Priorities and Productivity; Tips from a pretend organized salesperson.

There are a lot of "things" one could be doing when selling. Between discos and demos, follow ups, updating your pipeline, dealing with POs/Invoices, supplier forms, prospecting, sales enablement projects, meetings. You get the point.

It's normal for all of us to need a little reset on how to prioritize our days to make sure we are the most productive. Here are some tips on how to do so. Although I gave an example of a typical sales person's to-dos, these are applicable to really any role. (I think)

Don't try to be someone you're not. If your nature is not to be super organized naturally and your closet isn't organized by type of shirt and in the order of the rainbow, it's not going to make any sense to force yourself now. That being said, being productive comes from having discipline so you do still have to make some changes. If you're not willing to apply a small level of discipline into your day, then stop reading and go on about your crazy day.

Don't try to boil the ocean. One of my favorite pieces of advice. Don't sit there for a whole day and overhaul your entire schedule and decide to embark on some new life. It's not going to work, just like you can't boil the ocean. Select a few new habits or changes to start with. If any of those become habitual, then implement one more new thing. This is not an episode with Marie Kondo where we dump everything in your closet into a giant pile and figure out what brings you joy. (I do love a Marie Kondo overhaul but not in this instance)

Audit yourself. An invaluable exercise, that was suggested from a former leader of mine when I was being asked to do too much from higher leadership, was to share how many free hours in the week I hadto take on the work that was requested. I thought, how the hell am I going to do that. He said just start with the recurring meetings that you are in. Then move on to the work you put into preparing for any of those meetings, the rest will come. Well he was right, I was able to tally up how many hours in a month for the last quarter I spent on all the facets of my job and divided them into a per week format. Not only did this demonstrate the important things that I did there, but it also helped me self audit anything that maybe I didn't really need to do. I now do this a few times a year.

Just because you're organized, doesn't mean you are being productive. If you are the person with color coded calendars and everything is bookmarked in the proper place, that's great but that doesn't mean you are productive. This is where priorities come in. Sometimes it can be difficult to know what those are, everything seems so important and urgent! You're sitting there planning out your custom demo and then see an e-mail and it's a question from a prospect so you stop and respond. Which reminds you about that little video you were going to record for a team mate and oh look a slack message!

Enter, the Eisenhower Matrix. You've all likely heard of it before, but have you actually used it? (see here if you are unfamiliar) It's time to get real. Write all of those tasks on that random list you keep track of on your notepad. Place each task in one of the quadrants. How many of those tasks are urgent but not important or not urgent AND not important?

I bet the least amount you have are urgent AND important but they're likely the most challenging or time consuming. Which is why you keep gravitating to the urgent, not important tasks. Use that discipline we talked about early and prioritize the urgent AND important tasks.

Automation is your friend. What do most of your SaaS platforms do for you? Probably automate things. Use them! Have a giant list of people you need to nudge? Use a template or sequence. (okay but please, please personalize properly) Tools that can be interruptive like Slack or Teams have settings that put you on do not disturb if your calendar is blocked out. Automate that sh*t. Automation gives time back to you that requires your personal attention to detail. Also, now so does AI. So whatever you fancy, use it to give yourself time back that requires YOU, to do it.

Learn how to say no. All those items that end up in the not urgent and not important...learn how to just say no to most of them. If no is not the right answer, then learn to say "Not Now." Those tasks go to the end of your day if you have the time or to a future date. If there is someone waiting on the other end for you to do something, tell them the timeframe you can do it. Another version of this might be declining meetings that are not required for you to join or not participating in a project at this time. If this isn't in your top quadrants, then it's not your highest priorities.

Take breaks. You'll actually be more productive if you stay hyper focused for shorter periods of time and then take a break.

"Those who take a break every 90 minutes report a 30 percent higher level of focus than those who take no breaks or just one during the day. They also report a nearly 50 percent greater capacity to think creatively and a 46 percent higher level of health and well-being."

In order for you to truly stay focused, do what you can to be "indistractable." There's a very good, although very long article (hard to not get distracted reading it ??) that talks about this. TL;DR, do what you can to stay on task and eliminate distractions, mental or physical ones.

Pick 3. If you know me, you've heard this one a lot. If all of this sounds too much still and you're not down to nerd out over the matrix on a cork board with rose gold push pins like me, start your day out with the three tasks that MUST get done. If you get those done, you crushed the day. Everyone can manage three tasks. If you get more than that, then it's all gravy baby.

My last piece of advice...productivity doesn't equal quantity! I'll say that again, doing the most completed tasks doesn't mean you are the most productive. Productivity is the combination of completing tasks with the best quality you can provide, your efficacy of what you get done. The "no's" are just as productive as your "yeses" and it's about your bigger picture. If your day wasn't as productive as you wanted. You have tomorrow and if your week wasn't the best, your brain might have needed to wander a bit. We all do the best we can but sometimes a good reset like one or a couple of the above tips will help :). Post your tips for how to be more productive and measure your priorities in the comments!