8 Productivity Tips for Work (that pay off forever)!

if you find yourself performing necessary yet repetitive tasks at work chances are there's a process you can set up once that will make your life much easier in the long term so in this video we're going over my eight favorite set and forget productivity tips for work that are huge Time Savers in the long run let's get started diving into tip number one challenge the status quo the rule of thumb here is if I change the default setting for something three times in a row I should just change that default setting for example in Google Docs I actually never liked the aerial font so with this sentence highlighted I change this to verdana and keeping it highlighted click normal text normal text update text to match then click back options save as my default Styles now when I create a new Google Document doc dot new you'll see the default text has been changed to verdada another pet peeve of mine is receiving notifications on shared documents I own but the comment is not directed towards me so I click on the comment history here Bell icon select comments for you and none down here and click OK Pro tip you can also manage notification settings in Google Slides Google Sheets and the Microsoft Suite of tools as well by the way neither Google nor Microsoft is sponsoring me for some reason but this video is supported by those of you who subscribe to my paid productivity newsletter and Community Link in the description to learn more productivity tip number two grouping for efficiency at work you're probably part of multiple email aliases everyone at company.com marketing at company.com NSFW accompany.com which I'm told stands for no seriously feedback wanted the tip here is to add group aliases to calendared events directly so you never have to add or remove individuals who join or leave the team similarly you can grant file access to the entire Alias instead of adding individual team members Pro tip if their group owner set a reminder for yourself to update the membership list on a regular basis managers can also assign other team members to be the manager of the group while still being the group owner spending five minutes once a quarter going to Google Groups is much more efficient than having to make changes to multiple events and file permissions whenever someone joins or leaves work smarter tip number three automate back and forths whether you organize weekly office hours host regular coffee chats or provide Consulting Services as a side hustle you want to cut down on the number of back and forths needed for a time slot to be confirmed if your company or School uses the business version of Google workspace you can use the appointment scheduling feature found in Google Calendar simply create a new appointment schedule follow the answering instructions and at the end you'll have a shareable link you can send to people who want to book your time if you use a free alternative like calendly you can still block off a time slot on your calendar make it public so others know when you're available and title at something like weekly coffee chat sign up link in the description Pro tip if you use a Google works space version I recommend changing the minimum time here from the default 4 hours to 24 hours meaning people can book up until one day before the time slot giving you enough time to prepare for the meeting I also recommend adding two reminders for the scheduler of the appointment one for the day before and one 15 minutes before the appointment start time Pro tip number two add your appointment or candidly link to a Texas Banner tool so you never have to dig around for the URL I personally use the Snippets feature in the Alfred app so whenever I type colon colon schedule it outputs my link Alfred is Mac OS only I'll link my tutorial video down below so I can't be too sure of good Alternatives what I can be sure of is the comment section will definitely have an opinion on the best Texas Banner app so why not click the like button on the way down there productivity tip number four filter out the trash similar to the first tip if I find myself digging into my inbox to find a certain type of email three or more times I create a filter and label for example I have a filter that tags all confirmation emails and invoices from Airlines and hotels with a trips label for easy reference Pro tip if you use Gmail the next time you book travel you can leave your username the plus sign and the word trips gmail.com and you'll still receive emails as normal combine this with a filter whereby in the to field you have your username plus trips at gmail.com apply the label trips never send to spam and moving forward all emails sent to this Trip's email Alias will be tagged with the trip labeled automatically Pro tip number two if you use Google Calendar create a new filter in the hazard words field write file Name colon invite.ics and accepted uh click create filter skip the Inbox and Mark as read and create filter now you'll never receive an email after someone accepts your invitation but you'll still be notified after someone declines this makes sense because after someone accepts there's no need to follow up after someone declines you need to take action and find a new time productivity tip for work number five make an offer that can't refuse in his best-selling book Atomic habits James Clear States the best way to get rid of unhealthy habits is to introduce friction in his mediocre YouTube video Jeff Sue States the best way to get colleagues to promptly respond to work requests is to decrease the friction as much as possible for example instead of just sharing document access when you need input use the at symbol in Google Docs to create a bookmark right click on a cell in Google Sheets to get a link to that specific cell or go to a specific page in Google slides and copy paste that URL Pro tip you can also passive aggressively right click on this video copy video URL at current time and send that link to your unproductive colleagues set and forget tip number six the self-serve checkout in short if you own a process at work that relies on the input from others you want to both decrease the amount of time you spend on maintaining that process and minimize the probability for errors to occur for example instead of asking colleagues to give input Direct directly on a spreadsheet since they might make a mistake that messes up your future workflow use something like Google forms or type form where you can control the input for each field I also like to use the import range formula to import the raw data into another tab before making any adjustments so I don't mess with the original data I have an entire video on the most common spreadsheet formula so I'll link that up here as well Pro tip if you end up using Google forms you can go to the responses tab here click the three dots and enable get email notifications for each new response productivity tip number seven consistent file management if I were to ask all of you what the best file management system is for work I would receive over 50 responses so I recommend finding an organizational method that works for you and apply that consistently across all your files for example This Is My Level 3 View in Google Drive I have a folder for my marketing campaigns and one for overall strategy and within strategy I have folders for each year alternatively I could have years as my level 3 view and within a year have marketing campaign and strategy folders let me know if you want a full video on my entire file management system Pro tip I have a standalone meeting notes folder but regular viewers know we should always organize information by where we will use them so although I keep the original file in the meeting notes folder I always create a shortcut this does not duplicate the document and add that shortcut to the corresponding project folder tip number eight for the workplace the two minute rule for your inbox so we all know the two minute rule if something takes fewer than two minutes to do do it right away but you might not know there's an entire email workflow called inbox zero built around this concept you start the workday with a lot of emails but instead of treating them equally first only tackle the ones that take less than two minutes to deal with then label and archive the rest into three buckets follow-up waiting and read through I have an entire video on how to set this up so I won't waste your time here but a pro tip you can use immediately is the snooze feature available in both Gmail and Outlook if there's an email requiring you to take action more than a week from that out it's best to snooze that email and revisit at a later date so it doesn't clog up your inbox or your mind space I'll link my inbox zero step-by-step tutorial here see you on the next video in the meantime have a great one

Channel: Jeff Su

Views: 286,908

Keywords: 8 Productivity Tips for Work that pay off forever, how to be more productive at work, how to maximize productivity in the workplace, be more efficient at work, how to make fewer mistakes at work, how to succeed in the workplace, workplace productivity tips, boring repetitive manual tasks, microsoft word, powerpoint, excel, google docs, google sheets, google slides

Id: QHrWMMlVYRA

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 24 2023