Confidence in your pocket podcast series - Productivity Confidence
EM: Hello there, it’s Eilidh here and it’s our next series of Confidence in Your Pocket and today with Jane we’re going to be talking about productivity, confidence and how it affects your productivity. So I’m Eilidh, I’m the Speaker for Confidence, helping people, empowering them to be more productive, resilient and confident. So my good friend, Jane.
JAG: Good morning everybody and welcome. My name is Jane Adshead-Grant and I’m an executive coach specialising in creating thinking environments to help you think with courage, with rigour, with imagination and with grace so that you and your team can achieve more for yourselves and your business.
EM: So, let’s go to productivity then and how do people discover more about productivity, what it actually means?
JAG: Well for me, Eilidh, I feel that productivity is becoming increasingly important in terms of people asking me, “How do I become more productive?” The reason I think it’s important today is that we are often, in our environment, tight on time and low on resources and therefore with this new, evolving environment we’re in, feeling and being on top of things and enabling us to be more productive, I think is really critical.
EM: Well, we both have experience in productivity and all that it means, but what’s your back story? How did you get involved in this Jane?
JAG: Well that’s a great story. For me personally it’s because I love to achieve and there are lots of things that I want to do in my life. I’m really excited to be involved in coaching on a one-to-one, working with leaders and their teams, training others in what I do, speaking, and therefore in order for me to be involved in the various activities all around the area of interest, which is helping people think well for themselves through the thinking environment, I need to be productive. I need to be focused. I need to achieve what I want, given the time that I have. It’s around really doing and thinking about what I want to do, because there’s such a variety in working with a number of clients enabling me to do that requires me to be productive.
EM: Now we know that there’s something in the brain that likes three, we talk about the power of three, especially when I’m speaking, I always have three points. What are your three key points associated with productivity?
JAG: Great question. So for me, the three things about productivity to become even more productive, number one distraction. Remove distraction where possible. In the current environment we are, so many distractions for us, whether it be our phone, our laptop, people coming to our desk if we’re in an open plan environment, or even family members calling. So for me the first thing is to remove distraction and one of the things I’ve discovered, a really quick distraction to remove is the notifications on my laptop, so turning that to off I no longer get emails pinging in or notifications that I’ve got a new email. I turn my phone off, put it on silent for a time where I really want to focus my attention.
Number two is about, for me, preparing, preparing the night before what it is I want to achieve the next day. What I typically do is I just make sure my desk is clear from the day’s work and I have set myself my key priorities, what I want to achieve, so it might be the folders I’m going to be working on or even a short list.
Number three is to focus on, again three things. What is it that’s going to create the most impact for me today and what it is that is most important for me? For example that might, I need to contact three people with a view to discussing a new business proposition, with a view to planning our podcast together and there may be three activities that are really important. So power of three again but thinking about what’s going to have the most impact and the most important in terms of achieving my goals.
EM: Very good, and picking up on the phone idea I say to people, put your phone on aircraft mode. Decide on the right time for you and then you won’t get anything through, you won’t get any distractions whatsoever and you know your phone alarm will still go off, even if that’s what you use it for in the morning, on aircraft mode, you know that. So for me, my phone goes on aircraft mode at seven o’clock at night and I am certainly not picking up emails and communications because you have to respect other people’s time and that has a big part, time is all about productivity.
So the power of three, how long does it take to be more productive?
JAG: Well it depends, I’m afraid. It depends on our ability to be disciplined. It depends on our level of commitment to ourselves. If we want to be really productive for me it’s a bit like developing a habit. We talked just then about the three areas to become more productive, and of course we need to be disciplined and put those things into practice and so if you are and you truly want to become more productive that’s what you need to do is practicing minimising those distractions, preparing the night before what it is that you want to achieve and considering a list or something that works for you and you need the discipline to implement that each day so that it becomes a habit and then it will happen relatively quickly.
EM: Very good, that’s encouraging and I know we like alliteration and we’re going to talk about the problems associated with productivity, I don’t like the word problems so challenges, what do you think challenges people when it comes to productivity?
JAG: Well, I think probably the number one challenge is our ability to focus and it comes back to the distractions. Just knowing that about ourselves, only last night I saw a program on television which was talking about the addiction to phones and screens and it was really sad and there was one little girl on there that said she noticed how with their experiment of putting their phones and laptops away for a week the interaction with her mother really changed, i.e. her mother really listened to her when they were speaking rather than being distracted by a phone or an iPad.
I think some of the challenges are our ability to focus, the challenge of our own discipline in order to practice some of the techniques to become more productive and I think also commitment. Again, if we want to become more productive ourselves it is about our own level commitment in terms of taking this seriously, implementing our own thoughts and ideas about how we can do it for ourselves.
EM: Very good, some great tips there. So we’re going to close off the interview and I just want you to give one or two ideas to the people who are listening as to what they could do right now to be more effective.
JAG: The first thing they could do is, I’ve written a productivity guide on my website and that’s a free download so if you wanted to check that out it’s 15 points that will enable you to become more productive but something you could do right now is that notifications on your laptop. Take a look. If you’re working on an Apple you’ll find it in the top very righthand side of your screen. It’s slightly hidden so you have to look for it under the three little bars. If you’re on a Microsoft product you can have a look for notifications and then turn it off. That would be one of the key things I would recommend to support you straight away becoming more productive.
EM: Yes, and sometimes you have to go into the individual apps and switch them off as well. I don’t get Facebook notifications anymore. I don’t get them because they actually are switched off at that app. Sometimes you have to fiddle a little bit but it’s definitely worth the time doing it and what I’ve taken away personally, because every time we have a podcast you teach me something, and you have reminded me of the wisdom that I know I learned when working with, doing some coaching with IBM years ago was that they had a clear desk policy. You don’t go home at night until your desk is clear and if you leave anything on top of your desk then when the cleaners come in they bin it. It’s a case of clear your desk and I am actually scanning my desk right now and thinking I have a little work to do. I think that’s what we have to remember that we’re always a work in progress and just tick a box when you’ve done quite well and every step is an achievement towards being more effective and productive.
JAG: Absolutely, and there’s one other thing that you reminded me of just as we were preparing for this this morning by drinking water. Strangely enough to become more productive is to ensure you're well hydrated because the body will respond to that, so keep drinking regular sips throughout the day that will help your blood flow more rapidly through your body with flow and keeps your brain fresh and alive, so keep well hydrated would be my other tip.
EM: Ok, well on that lovely watery note I will thank you for your time today, for the tip that you’ve shared with us and we look forward to our next Confidence in Your Pocket, which is coming along your way very soon.
JAG: Bye bye.
EM: Bye.
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