How to stay productive while leading a team or company

Your time is not your own.

That's guaranteed if you're leading a team or a company.

Those you lead are either going to need your help, guidance or sign-off constantly. This isn't a negative. It's an amazing positive.

It is both your responsibility and honour to lead that team or company to success. However, this is never easy. More people, clients and moving parts create more possible breaks in the chain. It's your job to solve and mitigate these breaks before they happen.

I'm going to share with you my approach to making sure I am as productive and organized as possible so that I can effectively lead my team and companies to success.

Let's dive in.

It starts with the inbox

Your inbox is your first line of defence in maintaining productivity and organisation. Chaos generally comes from external factors causing disruption within. Don't let your inbox get out of control.

In my mind, there are 4 potential actions to take when receiving an email in your inbox. You either need to acknowledge, respond, document or ignore.

When you sit down to go through your inbox, do what you need to do. Send an acknowledgement receipt, continue the conversation with a response, document the content or ignore after reading.

Once you've taken action, delete the email if you won't need it again or archive if you think it will be of importance down the line. You've remained productive by taking the relevant action and remained organized by clearing your inbox.

By practicing this, you're turning your inbox into a backlog of work that needs some form of action instead of an absolute mess of communication debt.

Use your calendar as your To Do list

After you've cleaned up your inbox, it's time to make the most of your calendar.

Don't just use your calendar for looking at when you have meetings. That's a rookie mistake.

Use it to dictate your To Do list.

Things that I use my calendar for:

• Block out time in the day for "focus sessions" to achieve specific tasks e.g. building out a new feature
• Create tasks that are due on each day so I never forget e.g. sending off a proposal to a new client
• Set reminders so that I never forget tasks that happen often e.g. setting up a 1-on-1 chat with a team member

It doesn't matter which calendar app you use. They all offer ways of setting up your day, week and month so that you stay organized and don't miss any task that require your attention. This should help you stay productive and well informed on what you need to do for your team.

Carry a notebook

Now that we've covered managing our inbox and maximizing your calendar, the next part of being productive and organised involves a simple physical notebook. Alternatively, you could use a note-taking app on your phone, but studies have shown that physically writing something down increases retention rates so I choose to use an A5 notebook.

You'll most likely never see me without my notebook near me so I can quickly grab it and jot something down.

The purpose of the notebook in our productivity and organization is simple: write down thoughts.

It doesn't matter if I'm in a meeting or just a personal brainstorming session, I'll use my notebook.

Don't pretend that you're smart enough to remember everything that's worth noting in a meeting or a great idea you had in the shower. I can't tell you how many times I forgot something of importance because I presumed I'd remember it. I never did.

Use your notebook to write down the thought as you think of it. Get things out of your head and onto some paper (or into your app) so that you can refer to it later.

When I don't have my notebook with me, like when in the gym or while out for dinner, I'll make use of Notion.

I've created different pages to help categorise the thought I'm writing down. I have a "To Do" page that I'll add to when I think of something that I will then clear later once I've performed the action or scheduled the action in my calendar. I have an "Idea" page that I use to quickly write down an idea that I can then expand on later in a "focus session" with my team.

Be creative and make it your own. No matter if you're using a notebook or a note taking app.

Document or die

Document everything. I can't stress this enough.

The human brain is an amazing piece of hardware, but we are certainly not smart enough to remember everything that we need to. Furthermore, keeping it all in your head makes it far more difficult to effectively share with others.

Our inbox, calendar, notes and conversations all lead to this destination.

At Origen Software, we document everything. Our CRM, customer feedback, meeting notes, new opportunity ideas and team Pac-Man high-scores are all stored in our Notion. Easily viewable, editable and accessible to everyone.

Nothing is left stuck in a meeting recording, in some lost email or an in-person chat that can no longer be remembered.

Everything in centralized in a well organised structure which ultimately raises productivity.

You can see how this entire system revolves around decluttering your life. Keeping a clean inbox and clean mind. Getting things out of your head and into a digital space that's easily accessible to whoever may need it.

It decreases your responsibility in having to remember everything all the time and increases your team's productivity by making everything available at any point in time.

See you again next week.