ten minutes on each exercise. Some lend themselves to group work, in which case you can suggest working through the exercise in a team meeting and encourage debate among those who rely most on your productivity and vice versa.

1. ARRESTING YOUR TIME THIEVES“You have 24 hours in every day, seven days a week for a total of 168 hours to accomplish what needs to be done in your life. And every day… time thieves gang up on you and work to take some of that precious time away from productive use.”

Dr Donald E. Wetmore, Founder, The Productivity Institute

Productivity and time management go hand in hand. But in busy offices it can sometimes feel that even the best time managers are operating at less than maximum productivity, such is the abundance of ‘time thieves’ lurking around every corner. Dr Wetmore defines eleven members of the ‘inconsiderate troupe’ of time thieves.2 Read through the following descriptions, noting your reactions in the space provided.

EXERCISE


1. POOR PLANNINGDescription:‘People don’t plan to fail but a lot of people fail to plan. Without a plan of action set up before your day begins you are likely to get caught up in ‘stuff’, responding to the loudest voice that gets your time and attention.’ Example:I plan with a to-do list, but sometimes fail to work backwards from a deadline to really

understand how much time I need. When finalising the annual budget in preparation for the

board meeting, this meant the final stages of the project were rushed, and the emphasis was on

number crunching rather than careful analysis. This also impacts on other workload, which ends

up being side-lined in the rush. It's important to build contingency into the plan, and communicate

to business units who may be impacted by me having to say 'no' to ad hoc requests.

Your reaction/notes:

2. CRISIS MANAGEMENT Description: ‘Crisis management, for the most part, is poor time management because you’re rushed and stressed, letting things slip through the cracks and often having to go back and redo what was not done well in the first place.’ Example: All the major ad hoc projects that have come along were not actually ad hoc on reflection -

they were all in the business strategy. I had failed to see them coming, and therefore was

not adequately prepared to take them on. It's easy to plan for the short and long term, but

sometimes my team gets caught out with the medium-term projects that catch up on us.



3. PROCRASTINATIONDescription:‘All the planning in the world does not substitute for the doing. Many find that they just can’t get going on the things that will make a big difference in their success. They have

“permanent potential”.’ Example:If the team is generally performing adequately, it's easy to put off training and development, but

when I invest in getting them to the next level, I know that I always get it back tenfold. It means I

can delegate more, and the new skills elevate everything and everyone in the team.


4. INTERRUPTIONSDescription:‘Unanticipated events coming your way, in person or electronically, can steal your time away. Many interruptions are necessary and part of what you get paid for. However, most are unnecessary thieves of your time.’

Example:We often start Monday by sitting down with the CFO and discussing priorities for the week.

We get started, and then by midday a new priority arrives on our desks. In these situations, it's

important to feedback to senior management the knock-on effects of wasted time - both on

productivity and morale.



5. NOT DELEGATINGDescription:‘“If you want a job done well you better do it yourself.” What a thief! There’s a world of difference between “I do it” and “It gets done”.’

Example:For one-off pieces of work sometimes it really does make sense to take a "I'll do it myself"

attitude. You know it will get done and that the quality will be high. But if you find yourself

taking this attitude to the same task or sorts of tasks over and over again, then it's really time

to sit down and work out why you have a problem with delegation. Ultimately, you're creating

bottlenecks if you won't let go.


6. UNNECESSARY MEETINGSDescription:‘If two or more people get together and nothing productive comes of the time spent, that meeting was unnecessary.’

Example:Sometimes ad hoc meetings come along and though they might be an interruption, they're

important because it's where ideas and opinions get shared. But it's really important that at

the end of the brainstorm or discussion, actions and timeframes are drawn up and distributed -

otherwise nothing has moved forward, nothing has really happened.



7. THE SHUFFLING BLUESDescription:‘Many people manage their time through piles. Piles of ‘to be read’ emails on their computer and lots of ‘to be heard’ voicemails stored away. The piles require frequent review creating the shuffling blues which surrenders valuable time.’

Example:If something's not urgent, it tends to just accumulate on my desk and as that pile gets bigger I get

more stressed by the illusion of falling behind. In reality none of that stuff is urgent. New rule:

If I don't need to read it this week, it doesn't go on my desk. Whatever is left by the end of the

week is to be read in the last hour of Friday when I block out time to do so.


8. POOR PHYSICAL SETUPDescription:‘Not having the things you need the most often within arm’s reach and having a lot of the things you rarely need close by causes you to waste a lot of time wearing out the carpet retrieving what you frequently need.’

