a personal account by dravisha katoch — associate manager, brand marketing at leap.club, as she unpacks her learnings from the first 2 months with us.
27th april — it was my second day at leap.club and i was sitting at 80+ unread emails along with endless tasks on my to-do list till even 6pm for the day. today, while i write this, i’m at 0 unread emails & checking off the last task on my to-do list aka this blog.
i may have mastered productivity by 80% (it’s a continuous process) but can safely say i’ve got it together & you can too! first, let’s pause for a bit and understand why it is a continuous process & chasing to be 100% productive may not be the right way to look at productivity.
i believe one can’t be 100% productive on all days and the journey to being productive first starts with the acceptance of this fact.
again, why? your down-time and thinking days are equally important to keep your output high on other days.
what’s productivity in one word to me? in simple words, it means efficiency. and efficiency builds with mastering little chunks such as scheduling your day, building discipline, automating menial tasks, asking for help (quite underrated) & having a thorough understanding of your energy output throughout the day.
starting with, how to build a schedule (the one you will actually follow > a hundred tasks on your checklist/calendar)?
- first, let’s forget the way we used to build our old school timetables. map your energy levels to your work in place of time.
- how does that look? think of the hours you’re super big on energy. for me, that’s usually between 10am to 1pm. i map most of my thinking & strategy chalking work during those hours which also means a no meeting zone.
- other hack that works greatly for me is the eisenhower matrix. here’s what it is:
4. make google calendar your best friend! block your thinking hours, relaxing hours, important tasks, and reminders before you start your day to make sure you don’t drain out + also finish important tasks while you jump from meetings to meetings. all of this while ensuring you’re not ‘unavailable’ as per your calendar throughout the day.
5. lastly, get rid of that imposter syndrome inside you and get into action. to get you started, here’s a link to one of the masterclasses we hosted at leap.club on overcoming imposter syndrome by megha chawla.
now, how do you stick to following this? here’s what helped me instil that discipline (still learning, but better everyday):
- set your own deadlines & your own rewards. didn’t stick to your calendar? you don’t get to watch your favourite series till next sunday or drink your favourite cocktail for the next two months.
- review your weekly goals every weekend, and map your next week goals ahead of time! ps. looking at your calendar for the next day an evening prior, is a gamechanger.
- seek help & guidance: a lot of us don’t realise this enough but productivity coaches are game-changers. fyi, we have the most sought after coaches on the leap.club app exactly for this — feel free to check them out on the app.
- make a buddy who’s perhaps your friend outside work or even your colleague: keep yourself accountable to them throughout your day.
again, building a schedule & discipline is fantastic but the formula for productivity remains incomplete if we still spend half of our day on menial tasks. here are some hacks to help you sort this:
- auto-label your incoming labels and get them out of your main inbox. have unnecessary emails such as promos, g-drive mails, or any repetitive emails that aren’t important for you to read, label them! here’s how to do that.
- stop reminding people of what they owe you, we often waste a lot of time going back & forth on deliverables. hack: create a google cal invite & name the event as the task/deliverable they owe you and set the time + date.
- if you use slack & g-mail actively, snooze important messages & mail to come back to them at the end of day or whichever block of time you prefer to think & reply. avoid jumping on them as & when they come, it may hinder your focus & current task. needless to say, tell the person you’ll come back by xx, and stick to it.
- learn to automate workflows for repetitive tasks/reminders on slack especially if you manage a team. here’s how to do that.
- underrated: schedule emails a day prior which you think will take most of your morning productivity hours.
this might hit you as a surprise but 2 months back i knew 0 of this, and here’s a quick cheer to sindhu, ragini, karishma, and aarushi from my team at leap.club who helped me learn all of this from the ground up.
if you’ve got colleagues who have your back too, don’t forget to hit them for learnings or even ask them out to be your accountability buddy. lastly, build that discipline, schedule better, seek help (think coaching, and your peers), and go ace that productivity!
