The T-E-C-K approach to productivity
You can easily improve your work efficiency by managing its four pillars
Every PMP would like to learn how to work better and be more productive. However, despite the availability of productivity tools, a PMP’s time demands keep increasing, leading to incomplete tasks and stress build-up.
Some time ago, I read Lando Loic’s article on productivity management on www.makeuseof.com, which focuses on the four pillars of efficiency, Time, Energy, Competence, and Knowledge. When optimizing your productivity, you must ensure that its four components are in sync, as any component being out of sync can reduce your productivity.
Let us say you want to make a presentation on an exotic pest to your customer. Though you may have the time and energy to concentrate on making the presentation, you won’t be able to start preparing the content unless you gain knowledge about the subject. Let us explore the role of each of the four productivity pillars in today’s PCO Mentor.
Time: Time is the most important pillar of productivity, with each individual having twenty-four hours a day to manage their tasks in that period. Time management is a vast subject, with everyone preferring their approaches to it for optimization.
People differ in the time of day during which they are more likely to be productive, and they must schedule tasks accordingly to benefit from their most efficient time of day.
The Pomodoro (kitchen timer) technique which calls for undivided attention to a task for twenty minutes with a five-minute break, is a popular international technique to accomplish tasks. In it, after two hours of a task, you take a longer ten-to-twenty-minute break to retain efficiency.
Timeboxing is another technique for allotting time to a task and making yourself complete it without interruptions. In it, you stop a task even if you have not accomplished it at the end of the time you had planned for it. As a result, you improve concentration on the task at hand and task efficiency by repeatedly using timeboxing and reducing distractions.
I use a combination of the Pomodoro and timeboxing methods while I write PCO Mentor articles. I focus only on the document where I create the article and do not switch to any other task until I finish writing, editing, and publishing it.
Energy: Energy is the key pillar of productivity, without which you cannot concentrate on gaining knowledge or managing time. Energy is a product of nutrition, sleep, and exercise.
Regular and timely meals of nutritious food combined with sufficient restful sleep build the energy you require for your daily routines. In addition, exercise is a great tool to improve stress tolerance and physical ability through the better blood flow, muscle endurance, and alertness it imparts. Lastly, enthusiasm or motivation helps take on tasks and address challenges that invariably spring up during any professional’s workday.
I frequently get up from my desk at my workplace and walk a few minutes every hour to overcome fatigue from continuous sitting. I also take a walk after lunch to remain alert after a meal.
Concentration: Research has shown that individuals take a lot of time to return to their task each time they have an interruption. Any activity in the modern age is frequently interrupted due to the ubiquity of smartphones and online connectivity through computers. On my phone and laptop, I turn off all notifications so that they don’t disturb me when I use either device.
Further, I close all programs on my laptop when I am doing an important task to focus only on the assignment. For example, closing mail clients (Outlook and other such programs) and browser windows prevent me from the temptation to check and respond to email while I need to concentrate on the work at hand.
Uninterrupted tasks get over fast, whereas a simple task with many interruptions may take a long time or never get over. Mindfulness is the opposite of attention deficit that currently characterizes people globally. You can easily develop being mindful by doing one task at a time and resisting the temptation of task-switching. We commonly refer to multitasking as task-switching as no person can do two tasks simultaneously competently.
Knowledge: In the twenty-second century, knowledge is very easily accessible online. I use Google search to write PCO Mentor when I research content, but I also use specialized research websites like www.postpace.com that summarise search results on any topic. For example, I referred to www.makeuseof.com to write this article.
In addition to text content, the worldwide web hosts videos, online fora like Reddit and Quora, and online groups that discuss niche subjects to answer your questions on any subject. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I could generate our website policies by finding ready-made templates for them online.
When making a legal agreement sample, I could easily find standard ones free online—just searching on Google by adding: “How to” in front of a subject yields results that include videos to help you accomplish any task. As a result, PMPs can now easily deal with a question on accounting, legal compliance, risk management, insurance, product safety, pest identification, and numerous other daily work subjects relying on the world wide web.
My observation of PMPs reveals that productivity management eludes many of them as they are not balancing the four TECK pillars in their life. PMPs’ excessive reliance on phone calls to address issues results in frequent task interruptions and reduced efficiency.
As most PCOs everywhere are owner-driven small enterprises, PMPs tend to work on varied subjects in their organizations without having sufficient knowledge. Outsourcing marketing, legal compliance, accounting, and other functions are one way of avoiding the need to know those subjects.
As competition becomes more intense and customers are unwilling to pay a higher price for services, higher productivity helps all levels of a PCO to accomplish tasks easily and effectively. Even technicians need to adopt the TECK approach as they face the same challenges as their business owners. For example, a trained technician will complete the pest treatment faster than one without training.