Example:A dirty or messy desk definitely impacts on my productivity. Spending just a few minutes tidying

and cleaning at the end of each day is time well spent.



9. POOR NETWORKINGDescription:‘Quality relationships with others can be a huge time saver as they open doors for you with all kinds of opportunities. Failing to develop a good network base will cause you to waste time creating what you might have had through your network.’

Example:I find my work the easiest to do when I have good relationships across the business. That way,

if I don't know the answer to a question, I can announce with confidence that I will get back to

them with the answer, because I know exactly who will know. When I don't know who to ask,

there is always a temptation to investigate myself, when it might not be my responsibility to

know the information. When I find myself in that situation, it's worth stepping back and thinking

about who might be that expert I need to build a relationship with.


10. BAD ATTITUDEDescription:‘Nothing sinks a day more effectively than having a poor attitude. It causes you to dwell on the problems and not the solutions and makes it possible to throw the day away.’

Example:I've gone into certain pieces of work feeling that it's the wrong thing to do - normally when it's

linked to a business decision that I've not bought into 100%. Invariably this means it'll take me

twice as long, as I put in less effort, waste time and get stressed - prolonging the thing I don't

want to do and keeping me back from getting on with the things I want to tackle.



11. NEGATIVE PEOPLEDescription:‘The problem with having negative people around you is you wind up spending a lot of your time listening to their complaints rather than focusing on your success.’

Example:If someone's moaning is starting to drain me or impact my own positivity, I tend to keep a

distance, avoiding any contact unless it's completely necessary. Moaners normally want an

earpiece, and if you don't give them that your relationship becomes more productive. By listening,

there's a danger you become complicit in the moaning, even if you don't join in.


The exercise above may have been enough for you to identify your critical time thieves and develop a strategy for banishing them (or at the very least keeping them at bay). If you feel more investigation is required, draw up a seven-day timetable broken down into waking hour chunks. Keep the timetable with you and at the end of each chunk of time, spend just a few moments jotting down which time thieves have been out in force. You might want to do this outside the office too, to gain a more holistic understanding of what stops you getting on with the things that matter in life as well as in work. Once you’ve identified the time thieves, you can take action.

TIP: You’ll find a timetable for identifying time thieves in the everywomanNetwork workbook on Managing Your Time (see Further Reading).

“Arrest each of these time thieves. Sentence them to solitary confinement and re-claim your productive

time. You deserve it.”

Dr Donald E Wetmore


2. THE PARETO PRINCIPLEThe Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) was named after the economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 20% of the peapods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. The principle determines that 80% of your results come from 20% of your best efforts. In 1941, this paper came to the attention of management consultant Joseph M. Juran. He began to apply the 80/20 rule to quality issues in business, stating that 80% of a problem is caused by 20% of the causes (sometimes called ‘the vital few and the trivial many’). Since then, the Pareto Principle has been used by those seeking optimum productivity by focussing as much of their efforts as possible on the ‘vital few’ and less on ‘the trivial many’.

“All tasks are not created equal. Most of us deal with two fundamentally different types of work, Shallow and Deep: Shallow work is little stuff like email, meetings, moving information around. Things that are not really using your talents. Deep work pushes your current abilities to their limits. It produces high value results and improves your skills.”

Cal Newport, Associate Professor in Computer Science, University of Georgetown

“Shallow work stops you from getting fired — but deep work is what gets you promoted.”

Laura Vanderkam, Author, What The Most Successful People Do At Work


Let’s look at how you can practically apply the Pareto Principle.

In space provided later, define a task that you perform as part of your working day (you may find it useful to come back to this each day for a week until you’ve captured every task). You might find it easier to make a note of each task as you perform it in your smartphone ‘notes’ app, and then import them into a word doc or excel sheet to play around with the categorisation.

Once you have a complete list, highlight those that could be considered ‘deep’ work (see the quotation from Cal Newport in the introduction to this section to learn about the distinction between the two types of work). In making your decision, consider the following criteria:• the extent to which the task produces high quality results for you and the

business; • whether the task utilises your core talents, skills and abilities; • whether performing the task is likely to result in advancement.

Next, spend some time reflecting on the task. What needs to change for you to have more time for ‘deep work’? To help you work through this task we’ve provided a completed example.

TEAM WORK: This is a valuable exercise to do as part of a team meeting, encouraging debate around shallow and deep work, and brainstorming ideas for how you can collectively make more space for productive deep work, while limiting the potential for time thieves and shallow work to detract.

