Increasing Productivity Through Efficiency

Increased Productivity In Business Requires Smart Innovative Efficient Procedures and Office Technologies.


Competition Increases Production Days
As the world becomes more productive, workers experience longer hours and shifts that operate during the evening and overnight. To increase productivity beyond a 24x7 schedule, modern innovative methods improve efficiency. Competition between businesses involves increased efficiency that increases productivity with lower labor costs. This allows for aa greater return on investment for labor when time management and streamlined efficient methods. Years ago, workers enjoyed daytime shifts at a leisurely pace and not overburdened with a large number of tasks. Increased competition over the years included improved efficiencies that resulted in increasing productivity. This included employees working 24x7 in 8-hour shifts with weekends included. Even with a vast amount of improved productivity, businesses continuously look for how much more output can come out of the work of employees. With focused attention, businesses can use simple strategies to maintain peak efficiency to help maximize productivity.

Managing Work and Production Schedules
A business, manager, or employee that has a planned out day tends to produce more and demonstrate results driven behavior. Without a planned day, tasks complete one after another with no intended deadline. At the end of a shift or workday, leftover tasks fall to the next day. This shows signs of procrastination and laziness. Today's businesses need to have worked out schedules from the top of the business to the bottom. A schedule ensures avoiding blank spots in a schedule to prevent unforeseen slowdowns in productivity. Managers tend to fill employees schedules to check capacity and lower labor costs. The only downfall to this strategy comes when an employee goes on vacation, has a day off, or terminates employment. A company accepts those risks as the benefit of increased productivity outweighs that small risk. That downfall would only serve temporarily as a new employee, freelancer, employment agency, or other resource would fill the void. In the end, the efficiency from a planned schedule to fill the day ensures optimal performance.

Relying on Office Technologies for Efficiencies
Today's office technology has grown to support the need for optimal employee performance by adding efficiencies for improved performance at a lower cost. Many offices and employees rely on the digital tools that online calendars offer. A calendar event scheduled includes automatic reminders to email and texts to cell phones. Scheduling conflicts do not exists due to quick automatic identification and resolution. People can request changes, cancellations, or rescheduling to current scheduled events. A scheduled invents keep records of accepted and declined invitations. Scheduled reminders ensure that invited attendees do not forget the commitment. The invited guests who decline and invite may offer alternate provisions to an event. The greatest value comes from knowing who declined for planning purposes. Digital calendars ensure double booking wont' occur. Reminders ensure meetings and other critical events do not go unnoticed or forgotten.

The Effective and Traditional To Do List
The use of creating and using traditional list of action items to complete demonstrates strong time-management skills. Today, tools such as Excel help organize tasks. Excel allows sorting and adding other columns such as priority, date due, duration, and more. The task list of years ago on paper could easily be lost. Today an online Excel sheet will not get lost, receive updates, and sorted by priority. The smallest of tasks will not be missed. Without a task list, large tasks are focused on and the smallest ones unintentionally left behind. With a task list kept up to date and referred to routinely, even the smallest of tasks will not be forgotten.

Do you have any extra tips/ways that you are using to increase your productivity? Let us know in the replies below!

I recommend that you read up on agile project management in particular SCRUM, Lean Startup and KANBAN... The idea behind agile is an attempt to place "chaos" into a time box - i.e. when requirements and tasks are not clear... This works wonderfully well with regards to software development projects, however you can apply the principles to any area from SEO, web design, marketing etc.... In sum:

• Lean startup: supports effort to release a minimum viable product of which you can further develop beyond release.
• Scrum: Implementation of 2-4 week sprints to deliver capability which can be deployed/tested to end user. With use of product backlog you can then identify what items to include in a sprint...
• Kanban: My favourite! I've been using this for sometime. Basically place your tasks on a massive white board. You move tasks from left to right into each column e.g. analyze, develop, test... Under each column there is a limit on the number of tasks. This has the benefit of forcing tasks to be completed before others move on the board or move to the right...

Please note: The above is a very brief summary... Each one is a very detailed subject on its own... Other agile methods include XP (extreme programming), six sigma... etc.