Time Management: Productive Vs Busy

According to Dictionary.com, productivity is defined as ‘the quality, state, or fact of being able to generate, create, enhance, or bring forth goods and services’.  Busy is defined as ‘actively and attentively engaged in work or a pastime’.

So, how do you turn active engagement into productive output?

The success of a business is a combination of many factors, but often your time management and organisational skills in bringing projects and ideas together will be key in your overall success.

As the business owner, you are crucial and your time is precious, so it’s important to ensure that you are able to self-manage your time, and delegate where possible through great communication, ensuring that your team know what is expected and how to reach deadlines and targets.

You will find that having the right working environment and team behind you is key as your business grows, this will free up your time to get on with being the driving force behind your business.

• Make your working environment productive through light, bright working conditions, and plants to generate Oxygen to help maintain productivity throughout the day.
• Recognise achievement, spot the forward thinkers, and crucial cogs and ensure that they are encouraged.
• Engage them, ask for your employees input on how to achieve goals- a fresh perspective may be just the tonic you need.
• Set realistic goals, and monitor performance.

The above are just some examples of how to increase and maintain productivity. Most good teams will be made up of a variety of personalities, box tickers and goal achievers, the right combination should work productively together.

Busy people are effective though aren’t they?

It’s a common misconception that busy people are always productive people. An employee who writes and endless to do list is not necessarily a productive employee. Ticking off the initial task is not necessarily sufficient- what is the long term goal or plan, how will they see the initial task through to end? Instead of writing a never ending to do list,  try setting out objectives and key points of how to get there-

Example –

Two employees are asked to write a blog for the Company website, one has  a proactive manager who has already thought ahead and provided a pre-determined list of marketing topics. 

David is simply instructed to write a blog for the company website. David wastes time thinking about his chosen topic, and content before he can write.

 Kate is instructed to write a blog- her manager has already provided her with the topic list for the year. Kate knows that from this point she needs to;

• Research
• Write
• Check
• Post

 By having the process in place, Kate was able to produce her blog in the time that David has considered three different topics and decided that none of them are appropriate.

Having processes in place will turn busy people – into productive people, by giving them an element of ownership over their work as they work loosely within a framework. The processes will also provide the support and driving force to encourage the employees to reach their goals.

Try working in blocks of time productively on single projects. Having a default diary in place means that you allocate your time to certain tasks rather than flitting between many. This will allow you to focus solely on the task in hand and avoid distractions.

Ultimately focus and structure are key to avoiding procrastination and maximising productivity.

The Avanti group (UK) Ltd  can assist you with all areas of accountancy,  taxation, bookkeeping and company secretarial duties , with our pick ‘n’ mix services. You can choose the aspects of these often complex and time consuming areas that you would like our assistance with and know that you are in safe hands to do what you do best – run your business.