EXERCISE


Example

MY TASKSMonday- Collating and analysing weekly sales

figures.

- Distributing work to team and staying on

top of who's doing what.

- Recruitment - dealing with agents, sifting

CVs, preparing for and running interviews.

Tuesday- Preparing for the month-end budgetary

report.

- Preparing for and attending meetings

with senior managers.

- On the job coaching and mentoring team.

Wednesday- Dealing with ad hoc requests for financial

information.

- Reporting the numbers into templates

(sometimes multiple templates, depending

on stakeholders' requirements).

- Turning financial reports into PowerPoint

presentations.

Thursday- Preparing for and running 1-2-1s with my

team.

- Challenging business units on their

weekly figures.

- Briefing senior figures on the contents of

financial reports.

Friday- Preparing for and running the team

meeting.

- Identifying future opportunities and risks

from financial information.

- Responding to queries about contents of

reports.

DEEP WORKWhen analysing financial information under time pressures, it’s easy to put together very

top line information to fit in a template. What’s much more valuable and promotion-worthy

is a deep dive into the numbers resulting in some key business actions to present in senior

meetings. To free up time to do this I could:

1. Challenge team to find more flexible templates which can be used for multiple stakeholders,

rather than wasting time churning out the same numbers in X different ways.

2. Find a way of visualising project process, so there’s less time spent by me checking up on

people.

3. Put emphasis for 1-2-1 management on each individual in question, rather than me always

leading.

4. Appoint point people on rota basis for ad hoc financial information requests from

business. Communicate the point person to the business at start of each week.


MY TASKS

DEEP WORK


3. YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH EMAILThe keynote speech of the British Psychological Society’s annual conference rarely makes headlines. Yet when Sir Cary Cooper, Professor of Organisational Psychology & Health at Manchester Business School, proposed that Information Technology is resulting in ‘workplace overload’ and that a tendency for checking emails in bed, at the dinner table and while on holiday needs urgent addressing, he suddenly found his phone ringing off the hook.

Sir Cary had suggested that the UK’s obsession with the send/receive button was one of the factors behind Britain’s productivity gap with other G7 nations (17% below the average of other leading industrial nations and at its widest since 1992). Every journalist from every major publication wanted to know the same thing – how do we deal with this ‘email epidemic’?

EMAIL: THE FACTS AT A GLANCE

67% of holidaymakers say that falling behind on email is a major source of anxiety.3

Being distracted by an email notification increases the time it takes to complete a task by one third.4

Completely disconnecting from email for one week has been shown to drastically reduce stress levels.5

French company Atos found that barely 10% of its sent mails warranted attention. Yet almost three quarters of workers estimated they spent 25% of their time on inbox management – a fact which caused 82% significant stress, and an enduring pressure to ‘be seen’ on email outside office hours - to the tune of 20 hours per employee per week.6

In 2014, 108.7 billion business emails were sent each day around the world. This figure if predicted to grow by 6% by 2018.7

A McKinsey report found that the average employee spends 28% of their time on email.8


Over the last few years, many multinational corporations have introduced new policies around its employees’ email usage. Some have shut down servers at 5.30pm, making it impossible for workers to email out of hours. Others have banned email altogether, putting in place an instant messaging system for more efficient and immediate communications.

You may have already identified email as shallow work or one of your time thieves. Spend some time reflecting on your relationship with your inbox. Where can you claw back some time for more productive deep work?

1. In what ways does email facilitate your productivity? Give specific examples.e.g. When I'm requesting financial analysis from someone on my team, e-mail is

sometimes the best mechanic. Being really specific, in bullet points, can sometimes

eliminate ambiguity of personal interpretation. That way you also have a record of the

email to fall back on if things go off piste.

EXERCISE


2. How can e-mail be utilised to enhance your productivity further? e.g. By blocking out time at the start of the week to email information requests to everyone

whose help I need, I would eliminate the last-minute rush/panic for missing data. Use subject

lines to indicate action required and deadlines within

3. In what ways does email weaken your productivity? Give specific examples.e.g. Sometimes I notice my team slipping into the mindset that once they've sent an email,

it's now someone else's problem, and if that information doesn't come back to them, it's the

recipient's fault.

4. How can this learning be utilised to lessen the impact of email on your productivity?e.g. Encourage a mindset whereby writing an email doesn’t count as an item on the to-do list in

its own right. Finding the information is the item on the to-do list and email is just the process by

which you might do that. Understand your audience - who is going to respond best to email, who

would rather a quick call or even a 15-minute coffee chat?


