5 Step method to become more productive at work

As a working professional it can be tricky to finish all work during working hours. We struggle, stumble and many times fail to finish work on time. This affects our work-life balance thereby leaving us either exhausted or frustrated. Hence it is important to understand that work is meant to be finished on time. Hardwork is key to a successful career. But hard work alone will be insufficient. One needs to have a broader understanding of the value of work being done. One way to do so is to develop work management skills.

Below is a methodological approach to build work management skills that will increase overall productivity at work.

Step-1 Identify

First step is to figure out all the routine tasks assigned to you. Open a fresh spreadsheet file and list down all these routine activities in a column. In case you are not sure whether a work is routine or ad-hoc then there are a few ways to figure it out – ask your manager, check your KRA or job description, based on your past experience recall whether the work has a specific period before it is to be performed again.

This list of tasks must be close to an exhaustive list and should include all tasks even if it is a 5-min a month task. Do this step in a spreadsheet.

Step-2 Measure

Once step-1 is done, the next step is to put a number of hours spent on each task per month. Put close to the exact number of hours against each task. Please note that the number of hours mentioned here includes routine tasks only. Apart from routine tasks, there might be a number of ad-hoc tasks that you might be doing. So keep that in mind. 

A usual workday is 6-10 work hours. A work month is roughly 20-22 days long. Working professionals on average are productive for as much as 60-80% of work hours. Out of this productive time, depending on your role routine work should range should occupy 50 to 80% of time. 

Thus total productivity hours that must go into doing routine work is about 6-10 hours per day x 20-22 days per month x 60-80% x 50-80% = 40-140 hours per month. This is the amount of time you are supposed to spend to finish your routine work. 

If you are unable to finish work during office hours then by now you should be able to get a sense of it here by looking at the total number of hours spent on routine tasks listed earlier.

Step-3 Plan

After finishing the previous step and understanding the current situation, now it is time to prioritize and choose an appropriate action for each task mentioned in the list earlier. Order the list in decreasing order with respect to time spent on finishing each task. Pick the top n tasks (usually 3 to 5 tasks) that contribute to 80% or above of total time spent currently for completion.

Focus on these most time consuming tasks and ask the following questions:

Question: Am I multitasking when I do these tasks?

YES: Multitasking is a false belief. Give full attention to work and it will get finished faster with close to no mistakes. 

Question: Am I doing a lot of manual work on these tasks?

YES: Standardize the work by creating a format, template, form or using some automation tool. Most of the time you can get a creative zero cost solution for reducing manual work through brainstorming with colleagues and/or your manager. Internet research can help a lot here plus this will improve your research skills. In this age of technology, most of the computer based manual work can be automated. In case you are not good then you can always ask for help in your office from someone who may know a solution for such a thing. Try using formal and informal communication channels to improve your chances for getting a solution quickly.

For remaining tasks that take about 20% or less of total time spent currently for completion. Schedule each task for the whole month on the basis of their expected deadline and frequency.

Step-4 Execute

Once you have figured out what is to be done. It is time to execute and this is the most critical part. Your day must start with routine work. Until unless explicitly asked by your manager to finish some ad-hoc task before everything else, you should not start your day with ad-hoc tasks. Ad-hoc tasks arise when someone doesn’t schedule important work. Hence to make yourself more productive focus yourself on the core routine tasks and aim at finishing them. 

It is hard to switch work habits but stick to the plan. Finish scheduled routine tasks first. Then move towards ad-hoc work. Keep looking for solutions for manual work and start testing the solution. Match trial run with the output of your manual work. During the transition it may not be clear whether you are actually becoming more productive or not but stick to the plan and you must experience it within a month or two.

Step-5 Repeat

Improving productivity is not a one-time activity. It is a process where you need to repeat step-1 to step-4 again and again till you hit the 40-100 work hour a month mark as per your role in the company. By the way you can continue the process even after getting things done on time to see further gains. 

Do not forget that it is vital for you to keep your manager updated about the progress. He may find you more suitable for complex time-consuming or even fun tasks that he may have denied you earlier because of your earlier situation.

Conclusion

Now that you have gone through all the steps you must be wondering, if it was so simple why people still struggle to become more and more productive. The answer is not that straight forward. There are many reasons – work culture, personal work ethic, manager’s response etc etc. Keeping these aside, if you really wish to excel then the above method should work for you as it did for many teams I handled. Hope it helps you as well. Thanks for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.