5 Time-Tested Methods to Boost Workplace Productivity and Efficiency

Published on October 26, 2023
5 min read

5 Time-Tested Methods to Boost Workplace Productivity and Efficiency

Meta Description: Top 5 productivity methods used by top global companies: 1) Pomodoro Technique, 2) Eisenhower Matrix, 3) Time Blocking, 4) Kanban, 5) Eat The Frog

In today’s fast-paced and competitive business landscape, productivity is key to success. The world’s top companies have mastered the art of maximizing efficiency and getting the most out of their resources. They have developed strategies and methods that allow them to stay ahead of the game while fostering a healthy work environment.

According to a New York Times study, eight out of the ten largest corporations in the United States track their employees’ productivity in real-time using various methods. This demonstrates the importance of implementing proven strategies to monitor and improve productivity, as they significantly contribute to a company’s success.

In this article, we will outline the top five time-tested productivity methods that are commonly utilized by 80% of the most successful companies. By identifying these strategies, you can effectively support your business and achieve your productivity goals.

What are productivity methods?

Productivity methods encompass systematic approaches, strategies, and techniques that aim to enhance the optimization of work time, tasks, and resources management. They are established ways of measuring and enhancing efficiency in the workplace.

These methods are created to help businesses:

  • Improve task prioritization
  • Centralize and simplify work processes
  • Stay on track with tasks to achieve bigger goals
  • Gain better visibility on their workload and accomplishments
  • Avoid employee procrastination, demotivation, and burnout

Any business– including yours– can leverage these advantages by utilizing the right productivity methods most suitable for the nature of your business and the organization’s structure.


Download link sample:

Let’s explore the top five productivity methods commonly used by industry leaders.

1. Pomodoro Technique

Time is a precious resource, and the Pomodoro Technique prioritizes its efficient utilization. Developed by Francesco Cirillo, this method revolves around working in short bursts followed by brief breaks. The basic logic behind this technique is that people are more likely to exert maximum effort in completing a task when they will be rewarded with a quick break soon after.

A typical Pomodoro cycle lasts 25 minutes of focused work, followed by a five-minute break. After completing four cycles, a more extended break of around 15-30 minutes is taken. Designed to manage time, attention span, and energy, it’s no surprise that long-standing enterprises with thousands of employees utilize this method across their organizations. Applying Pomodoro blocks will enable you to break down complex tasks into more manageable activities, allowing employees to maintain focus, combat burnout, and boost productivity.

It’s important to note as well that this technique is heavily based on tracking time of both work blocks and breaks.

How to apply the Pomodoro technique using a time tracking software:
  • Choose a reliable time tracking software: This will be the key to the success of your Pomodoro method implementation. Find an easy-to-use, straightforward app that allows employees to simply click the start/stop button, add a new task to track, and view their progress for the day.
  • Set the sequence of tasks: Each person needs to list down the goals that they need to complete for the day, and break them down into actionable tasks that can be accomplished within 25 minutes each.
  • Plan breaks in advance: Five minutes can run by so quickly that if you’re only going to think about how to spend your break when it has already started, you may go over the allotted time. After the fourth Pomodoro, you can take a 30-minute break to enjoy a meal and relax for a while.
  • Stay away from potential distractions: Every 25-minute work burst should be free from possible disturbances. It would greatly help if departments or employees directly working with each other follow the same Pomodoro schedule, lessening potential distractions from co-workers. Likewise, turn off notifications on non-work related apps to ensure complete focus.
  • Track and analyze your progress: Through the time tracking app, you can generate reports to monitor progress and determine patterns from the entire organization’s actual performance. This data can be used to identify areas you can improve on and optimize processes as necessary.

The Pomodoro method simply serves as a framework. It can be modified to your business. You may adjust the time frames of your work and break minutes according to what your organization needs. This technique is quite straightforward and offers numerous benefits. However, it also comes with a few drawbacks.

Pros and cons of the Pomodoro method:
PROS CONS
1. Bolsters efficiency and focus through fast and highly focused work intervals, leaving no room for procrastination. 1. It may not be applicable to all types of businesses, particularly those that work on long, complex projects.
2. People become more mindful of how they spend their time. 2. Implementation may be a challenge as employees resist a system drastically different from how they are currently working.
3. Helps avoid burnout and stress with a more sustainable pace. 3. May be counterproductive for employees who get pressured by time.
4.Pre-planned and structured work makes workflows more organized.
5. Easy to customize and modify based on how your business operates.
2. The Eisenhower Matrix

Created by former U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, this popular matrix is a top choice for organizations that need to focus on addressing prioritization skills. If your employees are constantly working on multiple projects and are relentlessly feeling overwhelmed, this productivity method can help provide structure to make work more manageable.

