Start Doing Daily Productivity Checks in the Office

If you want to increase productivity in the office then you need to make yourself and others accountable for using your time more wisely. The best way to do this is to create a system of daily productivity checks. You check in with yourself, you check in with others and you check up on others in the office. When this is done in an efficient and organized manner each day, it is successful in increasing productivity.

Set Daily Productivity Goals

The first thing that you’ll need to do is to set daily productivity goals. Most people find that it’s best to create a list at the end of the day to be accomplished the following day. This way, you know right at the start of the day what your goals will be. It is best if you organize these tasks by their contribution to your overall productivity. (See this Daily Productivity Planner for one example of how to do that.)

Determine How You’ll Do Check-Ins

Daily productivity goals work best when you hold yourself and your employees accountable for meeting those productivity goals. You should create a plan for how you will check in with one another. The plan that I have found most efficient is this:

• Check in with yourself at lunchtime. Simply review your list of productivity goals to make sure that you are on task.
• Check in with an assigned partner at mid-afternoon. This should be a five-minute meeting in which you both discuss where you’re at with your day’s productivity goals. It can even take place over IM or as an email.
• Check in with the whole team before leaving at the end of the day. Schedule a twenty minute meeting into the end of each business day. Spend fifteen minutes briefly updating one another on your day’s productivity. Spend the last five minutes quietly creating your productivity list for the next day. Large businesses can be broken up into smaller teams to save time.

Rely on Productivity Rewards

The truth of the matter is that most of us need some type of external motivation to stay productive all of the time. There is a tendency for these productivity check-ins to go awry because team members waste time gossiping or griping about what they didn’t get done. This problem can be combated by establishing your own reward system for meeting all goals. This can be as simple as everyone leaves an hour early on Fridays if all the week’s goals were met or as detailed as planned retreats and office parties when big goals are met. Figure out what works in your office.