Dissecting Productivity for Today's Knowledge Labour

In every walk of life, we try to constantly strive to do better and become more efficient. The quest for increased experience is to fine-tune our ability to use resources better, understand situations comprehensively and take decisions. While that sounds very 'white collar', it is just the logical flow of the mind for anyone – even for the no so-educated. The more we do things, the better we become at it and to add the lens of monotony to it, is wrong. We don't necessarily become blind to change or less productive with increased years. While age is not a proxy for experience, youth is also no guarantee for innovation. Productivity and how to do things better is a constant peeve and the threads presented here are some of the practical aspects of getting things done better and more efficiently. The Magic of Calendaring We all use To Do lists. Typically, it is an immediate laundry list of things to be accomplished. When it is a time schedule and the list, it is OK. The problem comes when the list is longer and the time horizon is wider. The lists then become indications of intent rather than a plan to completion. Freud calls it the pleasure principle. We are constantly pursuing activities that give us gratification. This avocation mentally makes up prioritise easier activities and delays the more difficult and tedious tasks.

This also makes us do the easy tasks and not necessarily the important tasks. Calendaring tasks makes it more practical and more visual. Your calendar prop gives you a slot to do something and the likelihood of doing the same increases by quantum.

When it is a list, it is easy for another activity to usurp time from doing what is important in your 'To Do' list. Calendaring the activities makes it real and gives you the leeway to actually do it. At the root of all this is 'distraction'. We are easily distracted by internal triggers and by external tools. Internal triggers could be boredom, anxiety, fear, and pleasure which change instantly and external tools could be the myriad tools of technology – phone, computer, tv, etc. Even if we resort to the extreme measure of digital minimalism, or shutting off devices, our internal triggers will still prevent us from accomplishing tasks. Timeboxing activities you want to do is the easiest and the more practical way of accomplishing things. A dynamic calendar helps you to constantly look at how you are spending time and builds traction for what you actually want to accomplish.

Transcribing and Managing Notes

“Take notes, as if your life depends on it” – my colleagues would often hear me rant incessantly about this. Our memory is cluttered by a zillion 'To Dos' related to work and our personal life. Every interaction with a business stakeholder becomes a failed opportunity if one cannot take a set of actions and benefit from the interaction if we just forget what we heard and talked about. You would also be surprised when we take notes and capture important points verbatim. On reminiscing on reading the notes later, we tend to get better and different insights too. It is also useful to understand and learn from presenters who lack showmanship on a podium and the art of modulated and forceful speeches.

It is also an important part of the new medium of knowledge disbursement – podcasts. Most of us read faster than we listen and perhaps see it as a more intense activity and we are better in tune to assimilate if we read. A useful practice is to work with tran- scripts of podcasts and catalogue the information in word. One is likely to retain better and recall at will. I have heard several people avidly mention that they pay to get the transcripts or even to get things transcribed because it helps to manage time and to become more effective.

Templatize Repeat Communication

We often underestimate the importance of templates. Templates give us a structure to manage more than 60 % of our communication as a bulk of our communication are repetitive messages – be it in our personal life or professional life. Examples of these are printed communication that you perhaps send to a vast majority of stakeholders. But the regular 'cut and paste' or 'drag and drop' is not the solution. Templates also need to provide that element of customisation that does not prod the mail watchdogs to diver the mail to spam as it has features of a mail that has been sent to hundreds of people.

In the world of AI today, we have multiple simple tools and apps which help you enable this. But even without using any of these apps if you sit and think of the responses, the sentences we conjure, and the words we use, you will be able to see patterns and unconscious algorithms. Use it to your benefit and to find the time.

Listen Well

It is a silent truth that one of the key aspects of persuasion is the ability to listen and understand. This is often neglected when we rate articulation much higher than listening and as they say – We refuse to put listening on the same pedestal as 'speaking well'. One of the most undervalued of skills, it is also still in a nascent state as a business competency. As an entrepreneur, our minds perceive that the biggest challenge is to explain our idea, product, or service to others. It needs to be mentally reinforced that our pitches become much more refined when we listen to the stakeholders around us and their questions. It could be the insightful suggestion of a junior team member, an acerbic comment of a customer, or the pointed query of an investor –all of them help you build your repertoire of responses. We are also driven by the need to feel that what we hear confirms to our beliefs and ideas what Dan Kanhemann calls the 'confirma-

tion bias'.

We are all inclined to listen and learn selectively. Listening and taking notes helps us neutralise our biases and get insights to take course corrections and make intuitive resolutions. But the best part of both these skills is the ease with which you can cultivate them. You can see the positive changes in an instant with a conscious first step. So, all young and old, existing and potential entrepreneurs start listening with weapons of 'Mass Distraction' around you, the critical skill of this century is to build focus and not be distracted