Productivity and decision making are two topics often talked about in leadership development circles – both are important skills for leaders to build. But it is less frequent that they are placed together. This article is about both ideas put together. Specifically, let’s explore the productivity decisions we can make the will make a big difference in our results.
What are Productivity Decisions?
Productivity decisions are decisions made now that will make you more productive over and over in the future. We can create them for any number of situations that occur regularly in our life or work. The big idea here is to not waste our (always limited) mental energy on decisions that don’t help you reach your goals. When we can pre-decide on these simple decisions, we save our energy and decision-making for more important things.
What are Some Examples?
Here are a couple of fun ones to get us started…
- What to wear. Steve Jobs famously wore a black turtleneck, Levi’s jeans and tennis shoes every day. If you see me on camera, I will have on a blue pinpoint, button-down shirt. In both cases, it might be considered a brand, but look at it this way (and I do) - if that decision has been made, no time is wasted.
- What to eat. Alabama football coach Nick Saban eats the same thing for lunch every day. (Breakfast too apparently.) Here are some details. Maybe you don’t want to do that but think about how much time people spend deciding where to go or what to eat at a restaurant.
While these personal areas are instructive and make the point, you might prefer some examples that apply in your role as a leader. Consider these productivity decisions that will streamline your work and conserve some of your mental energy.
- How You Lead Meetings. Do you have a routine or process for leading meetings? If you do, it will streamline your preparation for them significantly.
- Your Not-to-Do List. Do you have a list of things that you have already decided you won’t do? Especially important to include on this list are things you like to do but could successfully delegate.
- Your 1:1 Routines. Do you have a process that you follow every time you meet with a member of your team (that works)? If so, keep using it. If not, improve it and lock in that routine to reduce decision and planning time.
How Do We Get There?
These three work examples should get your juices flowing on the idea of how you can make better productivity decisions. Ultimately, you need to do four things to make effective productivity decisions that serve you and your team.
- Realize that you can. Perhaps you have never considered this before now. Now that you realize productivity decisions are real and can help you, you can create them.
- Decide on critical decision points. Where are the situations and times in your day that you end up spending time? Identify the times where productivity decisions will make the biggest difference for you.
- Create your rules and processes. Determine the process that you will follow or the decision that you will pre-make in those situations.
- Commit them to habit. Once you have decided, create a way to make those decisions a habit, and they will no longer take any of your conscious thinking or mental energy.
As a leader, there is an additional benefit that can come to you as you make these conscious productivity decisions. As those decisions increase your productivity, they will likely do the same for your team – creating better results for everyone.
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