For many years now, businesses have been making full use of productivity tools as a way to help them build their businesses operationally. Productivity is often a challenge to maintain, especially when it comes to improving it across the entirety of the workforce.
While productivity tools can help boost productivity, they can also be a hindrance. Rely on them too heavily, and you could end up compromising that productivity even more.
Productivity tools are incredibly effective for managing multiple teams and improving workflow across all departments, both individually and when they need to work collaboratively with each other or with external contractors, too.
While they are effective, there’s also a lot of time spent and wasted on setting these tools up. From colour-coding your Notion tabs to setting up Trello automations and syncing your calendars.
You do all of this, but your project is still at the starting point with no signs of setting off. As a business, you may find yourself ‘playing office’ rather than actually getting any of your work done. That’s why it’s important to use these tools sparingly with your time; you end up procrastinating.
To help drive your projects forward efficiently, you’ll want to demote your tools from being the saviours of your business to utilities. Relying on them too much or putting them up on a pedestal is only going to waste time you don’t want to lose.
When it comes to organising yourself with productivity tools, there’s a dopamine rush that you’ll get. From setting up your project to checking off a sub-task, it feels a lot more gratifying sometimes than actually doing any of the project work itself.
The world of business is certainly a lot more complicated than it was, and there’s plenty of competition just waiting to pitch to your existing clients or for any of your prospective ones. In what can be an unpredictable world, we use complex software to create a sense of order that actually doesn’t exist in the creative or business process.
While productivity tools can have their benefits, we often see them as shiny new tools that are going to improve our processes immediately, helping with work progress as a result. We switch to these apps instead of actually facing the work that’s required.
There are some hidden costs that come from using productivity tools ineffectively. It’s beneficial to know these to prevent them from hindering your efforts further.
When you’re spending 30 minutes a day managing your task manager, you’re contributing to 2 and a half hours of the week that gets taken away from the deep work you’re meant to be doing. In that regard, you should be shaving that time down to 10 or 15 minutes at most so that you can take more time doing the work that actually drives a profit.
In order to save time, a lot of businesses may find it useful to outsource their marketing requirements so that less time is spent having to manage this through productivity tools and content calendars. Outsourcing link building and scheduling content are all effective in reducing the time you spend on the tools in-house.
When you’re jumping between multiple productivity tools and software in general, it often creates what’s called ‘attention residue’. It makes it a lot harder to focus on the actual project output, and as a result, wastes more time than it helps saving time.
When you’re using these tools, you want to use them sparingly and, more importantly, in an integrated way where possible to save time moving between them all.
If the systems you’re using become complex, then that friction of entering a task will actually prevent you from doing it.
That’s why it’s essential to simplify your processes so that they’re not overcomplicating the project workflows.
To benefit from productivity tools, a minimalist approach is required. A power user whose managing fifteen integrated apps and is burnt out on organising these alone isn’t going to be as productive as someone who uses just a couple of productivity tools.
The time spent on each of these tools is imperative, too. You want to look at spending a minimal amount of time building in these productivity apps so that more time can be spent on the deep work, the work that brings in the money.
To make better use of your time with productivity tools, identify the 20% of the features in an app that actually help to move the needle. Ignore the other 80%, as that’s where time gets wasted otherwise.
Before you add any new automation to the tech stack you have, you must delete an existing one. The one-in-one-out rule is a must for helping you avoid overcomplicating your workflows and wasting more time.
There are ways to identify what apps are perhaps having the opposite effect and aren’t worth the money you spend on them. If you can’t manage the project with a pen and paper, you can assume that a subscription to an app isn’t going to help either.
Identify what tools are actually slowing you down and try to audit your tools regularly so that you’re streamlining workflows and using your time more effectively.
Productivity tools are effective but only when used correctly. Stop the optimisation loop and slim down your pickings when choosing productivity apps in general. A tool is only as good as the work that it helps you to finish. When the project is failing, you want to focus on the actions rather than trying to save it with another app.
Build the thing that is your project, rather than focusing all your time on the system.