The Eisenhower Matrix categorizes tasks based on their urgency and importance. This allows teams to focus on the most important and time-sensitive tasks, while delegating or ultimately eliminating activities that are neither their responsibility nor contributes to their progress. It segregates work into four buckets:

  • Important and Urgent – Essential tasks that don’t require immediate action. These are activities that may involve long-term conceptualizing, planning, and continuous optimization.
  • Important but Not Urgent – These are tasks that may pose as potential distractions from accomplishing more important responsibilities specific to your role. Delegate these items to appropriate team members.
  • Urgent but Not Important – The most important, high-impact tasks that need to be done on the same day. These are items with the highest priority that should be done first.
  • Not Urgent and Not Important – These tasks do not add value towards achieving your desired output. Don’t spend time on these time-consuming activities that will not contribute to your goals.

While the key issue addressed by this technique is the lack of prioritization, time management is still a crucial aspect of its effectiveness. Integrating time tracking will improve your task categorization and let you know which activities are best accomplished first within each quadrant.

How to apply the Eisenhower Matrix method using a time tracking software:
  • Focus on one quadrant at a time: Understand what each quadrant requires and list down a draft of tasks that fall under each category.
  • Set realistic but specific time limits for each activity: Utilize your time tracking app in monitoring the time spent on each task. This is crucial in determining time drains and making smarter adjustments on which activities to tackle first, moving forward.
  • Monitor your productivity and efficiency: Continuously reassess the tasks categorized in the matrix. As you go along, there may be changes in priorities and urgencies.
Pros and cons of the Eisenhower Matrix:
PROS CONS
1. Segregating in quadrants drives focus on the most pressing, urgent matters. 1. Tendency to oversimplify intricate situations.
2. Empowers teams to take on higher impact tasks proactively. 2. Heavy focus on urgent and top priority tasks may lead to overlooking important but not urgent activities fundamental for long-term growth.
3. Promotes better time allocation and avoids you from wasting time on menial tasks. 3. Varying interpretations of what’s important and urgent across the organization.
4.Provides some structure through a visual matrix that everyone in the team can easily comprehend.


Download link sample:

3. Time Blocking

A task list tells you what needs to be done, while time blocking reflects when you need to do it. We’ve established how time is crucial in measuring productivity, and this strategy revolves around just that. Time blocking is basically grouping similar activities into specific time slots, reducing switching from one drastically different task to another.

It structures a typical to-do list into a schedule-oriented, logical workflow, which will enable you to accomplish more tasks in a shorter amount of time. This technique is one of the simplest ways to enhance focus, efficiency, and productivity, for any type of enterprise.

How to integrate time tracking software with the Time Blocking method:
  • Choose a reliable time tracking software: Research on apps that suit your requirements. Consider looking for features like customizable task tagging, categorization, and reminders.
  • Create a comprehensive to-do list: List down all activities needed to be accomplished for the day, including menial tasks, and batch them according to similarities.
  • Add short descriptions in the to-do list:This can help easily identify what needs to be done, especially for those who have a lot on their plates.
  • Set reminders through the time tracking app: Automated alarms will let you know when it’s time to move to the next time block.
  • Allot realistic timeframes for each task block: Rely on estimates first, but once there is enough data from the time tracking software utilize that information to optimize your time blocking strategy.

Because this productivity method is very simple and straightforward, it can easily be modified to tailor-fit your organization, as teams learn more about how much time they actually spend on each task or time block.

Pros and cons of Time Blocking:
PROS CONS
1. Breaks down big projects into more manageable tasks, increasing productivity and efficiency. 1. May not be applicable for companies that don’t practice strict scheduling.
2. Gives a sense of accomplishment, ticking off multiple tasks per time block. 2. Limited flexibility should urgent, unplanned tasks come up.
3. Easily customizable- teams can decide the length of each time block and how to batch tasks, as they see fit. 3.Poses as a real challenge for employees to allocate enough time for each block, and not over-work it to the point of burnout.
4.Can be implemented by both teams and individual contributors.
5. Reduces time drains and distractions as each block is firmly timed.
4. Kanban

Considered as one of the simplest productivity methods, this Japanese manufacturing efficiency technique has become implemented in other industries such as IT, software, and marketing, to name a few.

The Kanban method splits a standard to-do list into 3 primary categories: to-do, work in progress, and done. Such lists make work organized so that employees and their project managers can easily visualize the progress in each workflow stage. This technique streamlines tasks to help ensure seamlessness of the work process and identify possible bottlenecks before they disrupt any important tasks.

