0: 54 The power of using specific subject lines – putting order into your inbox!
1: 15 The one topic per email strategy to increase your productivity
2: 05 The 45/15 rule that will explode your and your team’s productivity
Please share YOUR number one productivity or time management tip below the video!
Franziska Iseli Hall: Hi. Welcome back to Basic Bananas TV.
Christo Hall: Welcome back.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Today we want to share with you three of our most favourite tips to be more effective every day. And we only discuss these a couple of weeks ago now and it was actually summer and we were sitting on the beach for a team meeting and we said, “Okay, how can we be more effective? Our team and ourselves.” And the first tips we have been implementing since then and the last one is a special one from one of our friends.
Christo Hall: Yes.
Franziska Iseli Hall: So what is the first one?
Christo Hall: Well the first one is when we send e-mails between team members or suppliers, we put what the e-mail is about in the subject line. So the start of the subject line is always about what the topic is. So that it‘s really easy to track and you‘re not fishing through your inbox anyways to find that e-mail has to do with that flyer or to do with that website or to do with that marketing strategy. Everything is labeled so the e-mails are labeled.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Yeah. And the second one?
Christo Hall: The second one is one topic per e-mail. So rather than filling in e-mails with ten different topics, especially between team members, we just have each one labeled in the subject line and one topic, so it really matches up well with the subject line and it‘s something. And if it‘s something I want to ignore for a little while, well I can see that is something so I‘m not going to clutter up my brain space because I know that I‘m working on that later. So everything‘s really labeled and it just has that one topic, each labeled in an email.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Yeah, and they‘re very easy tips, right. I mean they‘re so simple, but we‘ve been implementing them and that‘s made such a huge difference already for our efficiency and impact that we have.
Now the search tip is one that we‘ve only started implementing last week because we had training, team training and one of our dear friends, Heidi Alexandra... One of her tips, which was fantastic, was that we call it the 45-15 minute rule. And what we do is because we have a team here…. You know, sometimes you always have interruptions because you always have to ask stuff or help people out. So what we‘ve begun to do and what we‘ve been doing for the last couple of days is the first 45 minutes of each hour, we‘re focused on getting stuff done. So we‘re quiet, there‘s a bit a music in the background we focus for the first 45.
Christo Hall: No distracting each other allowed.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Exactly. And then for the next 15 minutes of every single hour, so from 9:45 to 10:00…
Franziska Iseli Hall: We‘re allowed to drop… So we are allowed to go, ask questions. If in the 45 minutes stuff comes up that you need to discuss, we just write it down. Then in the 15 minutes of each hour we just quickly ask questions, get stuff done. Hey, what about this? What about that? And it‘s really helped us increase our efficiency massively.
Christo Hall: Productivity.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Productivity massively, it‘s been a fantastic tip… So maybe try it out. Even if it‘s for yourself what you do if you work alone, you just do 45 minutes focus work, 15 minutes answering phones, calling people back, doing e-mails and that sort of stuff and it will increase your productivity straight away. Now let them share some of theirs, right?
Christo Hall: Yeah, we‘d love to hear some of your productivity tips or time management tips, so please do post and share because share the wealth, share the fun, share the joy with everybody in the community and everybody wins.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Yeah maybe post your number one productivity tip because I want to actually learn your tip. So give me your number one tip to be more productive at work and maybe I’ll send you some chocolate…. Not sure yet! But just post it below.
Christo Hall: Let‘s be productive and go and get some done.
Franziska Iseli Hall: Yeah, let‘s go.