5. What solutions can you/your team brainstorm to optimise email usage for productivity? Coming up next, you’ll find some stimuli to get your thinking or group work started – remember, these are opinions and you and your team are free to debate them and see what works for you.

1. Use 'cc' in emails with caution. Only include recipients who either have an action contained

therein, or who could really benefit from the information.

2. New team rule: Once an email chain has gone back and forth more than once, stop the chain

and have a conversation. If more and more people start chipping into an email thread, you're

clearly not going to get to a resolution, and some poor person comes back from a meeting and

has 25 emails to wade through.

3. Subject lines matter - make them count. In as few words as possible, define the contents or

what you're asking for.

4. Always be polite, but don't waste time with lengthy openers. Get to the point of what you

need and say it in as few words as possible.


BUSINESS LEADERS DISCUSS EMAIL

“While email may be the most prevalent technology used in the workplace today, it is certainly not the most efficient [and] is broken because it is being used for things it was not designed to do - real time communication and collaboration on work”

Jay Simons, President, Atlassian

“Remember that whenever you send an email to more than one person, you are creating a community.”

Ron Ashkenas, Partner Emeritus,

Schaffer Consulting

“Email should be treated like making a phone call. Sending it at a time that is convenient for you but not for the other person feels kind of selfish.”

Dan Calista, CEO, Vynamic

Sources 9

“The problem with email is that actionable things are completely mixed in with the irrelevant and non-actionable.”

Deidre Paknad, CEO, Workboard

“The problem is not the medium itself but the volume. If people only receive 5-10 messages a day, your message will get through. But we don’t.”

Phil Nunn, Operations & Channel

Development Manager, SnapComms

“For most of us, our email archives represent the largest repository of personal data we have about how we manage others and get our work done.”

H. James Wilson, Managing Director of

Information Technology & Business Research,

Accenture Institute For High Performance.


4. YOUR PRODUCTIVITY MINDSET“A productive mindset is one that makes the best use of your resources - your time, your energy and your efforts. It is not trying to do everything and be everything, or even doing it in the quickest way possible. It is making the most and best of what you have while enjoying the process.”

Zorka Hereford, Author, Essential Life Skills.net

The three previous sections have focussed on external factors that impact your productivity – interruptions such as colleagues, emails and meetings. They’ve also touched on behaviours, such as failure to delegate or plan, which also undermine your ability to reach optimal productivity. At the root of these behaviours is a particular mindset: a belief that you hold about yourself, your workplace and how things should be done.

Spend some time looking back over the exercises from previous sections. What can you distil about the behaviours you demonstrate and how they impact either positively or negatively on your productivity? Once you’ve noted these, think about the beliefs they are rooted in.

Positive behaviours Impacts on productivity

Belief

e.g. Delegating operational tasks to team members wherever possible.

e.g. Investing time in training my teams now, saves me time in the long run, meaning I can focus on long-term thinking and planning, while my team members acquire essential new skills.

e.g. I’m not scared of letting my employees shine: by giving them opportunities to grow I am seen as a more competent manager, than if I tried to do everything myself.

EXERCISE


Positive behaviours Impacts on productivity

Belief


Negative behaviours Impacts on productivity

Belief

e.g. I plan my workload, but typically let curveballs throw me off course.

e.g. Fighting fires mean that the to-do list items most aligned with my personal objectives are often de-prioritised.

I can’t say ‘no’ to colleagues or bosses when they ask for my help.


Once you’ve identified any beliefs that are impeding your ability to be as productive as possible, spend some time reflecting on these and how you could begin to make tweaks to arrive at a more productive way of working. Who or what could help you in your journey to cultivating more productive beliefs? Over the page, you’ll find some quotes, facts and opinions on productivity mindsets – use these to steer your self-reflection if you need a bit of stimulation.

EXERCISE


SOME THINKING ON A PRODUCTIVITY MINDSET

“Slow Down. Sometimes we get so caught up in what’s happening in the moment we forget to breathe deeply. When unanticipated situations crop up, stress is a natural reaction. However, remembering to breathe deeply can calm the hectic moments and allow you to re-focus on where you want this day to go. This reflective pause helps you experience improved concentration and an increase in energy. Relaxed bodies also have greater self-confidence—just what you need when things seem to be spinning out of control. Pause. Reflect. Refocus.”

