My story
When I was an assistant marketing manager at a global coffee shop chain, my role involved driving store sales from external channels (out of store), including partnerships and joint promotions with shopping malls, payment service providers and food delivery platforms. Especially during the pandemic where business environment was challenging, all businesses did whatever they could to drive sales, without knowing they would work for sure.
As you could imagine, I was once overwhelmed by floods of unread emails (over 600), partnership proposal, new promotion requests from internal teams and operation issues that required fixing, all urgent.
I was totally overwhelmed and did not know what to do. Each email contained a bunch of information that I did not even know where to start tackling it. Only until I started looking online for productivity solutions, I reckoned what I lacked was a sound, functional productivity system.
I then landed on Getting Things Done (GTD). There are multiple concepts but by first adopting it, it quickly shifted how I approached my inbox. It helped me decide what the next single action was for a particular email.
For example, a general promotion proposal involved promotion period, promotion mechanics and promotion materials needed to be developed. In some cases there were not enough information my next action could simply be clarifying details with the other party. Sometimes, merely from initial proposal I could determine it was not feasible from operation perspective, I could turn it down right away without letting it sit in my inbox for weeks, paralysed.
Sometimes, I would need a mechanism to remind myself on following up on others’ response a few days later to catch a specific timeline. It may sound exaggerated to people who first heard of what a productivity system is but it was the single biggest lesson I learnt from that job, in a hard way.
What is a productivity system?
In my opinion, a productivity system is a combination of workflow and tools you adopt to process huge load of incoming information you encounter everyday in a systematic way.
For example, in a typical day, you may receive hundreds of inputs not only from emails, but from what people told you, news, text messages or even from an advertisement you came across in the street.
It should provide you a systematical way to capture, organise and decide what to do about the incoming information. Sometimes there is no action on a piece of information but you may want to take reference of it in near future. A productivity system should help you save and retrieve it in a seamless way. It will be crucial in keeping you at a peaceful state of mind, when you are in control of your things.
Personally I find GTD is the best framework with bulletproof workflow and high flexibility to suit my own needs. The key is to learn, try and twist your system and see which one works best for your unique need.
3 top reasons why you need a productivity system
Reason 1: Life is short. Do more in less time.
With a productivity system, I miss a lot less tasks than before. I spend less time in retrieving (or recalling from memory) past information that I need for a current task. All these make me a lot more effective and efficient in work and personal life that I end up saving a lot of time.
Usually until end of your 20s, people will start realizing life is too short to waste time on meaningless stuff. In our context, it could mean re-doing tasks or spending more time than needed to complete a task.
I remembered in my first job, I was taught to jot notes and tasks on a notebook. A notebook is a tool, but how you process the stuff you jotted is where a productivity system takes place.
Reason 2: Reclaim focus energy which is equally valuable as your time.
Another life lesson I have learnt throughout my productivity journey is that focus energy is at equal importance as time. Many people know time is valuable because you can never go back in time. However, in search of increasing my productivity, I often realise I do have time. Every workday after dinner I would lay in my bed browsing YouTube on my phone for an hour. What I lack is not time but energy. After a long day I merely don’t have the focus energy to do something I find meaningful, for example to work out, learn a new skill or read.
Without a productivity system, you will spend much more focus energy in juggling around a mess of information and ideas, that drag down your will power. On the other hand, with one you could stay on top of things and feel confident you are in control.
Reason 3: Boost creativity by offloading information from your brain.
You might hear of the power of writing things down and how it creates mental space of creative thoughts. It is the same of a productivity system which usually involves storing reference information that you think you might need in near future. In GTD’s context, it is called reference file or project supporting material. By offloading reference information and having the confidence in your system that you know where it is and have the ability to quickly retrieve it, is a game-changer to your creative mind, which in turn brings higher value to your life, work and personal growth.
Conclusion
Even without apparent urgency or an email inbox of over 600 emails, a productivity system is definitely something you will want to learn, test and invest your time/money in, which could save you loads of time, regain focus energy and create value for your life.
What do you think? Comment below and share with us your top productivity tips!
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