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You can watch the video for the last episode recorded on June 14, 2019, above, or you can review the transcript below.
In this episode we talked about:
- How can I increase my team’s productivity?
- What are some great habits to increase productivity?
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Alright, cool, we are live, I believe. As always I get a little weirded out by having like a cam showing me on the side here. So anyways, sorry about the weirdness. Real quick wanted to say we’ve got some cool stuff we’re going to go over today and in this is Episode 86 of the productivity Academy weekly Q and A.
Today I want to talk a little bit about trains and how they relate to productivity, as well as improving your team’s productivity and some good habits. Just to increase productivity in general, there’s a couple I want to touch on.
But real quick, if you aren’t a part of the real world productivity group, you can find the link below whether you’re watching live, which is great. Or if you’re checking out the replay on YouTube or something, you can find the link below. And if you’re watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit the subscribe button if you want to stay up to date with these videos, as well as app reviews, book reviews, and then general videos on productivity, time management, automation, team building all that stuff, sort of good stuff.
So let’s get into it. I said I was going to talk about trains and I am. This is pretty cool. I hopped on a train from Denver to San Francisco or close to San Francisco over the weekend. And that was the first time taking a long train ride and plan this couple months ago, it’s something I’d wanted to do for a long time thought I’d give it a shot. And it’s kind of fortuitous.
And the timing that after I had planned this, I started looking around, I came across some articles and people were talking about how Yeah, trains are great for productivity in the sense that, you know, literally you kind of have to slow down, you may or may not have reception, you know, you may or may not be able to use your phone, your computer, this that or the other thing I said, Oh, this is great.
I love to read if nothing else, you know, maybe you’d be able to get some work done and kind of brainstorm on some big projects. So the way that went was pretty interesting, I ended up doing exactly that I did a lot of reading, I didn’t do a lot of like focused kind of brainstorming or working on projects. But that actually worked out well.
And I think in retrospect, it’s more about kind of where you’re at in terms of head space. For me, it was great to have some downtime after visiting family, you know, look out literally out of the train, check out the sights, you know, going through the Rockies, and then through Nevada and all that. And just to be able to read and I had like a loose list of things with me that I could have done a couple of my looked over, I got a little bit of work done here and there.
But overall was really good. I really recommend it to anyone who feels drawn to that, you know, if you hear this and you’re like, Oh my god, no way, I never want to do that, then definitely don’t do it. But I think it was good. You know, I had my Kindle with me laptop, iPhone, I didn’t bring an actual physical book just because I was trying to travel white. But I think having a few options of things to do, instead of kind of boxing myself in and saying, I’m going to do this one specific thing worked out really well.
So anyways, highly recommend it. It’s kind of a fun way to see parts of the country if you haven’t done that before. So let’s see. One of them the questions today was talking about how do you improve your team’s productivity, I’m going to grab some water real quick.
I think that there’s obviously this is a big subject, as far as you know, keeping a team or organization productive, you know, not just ourselves. But I wanted to talk about one specific way we can do this. And that’s keeping in touch with them. Right. So both from a managerial standpoint, but also from like a cultural standpoint of your team or your business.
And the shortest way I can think of to explain this, and I’ll go on a little bit more after that. But is to think about yourself, whether you’ve had a job where you had you’re part of a team or you had a boss, or just where you worked with other people and and thinking about, you know, did you like it, when somebody invested time in you and find out what you’re doing? how things are coming along, not just you know, report to me what you’re doing, but you know, Hey, are you having any roadblocks, you any obstacles? Hey, you’re doing this or that really well? Is there anything I can do to help you investing that sort of time into your own team is huge.
And I know, a lot of times, we all get busy. And you know, it needs to go a little bit beyond the maybe all hands meeting, maybe do a one on one with people. And you know, certainly there’s a limit to how many people you can do that too. But if you can do that, with your direct reports, you know, maybe it’s just a project manager or a manager of a small team of VA is or maybe you’ve got a really big team.
And that’s great, too, that’s a great way to do this. But investing that time and then having them do it down the chain is really important. And one it shows you care, which is important. And that’s going to have people invest or be invested more, and then also is going to let you find out literally by asking them, you know, what’s going on with you? What are the roadblocks, you know, staying on top of that, and being involved.
And I know for the times I’ve been part of teams where you know, there’s more cohesion, you’re definitely more motivated and you feel again, like you’re part of a team instead of just some person doing something. So I think that that’s a really important one that we can kind of gloss over and we just get busy. And sometimes it falls to the side. And I would say not to do that really build that into your team building.
And if you have a small team you could do this is kind of an all hands thing, where you check in if you’re remote or distributed. There’s different ways of doing this. I’ve started recently doing one where all recorded a short video. And then you know, ask everyone just to reply with their own short video, what do you been up to, as far as you know, the team? What’s going on?
Is there anything you need help with things like that, and you know, this could take as little as 10 or 15 minutes a week, but really brings everybody together and you know, just the conversation back and forth, you might discover you know, someone enjoys doing something or has already solved a problem that somebody else is working on. So a lot of hidden benefits there.
Alright, so secondly, what are some great habits to increase productivity? Man, there’s so many, I will of course, a daily review, that’s my go to answer for goodness, I think that that’s really the foundation of being productive, as well as managing your time Well, I’ve got an article article on that you can just search for productivity Academy daily review, and find out more about that, I think that the next building block on to that is, you know, you’ve done the review, but then adding a real review.
So the daily review, I just mean you know, gathering everything and kind of in the Getting Things Done sense of like, you know, take all your sticky notes, take everything from your different areas, Evernote, this, that and put it into one space, you kind of prioritize batch, plan your day out and go. But then sitting down maybe once a week, once a month, however works for you looking back and saying, Hey, is my daily review working?
What is working the best out of that? And how can I get more results from that? Or what isn’t working? or What am I not doing? And why am I not doing it? Is there a reason? Should I just stop trying to do it? Or is there a way I can kind of make myself do it by setting a reminder or, you know, accountability partner or something like that. Just asking yourself these questions, you know, it’s going to set you apart from where a lot of people stop, and it’s going to help you advance yourself a lot, lot quicker.
And you can apply this into so many different situations. And again, the daily review, just that foundation part could just be you know, 10 or 15 minutes, maybe 30. This review can be the same, this doesn’t have to be some, you know, really painful process, it can be a lot of fun to just say, Hmm, this is what is gone? Well, how can I get more results? Like from that doing that? Can I do more of something? Or is there another way that I can either automate or delegate or do something else like that? So I think that that’s a really important habit to get into immunity.
Like I said, you can start applying this to other areas, you know, on your business, your personal life, maybe, you know, fitness as one, okay, I’ve been doing well in this area, how can I continue to do even better, this area suffering? Why is it What’s going on there? Is it something I can either get rid of like maybe I’m binge eating well, okay, can’t get rid of eating, but you can try to say, okay, maybe all, you know, stations max in the fridge, or like a bag of carrots is up front so that I don’t just reach for something else.
I mean, that’s a very simple example. But that’s the idea of just sitting down and you’re making these small changes over time. And then you just get that kind of exponential increase where over time, it really, really does. So good questions today. I think that is going to do it. Keep it pretty short. But yeah, if you’ve got any questions, you can always join the group and ask below. Just find the link. You do have to answer a couple questions.
You gotta, you know, explain how you found the group and whether or not you liked productivity. It’s pretty tough entrance exam, but I’m sure you can, you can pass it. So that’ll do it for this week, and I’ll see everyone next time.