Source: Trainingmag.com10

“If not me, who? If not now, when?” Attributed to historical Jewish leader, Hillel The Elder. Quoted by Emma Watson in her #HeForShe speech at the United Nations (September 2014)

Source: United Nations12

Sources 9

“If you want to experience the best, you have to be your best. And this means taking care of you. We have all had someone tell us we need to get enough sleep each night and that we should never skip breakfast right? But what about the 24 hours in between all that? In an effort to create a more productive mindset for ourselves, we must learn to check into ourselves throughout the day.”

Source: Entreprenuer.com11

“Some days you know exactly what you need to work on, and other days you spin your wheels. Is that because your leadership is unclear, or because the team dynamic has confused priorities? Teams are great for brainstorming, research, and execution, but at some point, a leader has to make a decision. You can demand actionable direction, and find out who really makes the final decisions.”

Source: Forbes13


5. A TEAM CHALLENGE

That was the conclusion of an experiment into productivity carried out by HR leaders at Google. They noticed that almost every project happening within Google was driven by teams. So, they asked themselves: what if instead of an HR department whose services were aimed, by and large, at individuals, we focused instead on supporting teams? The vision was that every time a project team needed to be formed, HR could advise the project leader which individuals to pick, based on varying balances of men and women, extroverts and introverts, thinkers and doers and so on. Google’s Director of People Analytics, described it as a ‘Pokémon approach to team staffing’.

The experiment didn’t work, and for the reason highlighted above: productive teams don’t just rely on a bunch of productive individuals working together; there needs to be a dynamic of productivity among the team too. The experiment continued in a different vein, the attempt to unpick what set apart the most productive teams within the organisation. And Google thinks it hit the nail on the head. Their most effective teams, it says, share five characteristics.

The five characteristics of Google’s most productive teams, in descending order of importance.

“The characteristics of individual members don't have a large effect on team

performance. What does matter is the dynamics of the team as a whole.”14

Leigh Buchanan, Editor-at-large, Inc.magazine

5. IMPACT Members believe their

work will have a positive impact on the organisation

or on the world.

2. DEPENDABILITY Members are confident

their coworkers will deliver what is expected of them.

3. STRUCTURE & CLARITY Members understand their individual roles, those of others, and of the team

overall.

4. MEANING Members feel their work,

and that of the team, is important.

1. PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY Members feel they can be vulnerable and are safe to

share ideas.


As either a team leader or a member of a team, spend some time thinking about each of these factors in turn, beginning with psychological safety.1. To what extent is psychological safety present in your team? 2. Give an example of when psychological safety has been present in your

team.3. What circumstances enabled psychological safety in your example?4. What was the outcome?5. Give an example of when psychological safety has been absent or not

present enough.6. What circumstances were in place in your example?7. What was the outcome?8. What would need to happen in order to move one step further up the

scale?

If the circumstances are right within your team, you might consider running this exercise as a team brainstorm, or as 1-2-1 brainstorms with individual members, allowing ten minutes per factor. Remember that no blame should be apportioned to individual members where factors are not present in optimum measures. The emphasis should be on, ‘How can we be more productive as a team?’ with each individual playing their part.

EXERCISE


1. Choose a time thief. What is your plan for eradicating this over the coming days and weeks?

2. Thinking about how you define deep work, what practical measures can you take to enable more time for this?

3. Having identified the environmental factors impact your productivity, what steps will you take to develop or limit these?

YOUR PERSONAL ACTION PLAN


4. What steps will you take to foster a more productive mindset (for yourself

and within your team)?

5. What role can you play in making your team a more productive whole?

6. Summarise below any further actions you have identified as necessary to

improving your productivity.


7. Create your productivity resources list. You’ve highlighted some of the core areas you want to work on. Now break them down into keywords (e.g. time management, delegation, energy levels, limiting beliefs). Search the everywomanNetwork and bookmark the articles, webinars and workbooks that can best support your development in these areas. If there’s anything missing, get in touch – we always want to know what content our members need.

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FURTHER READINGeverywomanNetwork resourcesManaging Your Time

In this workbook, you’ll delve deeper into how you use your time, understanding where you are under-utilising this precious resource, and how you can ensure you’re as effective as possible.

Managing your team’s time

Listen back to this webinar, which will help you empower your team to manage their own time and to give you the information that you need to be an effective resource manager.

60 minutes to motivation

Motivation is a workplace characteristic that’s easy to spot in both abundance and its absence. This workbook is designed to give you a quick insight into motivation – why it matters, and how, as you embark on a fresh challenge or a daunting task, you can better understand its intricacies to ensure your own tank is full.

