How to work with higher productivity

Once I started to work, and I was completely satisfied with my performance. But after that, when the problems associated with lost clients, escaped partners, and silent-playing suppliers due to forgetfulness, non-commitment, or untimely execution of cases began, I had a desire to change something in my attitude to work.

I started off small: I read articles, but I thought with my brain. And in the end he built for himself a certain model that would allow, perhaps, to work a little more productively. In general, I did not want to lose money, pragmatically it all.

All of the following is true for me, the director of a small Minsk outsourcing company , but it may well be applicable for a wide range of people: managers, administrators, coders, web designers, designers, and anyone.
')

1. No social networks, news feeds (yes, ill-fated Google Reader), YouTube and other entertainment resources from 9:00 to 18:00, for example. To Habr it also belongs. Even if you really want, even if there is nothing to do. It can only be after hours, or from a mobile device, when you go in a minibus, or stand / sit in a line. Need to overpower yourself. You open your TODO-list, and you start doing things in order. For greater efficiency, you should limit access to certain sites technically: all sorts of blockers are available either as a browser extension or as separate applications. You should also get rid of other time-eaters that do not bring profit: reading tower trading, viewing pictures with kittens, and for radicals - communication with the opposite sex.
   
   
2. Planning for tomorrow. At the end of the working day, already pretty tired, or even tortured, try to add to your to-do list everything that would be desirable to accomplish tomorrow. And try to put down the estimated time of execution. For example: from 9 to 10, to find out if clients sent signed acts, from 10 to 11 to call all customers who have not paid you anything yet.
   
   
3. Any thoughts and ideas are recorded in the TODO. It is in the to-do list, not in the notes. Something like this on “you need to find a partner in the 1C service area” is usually written just in the notes, or in the list of ideas. If you put it in the TODO, then sooner or later the time will come to fulfill this fad. In the case of a list with “just ideas”, no execution is guaranteed at all. Here we will help the next item.
   
   
4. Prioritization of tasks. Roughly speaking, tasks should be prioritized. Priority tasks are logical, of great importance, and should be carried out faster. Meeting with the director of the company, which is a potential client - a priority task. Talking with the sleepy admin is also an important thing, but not so much. Prioritize from 1 to 5 all your tasks, where 5 is a task with the highest priority, requiring immediate solution, and 1 is a task that can be solved. And, in order not to happen that non-priority tasks are not performed at all, tasks should be carried out as follows: for 5 closed tasks with priority 5 there should be 4 tasks with priority 4, ..., 1 task with priority 1. Here you also need to control yourself (as and everywhere, however).
   
   
5. "Hot potato". In childhood we loved to play one entertaining ball game. The essence of the game is simple: the kids throw the ball to each other, imagining that he is hot and, therefore, must be quickly thrown to another. So, when a task arrives, an incident occurs, or any other situation that requires a quick, or even immediate solution, and is related to interaction with colleagues, partners, clients, the task should be closed as quickly as possible by throwing the “ball” on the other side . It is to close, that is, to do its part of the work, and transfer the result further, and to get into the conditional waiting mode yourself. Many times before there were situations of the type: the client waits for a sample contract for proofreading, and we will volunteer with simply submitting the document to the last, which is why we lose the client. Time handed a sample contract = threw the ball to the other side. You can wait for the reaction of the client. Further, he agrees (or disagrees, but that is a completely different story) to sign an agreement, which means the ball is with us again. Make an appointment, once again negotiate the details. And so on. It is necessary to teach this to your employees, it won't get any worse.
   
   

I wrote this post because my task list appeared a month ago to write a post about my experience in GTD. If I were not guided by the principle of compulsory execution of low-priority tasks, then the post might not have been born at all. Following the principles listed above helped me to increase my productivity by several times compared to how I worked at the start, without having the necessary experience. And you know, I really like being productive.