How managers can maximize their productivity without a to-do list

How managers can maximize productivity — without a to-do list

June 9, 2021 4:04 PM

For managers, the pressure is always on to maximize productivity and get it all done. But there are better ways to power through the day than by checking off boxes on an endless to-do list.

“To-do lists don’t work,” says Don Khouri, an executive coach and author. “To-do lists don’t tell us what to do next and they include a flat list of stuff that can’t really be completed. That can be overwhelming.”

With burnout on the rise, managers need a better way to set and reach their long and short-term goals for themselves and their teams. Managers should set clear and concise expectations around what productivity looks like, and learn to say yes, instead of no, when tasks and assignments pile up.

“There's tons of productivity books on the market that teach us the importance of saying no, but no one actually wants to say no,” he says. “Instead, if we can identify a clear process for knowing when to say yes, these tasks become much more appealing.”

Khouri shared his five steps to prioritizing daily work tasks to create a system that will help you and your team members succeed:

Align the task to your goals

In your career, you need to have a plan for where you’re going. There's more requests for our time than we could ever possibly get to. So that's where we have to be really clear and purposeful about what we are going to focus on. Do these items fit into the goals you’ve set? If it does, you can move on. If the task doesn’t fit into that, you really need to ask yourself if the roadmap needs to change.

Identify and be aware of the relationship with the requester

In talking to C-level executives, most of them had some sort of relationship hierarchy. Some may put their boss number one, others put their customer number one, others put their spouse number one. And they're going to give more weight to that request than they are for someone that's lower on their relationship hierarchy.

Ask, is this a quality request?

Has the requestor completely thought through what they're asking? If they have, then you're going to pay more attention to it. If it's a haphazard, lackluster type of request, then you might go back and ask, “Before I could even process this, I need the following information.” Then you can decide what to do with it.

Prioritize — and then reprioritize

Priority needs to drive everything. When you get a new request in, it’s not about how you can fit it in and do everything else, but asking what needs to be reprioritized. If we have a really clear list of priorities, then we would make a decision on what doesn't fit and what’s really important. The most effective leaders are the ones that say, “I'm happy to take on that new project for you. Could you just let me know where that fits on our priority list?”

Delegate

People who are really effective think about delegation in two ways: not just to get it off their plate, but also to use it as a development opportunity for someone on their team. If it's a development opportunity and they're growing their skills, then they're going to be able to take on more. We can get more done together than we can alone.