Basically, there are only two rules for Kanban to be effective: 1) Visualize your work, and 2) Limit your Work In Progress (WIP). To follow through with these guidelines, tracking time spent in each stage of the workflow is crucial.

How to integrate time tracking software with the Kanban method:
  • Create a Kanban board: Whether it’s on a digital platform or plastered on a wall, creating a single dashboard where anyone in the team can simply update the status of their tasks, add new activities, and view what’s in their pipeline is the core of the success of your Kanban strategy.
  • Integrate a time tracking app with the Kanban board: ntegration allows teams to track time spent on tasks and seamlessly move forward to the next activity on their board. Note that your time tracker should have a wide range of app integrations that recognizes your Kanban platform.
  • Personalize the workflow stages: While there are 3 typical workflow stages commonly used in Kanban, you modify them to match your team’s distinct processes.

.

An example of a Kanban chart with the three primary categories.

Pros and cons of Time Blocking:
PROS CONS
1.Easy to implement across any organization size or industry. 1. Handling hundreds of tasks can be too disorganized and lost in monitoring with this setup.
2. Can be modified and tailored according to changing priorities and work activities. 2.May not be the best option for industries that comply with fixed timelines and plans.
3. Streamlines work through better visibility of task progress. 3.Relies highly on employees to implement successfully.
4.Eliminates procrastination as work progress is highly visible to everyone in the team.
5. Employees will learn to have a sense of accountability over their work.


Download link sample:

5. Eat The Frog

Brian Tracy’s popular productivity technique is focused on accomplishing the most difficult, unwanted, or important tasks first thing in the workday. Doing so takes a large chunk off your plate, allowing you to focus on accomplishing other responsibilities afterwards. It is ideal for teams that struggle with procrastination and lack of progress as it eases their mind from the unnecessary stress of lugging around the thought of such daunting tasks the entire day.

The first step is segmenting the to-do list according to these categories in order to determine your “frog”:

Essentially, Eat The Frog addresses effective prioritization, task progress monitoring, and improving focus. Time is once again an essential factor for a successful implementation of this technique as the most daunting tasks are often the most time-consuming.

How to integrate time tracking software with the Eat The Frog method:
  • Create a to-do list: Include only the most critical tasks for the day, and decide on the “frog”, followed by all other activities that need to be done but are not time-sensitive.
  • Set time limits:Just because it’s a big task you’re about to tackle first, doesn’t mean you can take all the time to accomplish it. Placing a limit through an automated time tracking system ensures that no procrastination and overthinking will ensue.
  • Start the day early: Take on your “frog” during the most productive time of your day. Studies show that your peak hours may actually depend on the business industry. Explore what works best for your organization and encourage employees to leverage that period.
Pros and cons of the Eat The Frog method:
PROS CONS
1. Overcoming a challenging task to jumpstart the day, setting the momentum with high energy, motivation, and focus. 1. The most daunting task can sometimes be mentally draining.
2. Immediately breaks any possibility of procrastination as the biggest task is accomplished first. 2. Not very flexible to accommodate unexpected tasks and schedule changes.
3. Structures the to-do list with prioritization. 3. May be quite rigid for teams handling creative jobs that require versatility.
4.Boosts employees’ sense of accomplishment and confidence.
5.Encourages smart and mindful time allocation.


Download link sample:

Conclusion

In conclusion, the world’s leading businesses employ a range of productivity methods to drive success. By incorporating these strategies, companies can boost productivity, stay competitive, and create a work environment that nurtures both personal and organizational growth.

However, the secret to effective productivity techniques is inherent not solely on the strategy, but in the availability of the right tools, the success of its implementation, and the organization’s cooperation. But arriving at a strategy that blends smoothly with the nature of your business and your company’s culture takes time, resources, and the support of third-party software that can make the whole process much easier.

It’s time to get Productive.

Productively is a time tracker app that lets you elevate work efficiency with advanced time tracking, real-time reports, and powerful analytics. We believe that if you can manage your hours, you can handle everything else.

With a streamlined dashboard that lets you visualize time tracked by days, weeks, months, or even by client and project, you will be able to make more informed decisions based on accurate data. Its seamless invoicing feature allows you to automatically generate account statements for a more organized billing and receivables system. Altogether, it provides a comprehensive view of your teams’ efficiency, hours worked, billables, and profit.

Bolster productivity, reduce unnecessary costs, and improve the way you do business with the app that empowers you to visualize your untapped capacity.

Social Media

Like our content? Subscribe to our mailing list to get the latest updates, tools, and resources.

Start leveraging powerful time tracking data to boost productivity and improve the way you do business.

All that and more through a time tracking app that will empower you
to understand your business better and identify problem areas.