How to Increase Productivity in a Post-Pandemic Landscape

The last 12 months have forced many businesses to pivot and adjust in new and unexpected ways. Despite the global pandemic, you, as the CEO, are still expected to perform at a high level, every day, without fail. However, maintaining your peak performance, amidst the stress and uncertainty in today’s post-pandemic business world can be overwhelming – not just for you, but also for your staff. According to leading CEO peer group and CEO professional development consultants, here are the top ways that you can enhance your productivity.

1. Be mindful of when you schedule meetings. It is important to know when you perform best during the workday. You may find that your high-energy times are in the morning, or peak later in the afternoon when you get your second wind. Whenever the times are, make sure to keep them rather open as your time to innovate, come up with new ideas, or work on high impact projects. Some CEOs find that they get a surge of ideas and energy late at night before bed. So, to leverage this, they may tentatively build in an hour every night to list out action items they want to tackle the next day.

2. Income-driving tasks must take priority. Take an inventory of all of the tasks you do in a given work week. How many of them are things that directly impact sales? Generally, only about 5% of a CEO’s daily tasks are revenue-generating, while most of their time and focus is spent on the other 95% such as answering emails, attending meetings, following up or checking in with teams, traveling, etc. The more you can spend on the revenue-boosting areas in your business, the more you can truly maximize your time and productivity.

3. Block off times in your schedule. Having interruptions derails your focus and your energy. Being able to create chunks of time when you can be in the office and not scheduled for meetings or having to attend to day-to-day business items is key to ensure you are able to channel your efforts to mission-critical projects and tasks. Even extending this as a company-wide policy of No Meeting Tuesdays or requiring meetings to only be between 10am and 12pm can also be an effective way to create an environment that is primed for maintaining a high level of productivity and focus.

4. Become obsessed with deadlines to get things done. Though having too much structure can cause stress in the workplace, it is important to maintain a high level of accountability for yourself and your teams. Without deadlines, you run the risk of things not getting done when you need them most and this can set your business up for failure. Be sure these deadlines are communicated to all of those involved and visible for everyone to see. 

5. Take time to clear your head. Whether you need to start leveraging a calendar more or take a notepad with you to jot down ideas as they come to you, you want to free up as much brain space as you can. Having too many thoughts, worries, reminders, etc. in your brain reduces your ability to focus on the tasks at hand. Even carrying a voice recorder or using a transcription service, you can quickly talk through your thoughts and ideas, have them transcribed, and used later. Building in daily time to meditate can also be an effective way to enhance your focus and mental clarity.

What other ways have you used over the past year to increase your daily productivity? We’d love to share notes. We invite you to share your thoughts on our Facebook page here.