My key to productivity (A short intro)

At the beginning of my career, I worked non-stop. Luckily, I quickly realized, that the key to productivity lies in working smarter instead. The result of this: Getting complimented by colleagues as being amazingly structured and productive (thanks for that ☺️) while having more time to work on relevant things.

In this article, I want to share my key to productivity. A system not hard to adopt and that I’m using since almost 5+ years. Ever since then, I have perfected it for me — but it’s still able to adapt to new challenges I’m facing.

As a Product Manager/Owner, I highly believe, I’m getting paid for getting things done. Structuring and executing a lot of different projects and tasks at the same time is challenging — no question — but it’s also highly satisfying when being in a flow. On the opposite, it can be really overwhelming and stressing when being lost in details and stressed from all the tasks on my desk.

My goal now is to now share my insights, with the hope you find it useful and can adapt something from it! All you need are 2 things: a tool of your choice as well as the methodology.

The tool

Take a tool you like to start with! People often stress about the right tools, but just trust your feeling and be open-minded. I personally started with Trello and quickly hit limitations in having a good overview and writing in-depth tasks. So I knew it was about time to change.

The past 4+ years until today, I then used the free version of Asana, which I highly recommend. Besides having your tasks plus boards/lists for each project, Asana also offers multiple level of tasks. I can also recommend the App to quickly note ideas.

Over the past years, Asana also published some major features (such as List/Board Views, Voice2Text, …) that really show how user-centric they work and how strong they are in executing their vision to shape teams collaboration of the future. Great work, Asana team!

The methodology

If you already have a (Kanban) board as well as some basic knowledge about the Eisenhower Matrix, you’re good to go. About the matrix in short: Prioritize your tasks depending on their importance & urgency.

Based on this idea, I use the following columns to structure my board:

1. Today: Everything that has its due date today is automatically going into this column. They are my first priority, and in case they are not, I usually re-prioritize and move them to other columns.
2. Important & urgent: Those are the topics having the biggest Business Value and which are always in mind. The tasks are used to keep an overview (including JIRA tickets, notes, …) while their sub-tasks get due dates and then pop-up in my today column when being relevant.
3. Important & not urgent: Those are the topics on which I set my focus when having time or when seeing upgrades in their priorities.
4. Urgent & not important: Usually, you would delegate those topics. In my case, I want to have them visible and get them done asap without spending much time.
5. Not urgent & not important: I keep those topics because in most cases they are not relevant just now but often pop-up in the future. Until then, I can add sporadic notes when being confronted with similar topics.
6. Upcoming: All tasks with due dates go into this column and are sorted. When their due date is Today, they are moved to my Today column.
7. Random: Here I collect vacations and similar topics.

So much about the structure.

How do I now actively structure myself?

I use tasks in Asana to structure my thoughts and keep an overview. Tasks are used as my personal to-dos. Inside them, I link to external sources, JIRA tickets as well as the official documentation in Confluence. It’s also the space to collect meeting summaries and prepare topics before making them public.

To kick off a productive day, I prioritize my Today column and order the tasks accordingly. This, I do first every morning because it’s highly important. I can “eat that frog” first and have the most important tasks done early in the day. Tip: Don’t forget to check today’s appointments in your (business as well as personal) calendar. It happens enough to me, that I forgot to create tasks or just set due dates to tasks that I need in preparation for appointments.

I also actively take notes whenever I have an idea, or hear something in conversations with my colleagues. By doing so, I can focus on my current topic but get a later reminder. Just don’t forget the due dates, in case it’s an important new task.

My learnings & tips to start using it

1. Don’t duplicate your work! It took me my first years to discover the best mix between Asana and our company tools (such as JIRA). Especially at the beginning, I had to learn the hard way how to use multiple systems in parallel. Since Asana is just used to structure my thoughts and personal to-dos, I often use it for personal notes and reminders. All the official stakeholder communication and documentation happens in JIRA/Confluence, which I then link to in my tasks.
2. Use due dates. Write down tasks as reminders, set a due date, fill them with ideas whenever you have some and get Asana reminders when it’s relevant. This was really a big learning. Whenever stakeholders mention something, or I have ideas, I use this strategy. Often enough I then read about something, talk to people or have spontaneous ideas and add notes to the tasks. The next moment, I can focus on my current task again. My flow isn’t stopped, but I also didn’t lose the previous idea I noted This way I also don’t forget to-dos and impress people with an excellent structure.
3. Be honest to yourself. Don’t do tasks which are not relevant. Instead, change their due dates and clarify their priorities. Focus on topics that make you, your company as well as your users smile.
4. Each system is worthless if you don’t keep it updated. No lies. Prioritizing my tasks and keeping my notes up-to-date takes a while, but this time is the best investment in later productivity I can do.

As mentioned at the beginning, I developed and use this system in the past years. That it works perfectly for me, unfortunately, doesn’t mean it’s your perfect match. Just give it a try, adopt the parts you like and find your own methodology.

Feel free to let me know what you think. I’m really curious to hear from you, how you improved it, or which system you’re using instead. Stay healthy!