Client Success Stories Part 1

Clients Who Increased Their Productivity

Contrary to what one might think, a simple change in your process can do wonders to your productivity and reduce your stress tenfold.

Don’t believe me? Check out these 3 client success stories! (All names have been changed to protect privacy).

If you are excited to get started right away, feel free to schedule a free 30 minute call with me!

What is the Status?

Unlike my blog posts about “Dating Productivity,” I am not talking about your productivity status, but the literal status of a task.

Such as:

• In progress
• Need to start
• Waiting on someone
• Completed

If you use any project management tool, you will should be able to change the status of your different tasks.

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This might seem like a silly little thing, but let me tell you – this little thing can make a huge difference!

I had work with Amy previously and wanted to check in on her after sometime. She said her productivity was improving and that she is now able to fit in the exercise her doctor has recommended to her in her schedule. (Another great productivity tool – exercise).

However, she was still struggling with adding her hobby, art, into her schedule because she keeps focusing on projects that relies on other people with notes such as “follow up with X about project.”

She found this waiting would cause her to loose steam and motivation.

I recommended her to change the note from a note to a color coded label. For example, a bright red color that says “Waiting for.”

This way she can briefly look over her tasks, see if she has done the follow up and move on.

After a couple of days, she reached back out and said that doing that simple system made her realize that out of her 100+ tasks, only a few were “waiting for” and a few of them were duplicates, so this labeling trick actually reduced her tasks!

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Set Time to Focus

Charles is a passionate businessman who works in different states around the country. He reached out to me because he felt like he was plateauing when it came to his focus and productivity.

During our second sessions, I had us do a priority and task dump. This means to outline everything he had going on and what priority would he rank it as. What blew me away was that he never did a to do list before. So basically, we were working on what type of to do list works well for him.

I recommended 2 things to him:

1) Set 2 hours of focused time daily (as possible, if not a few days or once a week, but often), in his calendar so he would not be interrupted and could have dedicated task time.

Example, I told him to block an hour in the morning and an hour right before the end of the working day to just work on things that were him only. So he didn’t have to answer calls/emails nor be involved with meeting.

2) Then, once he has set times just for him on his calendar, I had him create a to do list of tasks ranking them from very important to least important. Next to each task, add a second column and write down the status of this task. Just like Amy, I wanted him to write something like:

• In progress
• Need to start
• Waiting on someone
• Completed

If anything was marked “waiting on someone,” he knew he didn’t have to focus on that or look at it at all during this 2 hours of focus time. In addition, he is able to know which tasks he can hold staff accountable and which were his sole responsibility easily.

Within the first month of working together, he was able to take control of his productivity and can see how much he has completed and what he still has left to do (for him alone or with staff).

He said: “This is the first time I have felt productive in years.”

Assess The Process

I worked with a client, George, for over 3 years on his daily checklist and processes. When we first got together, he expressed his goal of getting his emails to zero each day. However, after some time, he realized that this goal was not getting his desired outcome.

Just like Charles, he started to dedicated a specific amount of email time daily. During this time, he would only respond to urgent requests. This freed up the rest of his time to focus on necessary and important tasks.

At the end of the week, he then went through the other emails and was able to catch up creating a zero inbox!

George was able to transition from his daily goal to a weekly one and it freed his productivity tenfold.