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This is Why the People Who Work At Your Company are So Unproductive
Time Blocks for Communication
Text-based communication should have time-blocks: like an hour, twice a day, where we check and respond accordingly. It shouldn't be a constant activity.
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Shockingly Unproductive
- Studies show that employees spend more than five hours per day reading and replying to emails. While it may seem like urgent work, email is not the best kind of work.
- The open office culture in many big and small companies is not conducive to achieving the state of flow, in which we are creative and productive.
Facilitate Deep Work
A few smart strategies that can be deployed:
- Installing pods for deep work while having common areas for collaborative work.
- Wearing headphones that are easily seen to signal that you are not to be disturbed.
- Turning your office into a library, following the same culture of quietness where everyone is hushed and respectful.
Email is not Real Work
Real work, by definition, should be rare, valuable and cognitively demanding.
Email does not check any of these boxes, and is, therefore, a pseudo work.
Collaborative Notes
Instead of the unstoppable email back and forth, using a collaborative tool or notion can lead to more productivity and fewer emails/notifications.
A Deep Work Routine
Setting specific times for employees to get into the deep work zone and establish certain rules that promote pure creative work is a great motivator and productivity enhancer.
If employees work just an hour doing one task, without any interruption, they will understand the benefits and will love to do more of the same.
Be Distraction-Free
If while working, we see an email or notification, it derails our focus even if we don't do anything about it.
An environment free of distractions, with no smartphone notifications, no ringing phones, no incoming email, facilitates deep work.
Mails and Priorities
Most email falls in the category of other people trying to get you to do something.
And ideally, we shouldn't be spending so much time per day catering to other people's work priorities.
Time Blocks for Communication
Text-based communication should have time-blocks: like an hour, twice a day, where we check and respond accordingly. It shouldn't be a constant activity.
Meeting Rules
- Meetings should be short and crisp with a specific purpose/agenda and should just be a reason to gather.
- There should be someone in charge of the meeting.
- Meeting notes should be collaborative, and with a set goal.
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Make Time To Connect
Workers crave a sense of authentic connection with others and the best way to do that is by bringing people together in person. But it's not always a viable alternative.
One way to do that...
Communication
- Set clear expectations and make an effort to be a good listener.
- Set clear boundaries. Establish a preferred time for communications so you feel respected and acknowledged.
- Get to know others. Remote workers often have purely transactional interactions. Listen to people and get to know them.
- Update people on what you’re working on and your availability.
Use Shared Experiences
A co-located office develops its own personality through inside jokes, shared experiences, and a collaborative environment. A remote team needs to develop something similar.
Creating specific Slack channels based on interests and book clubs where the company funds the books are the easiest ways to do this for remote workers.
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Asynchronous communication
There are mainly two ways to communicate within a company: synchronous and asynchronous communication. While the second type has always been widely practiced, as face-to-face meetings or any other ...
Real-time communication drawbacks
While real-time communication inside of a team might lead to solving faster some issues, it also has various disadvantages.
For instance, having your colleagues come to ask you questions to which you feel pressured to answer on the spot leads to you being continuously interrupted, which results in being less productive and feeling stressed or even getting a burnout, as you try to do everything in proper time.
The asynchronous workplace
When the employees are provided with control as to when they are willing to communicate with their co-workers, there are many advantages that emerge.
For instance, having the freedom to decide exactly how your working day should look like leads to more satisfied employees as well as to better communication within the team. Further benefits vary from feeling less stressed due to better planning to greater transparency and more efficient work.
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Deep work vs. Shallow work
- Deep work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. Creates value.
- Shallow work: Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. Doesn't create value.
4 philosophies to integrate Deep Work into your life
- Monastic: maximize Deep Work by minimizing or removing shallow obligations. Isolate yourself for long periods of time without distractions; no shallow work allowed
- Bimodal: divide your time into some clearly defined stretches to deep pursuits and leave the rest open to everything else. Reserve a few consecutive days when you will be working like a monastic. You need at least one day a week
- Rhythmic: involves creating a routine where you define a specific time period — ideally three to four hours every day — that you can devote to Deep Work
- Journalistic: alternate your day between deep and shallow work as it fits your blocks of time. Not recommended to try out first.
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