Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Productivity is the name of the game for project managers. If you’re productive, you’ll most likely be successful. If you’re not – well, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest where that will take you (and it’s not good). 

The question is, do you have a plan for maximizing your productivity for increased success?

How to Improve Your Productivity and Output

Productivity can feel elusive at times – especially if you’re managing a project with lots of people and moving parts that you don’t have complete control over. But it’s not exactly a mystery. 

If you want to get more done and be more efficient with the time and resources you’ve been given, it’s simply a matter of being purposeful and intentional. 

Here are several ways that top project managers tackle prickly projects and get more done in less time.

1. Rethink Your Goals

Every project manager understands the importance of setting goals. However, it’s possible that you’re setting inefficient goals that don’t actually improve productivity. Research shows that a lack of well-defined goals is one of the driving factors in project failure. More specifically, poorly defined goals account for 37 percent of all failed projects.

It’s not enough for goals to be realistic, clear, and measurable – the defining metrics of effective goal setting. You also need to focus on the timing. Annual goals are great, but they do very little to light a fire. The same goes for six-month goals. You should break them down into digestible goals that extend no more than 12 weeks out. This is long enough to make progress, but short enough to keep people motivated. (But even then, you should have weekly and monthly checkpoints for your team to hit.)

2. Switch to Standing Meetings

Research shows that the majority of meetings are highly inefficient and do very little to improve productivity. In fact, most of them actually hinder productivity and slow teams down. But sometimes meetings are necessary. And when they are, you should opt for the standing variety.

A standing meeting is exactly what it sounds like: A meeting where everyone is standing. The goal is to keep things brief and straight to the point. Rules include: 

• Never invite more than five people.
• Nobody is allowed to sit down or bring a computer.
• The meeting begins precisely at the start time. 
• The meeting lasts no longer than 15-20 minutes.
• No small talk is allowed.
• One person takes meeting minutes and sends them out after the meeting.

This might sound unnecessarily constricting, but you have to follow these rules. Otherwise, a standing meeting turns into just another meeting.

3. Encourage Remote Working

If individual team members have the ability to do their jobs remotely, you should encourage them to do so. Studies show that productivity is much better when working from home than when working in a traditional office setting. 

In fact, the average person is 47 percent more productive when working from home. Not only that, but the quality of their performance increases by an average of 13 percent.

4. Use the Right Tools

There are hundreds of different tools that you could theoretically use as a project manager. However, it’s important that you focus on using the ones that will have the biggest impact. In other words, target the 20 percent of tools that will produce 80 percent of the results.

If your project is data-heavy and requires you to send lots of large files (like videos, massive spreadsheets, or entire folders of images), a cloud storage tool can streamline your communication and file sharing. 

If your challenge is daily communication and keeping people on the same page, you might want to switch away from email or phone and use a streamlined chat application like Slack instead.

You get the idea. Focus on the tools that are going to have the biggest direct impact on day-to-day productivity – not the ones that promise a bunch of shiny bells and whistles but take weeks to get comfortable with.

5. Block Out Distractions

Research shows 70 percent of employees feel distracted at work, while 16 percent say they’re “almost always” distracted on the job. And here’s the scariest part: The average office worker gets just 11 minutes of focused time in between each interruption. It then takes them 25 minutes to return to the task. In other words, a five-minute distraction might not seem like a big deal. But it can easily turn into a 30-minute hiccup.

As a project manager, anything you can do to help your team block out distractions is going to be helpful. This might even mean investing in high-quality noise-canceling headphones for each member of your team. 

Retool Your Approach to Productivity

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you’re frustrated by your lack of productivity as a project manager but haven’t changed your approach, then you’re not setting yourself up to be successful. 

It’s time to shift your inputs so that you can produce different/better outputs. Use the suggestions in this article to begin moving in a positive direction.