An introduction to resource management

This workbook is designed to raise your awareness of the resources available to you and how you can make the best possible use of them so that you, your team and your projects are as successful as possible.

Other recommended resourcesFreakonomics podcast: How to be more productive available at freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-more-productive/

Manage your day-to-day: Build your routine, find your focus & sharpen your creative mind by Jocelyn K Glei & 99U (Amazon publishing, 2013)

Unsubscribe: How to kill email anxiety, avoid distractions and get real work done by Jocelyn K. Glei (PublicAffairs: 2016)

What The Most Successful People Do At Work (ebook) by Laura Vanderkam (Penguin special portfolio, 2013)

https://www.everywoman.com/my-development/workbooks/managing-your-time

https://www.everywoman.com/my-development/webinars/managing-your-teams-time

https://www.everywoman.com/my-development/workbooks/60-minutes-motivation

https://www.everywoman.com/my-development/workbooks/introduction-resource-management

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-more-productive/

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-more-productive/


ENDNOTES1. Polls carried out during everywomanNetwork webinars Managing long-term projects and Managing your team’s

time (October 2016)2. Adapted and printed with permission from Dr. Donald E. Wetmore, The Productivity Institute3. Survey by Sunshine.co.uk4. Effects of email addiction and interruptions on employees by Marulanda-Carter and Jackson (Journal of Systems

and Information Technology: 2012)5. ‘A Pace Not Dictated by Electrons’: An Empirical Study of Work Without Email by Mark, Voida and Cardello (Associ-

ation for Computing Machinery: 2012)6. uk.atos.net/en-uk/home/we-are/zero-email.html 7. radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf 8. mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-social-economy 9. 1-4: fortune.com/2015/04/21/email-fix/ 5: hbr.org/2011/07/email-etiquette-and-the-perils 6: hbr.org/2014/01/use-

email-auto-analytics-to-tame-your-inbox 10. trainingmag.com/content/building-productive-mindset11. entrepreneur.com/article/27368112. youtube.com/watch?v=gkjW9PZBRfk 13. forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/08/16/shifting-your-productivity-mindset/#707a6403693414. inc.com/leigh-buchanan/most-productive-teams-at-google.html

https://www.everywoman.com/my-development/webinars/managing-long-term-projects



http://www.balancetime.com/

http://Sunshine.co.uk

http://uk.atos.net/en-uk/home/we-are/zero-email.html

http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Email-Statistics-Report-2014-2018-Executive-Summary.pdf

http://www.mckinsey.com/industries/high-tech/our-insights/the-social-economy

http://fortune.com/2015/04/21/email-fix/

http://hbr.org/2011/07/email-etiquette-and-the-perils

http://hbr.org/2014/01/use-email-auto-analytics-to-tame-your-inbox

http://hbr.org/2014/01/use-email-auto-analytics-to-tame-your-inbox

http://trainingmag.com/content/building-productive-mindset

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/273681

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkjW9PZBRfk

http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2012/08/16/shifting-your-productivity-mindset/#707a64036934

http://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/most-productive-teams-at-google.html


EVERYWOMAN EXPERTSeverywoman creates workbooks on topics that matter most to our Network members. We draw on member surveys and the latest thinking from the academic and business worlds, as well our own experiences as we navigate our careers. Each workbook offers practical advice, enabling tangible actions for your daily work lives ahead of those important performance reviews.

Maxine Benson MBE & Karen Gill MBECo-founders of everywoman, Karen and Max have spoken to thousands of women about the challenges they face at work. Through their own experiences of starting a business, they uncovered a real need for a network where female entrepreneurs and businesswomen could interact and share experiences. The everywomanNetwork, launched in 2013, serves as a truly global tool to enable members the world over to propel their careers and businesses through online membership.

everywoman workbook teamRebecca Lewis, Associate EditorVictoria Pavry, Head of ContentKate Farrow, Senior Client Manager

Any topics you’d like to see covered on the everywomanNetwork? We’d love to hear from you: [email protected]

COPYRIGHT© 2016 Everywoman Ltd. All rights reserved worldwide. This publication is protected by law and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: no part of this publication may be reproduced and you are not allowed to make copies and distribute or sell this workbook to anyone else. You may only use it if you are a member of the everywomanNetwork and have downloaded it from www.everywoman.com.No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Everywoman Ltd or the authors/experts.

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