How productive are you, really? New test and research shows how you stack up

Age and seniority highly correlate with personal productivity.

Habits of seniors include:

• Developing routines for low-value activities.
• Managing message flow
• Running effective meetings
• Delegating tasks

There are noteworthy differences in how women and men managed to be productive.

• Women are able to run productive meetings; they can keep sessions within 90 minutes and finish with the agreement of the next steps.
• Men do very well at coping with high message volume. They are able to look less frequently at their emails, bypassing messages of low value.

• Most of us look at emails every 3 - 5 minutes. Instead, look every hour or two, and then only at subject matter and sender. 
• Answer important emails immediately instead of flagging them.
• Managing incoming emails needs to be paired with other, more big-picture habits. 

• Focus on your primary objectives: Every night, revise your next day's schedule to understand your top priorities. 
• Manage your work overload: Skip over 50-80% of your emails based on the sender and the subject. Break large projects into small steps — and start with step one.
• Support your colleagues: Limit any meeting to 90 minutes or less and end each meeting with clearly defined next steps. Agree on success metrics with your team.