Building a Routine That Works

Ah, Microsoft. What do you think of first when you hear that name? Word? Powerpoint? Bill Gates? Well, let us make the case for why your first thought ought to be ‘productivity’. Many of us knowledge workers have been using Microsoft for so long that all of the new applications and features added to the 365 suite over the years have gone completely under the radar. There are now a whopping 20 apps at your disposal, which contain hundreds of features to make you and your team’s working life more streamlined and efficient! The Reality Unfortunately, many of our clients describe using Microsoft applications as the opposite. We get it—tech tools can be overwhelming…

The time of disorganised, random meetings is just so over. Every single day, hours of company time and employee capacity are wasted by colleagues and managers sending calendar invites willy-nilly without an agenda, a set purpose, or, let’s be honest, even a title that tells you what the meeting is about. Well, if it isn’t that time yet, we at Think Productive are calling it! Say goodbye to time-wasting meetings and hi to the 4 glorious Ps of productive meetings. It’s time. What are the 4 Ps? The 4 Ps is a repeatable framework used to nail down the specifics of your meeting so that you can send an invite full of detail to the right people with purpose. It allow…

Feedback is one of those icky subjects. At Think Productive, we’ve been on a mission recently to drive up our own feedback culture, as well as it being something we help many of our clients do too. This means getting savvy about both giving and receiving feedback. It’s never easy, but here are a few quick thoughts to make it a little less painful: The bigger picture matters Feedback is usually directed at an individual, but its’ purpose is collective. We talk a lot at Think Productive about eliminating “stinky fish” – this means tackling head-on those issues that start as a minor irritation but have the potential to derail the whole endeavour. I find that often the…

Do you find delegation tricky? When it comes to delegating more, do you find yourself using excuses like these? I don’t have time to explain it or track it. I might as well do it myself. I’m just a control freak. (It’s not you, it’s me!) I’ve been around the longest, so I’ll just know how to do it better than someone else on the team. I feel bad dumping my work on already overloaded colleagues. All valid reasons, but have you considered what message each of these excuses is sending your team? I don’t trust you to understand the assignment or to keep me updated. Also, I don’t want to waste my time investing in your growth. I just don’t trust yo…

Technology is a fast-paced industry and the list of apps which exist to help you improve your productivity is ever-growing. That’s why we’ve put together a list of some of our tired & tested, favourite apps. Is your favourite on the list? Let us know in the comments! Task management apps Todoist – Think Productive HQ’s favourite second brain tool! We’re not supposed to have favourite second brains, but Todoist is very popular at TPHQ with the majority of our team choosing it for their second brain. Todoist can help you plan your projects, create to-do lists and set up recurring reminders. You can also send emails from your inbox straight to …

You know how these posts are supposed to go. It’s usually something like “get up at 5am, drink a lemon water, meditate for half an hour, write my gratitude journal, hit the gym for an hour, come back for a protein-fuelled breakfast”… and on and on with the nauseating hustle porn until midnight. But there’s a reason the first words of my book, How to be a Productivity Ninja, are “Dear Human Being”. I don’t believe in perfection or striving to be a superhero. For example, here are several things that regularly happen in the first hours of my day: Being woken up too early and too tired, and putting a podcast on so that I fall back asleep for an extra hour Lab…

Since joining Think Productive a month ago today (happy anniversary TP!), I’ve had the pleasure of attending lots of our workshops. It’s been the best way to dive into my new role as Learning Success Manager, where I get to support our superstar clients plan learning programmes for their teams. After 19 years as a teacher, trainer and facilitator, it’s wonderful to sit at the other side of the table (well, laptop) as a participant in Ninja Russell’s online Project Management Training. Project Management 101 is a relatively new addition to the TP catalogue. The session overview promises to help me “Be the Project Manager that Wows the Rest!”. This sounds juicy and…

FIRST SEEN ON GRAHAM ALLCOTT’S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER ‘REV UP FOR THE WEEK’. “If you understood everything I’ve said, you’d be me” – Miles Davis Over the years, I’ve worked with and interviewed some pretty remarkable people. Business owners, high-performing leaders, young people with incredible energy and potential, older people with quiet wisdom and painful experience, Olympic gold medallists, multi-millionaire entrepreneurs, professional clowns, inspiring authors, community leaders changing the world, folk musicians telling stories… It’s a long list. One of the questions I’m sometimes asked when I do keynote talks is whether I notice any patterns in how high-perfo…

You’re busy. You have a million and one things on your plate and the list never ends. You’re wondering how you’re going to manage your workload and meet your deadlines. You think about going on a course or workshop to learn how to prioritize. You google ‘Time Management Training’. Maybe that’s what you need? Well, stop right there. Time Management Training isn’t the answer. Because you can’t manage time. Whatever you do, the clock still ticks. You’re only ever going to have 24 hours in a day. There’s no workshop that can change that. So what can you do? Well, you can manage your attention. That’s where our ‘How to be a Productivity Ni…

When I tell people we’ve had a 4 Day Week since 2011, I think it’s fair to say most people are surprised, impressed and feel a glimmer of hope. There’s hope that the future of work is headed in a more human, happier and healthier direction. REST AND RECOVERY It’s easy to see how the 4 Day Week has been good for our wellbeing. An extra day of rest and recovery to ourselves. Who can argue with that? The 4DW has naturally taken our productivity to another level too. Rest and recovery are important for good productivity. With a shorter week, we benefit from what I call “Pre-holiday and Post-holiday feelings”. PRE-HOLIDAY PRODUCTIVITY BOOST We all know …

Why is Mental Health Training Important? It’s a well-known fact that organisations must have first aiders, at least one per floor or a recommendation of 1 per 50 employees. Yet, as the number of suicide deaths per year inch closer to that of heart attack deaths, asthma attacks become less common than panic attacks, and food phobias are about as usual as food allergies – why aren’t we talking about Mental Health First Aid more? Even without digging into the morbid statistics, creating mental health awareness within the workplace says; “This workplace believes you have a worthwhile story to tell. You are in a safe place to tell it, and we will support you to man…

To create great comms you need to be able to identify the right comms channel for your message to land correctly, with impact and with clarity and the right intended tone. In our Supercharge Your Team Comms workshop, we introduce our workshop participants to POPP (we love an acronym ) as a method to identify the best tool for your comms. So, before you send out any piece of comms, take some time to think about the: Purpose – what is this purpose of this piece of comms? Why am I even sending this email or setting up this meeting? Outcome – what result am I looking for here? Priority – is this urgent? Is it important? What level of urgency or importance …