3 infographics to boost productivity

In Search of Lost Productivity

While “productivity” and finding ways to increase this elusive quality in businesses is a neverending task, let’s face it: productivity is fleeting. It’s like working out to reach your exercise goals – it is hard to achieve, and takes work to sustain. What’s more, life gets in the way – our attention is constantly grabbed and taken in different directions, and our concentration and focus are only finite.

But, there are ways to be more discerning with your tasks, and improve your approach to tackle them. In this blogpost, we’ll take a look at three types of infographic that have an enduring reputation in the business world. We’ll also look at the theory underlying them, in order to see how they will help you and your teams with self-organization, efficiency, and productivity.

1. The Pareto principle

Also known as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle “is a theory maintaining that 80 percent of the output from a given situation or system is determined by 20 percent of the input.”^[1] In a business context, this means that you may well notice the following trends:

• 80% of results come from 20% of your profits.^[2]
• 80% of sales come from 20% of your clients.^[3]

The Pareto principle has stood the test of time. It was first developed by Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto, who wrote back in 1906 about this 80/20 relationship while teaching at the University of Lausanne, noticing that 80% of land in the Kingdom of Italy was owned by a mere 20% of the entire population.^[4] Since then, the Pareto principle’s relevance and applicability across various sectors and scenarios has ensured its lasting impact and continued use today.

Using the Pareto principle is a great method to assess your workload and identify which tasks have the highest impact for whichever goal you’re measuring against (increasing profit, hitting those KPIs, moving the needle towards a particular milestone, etc.).

Once you’ve identified your high-impact tasks, prioritize them in the order that will result in the biggest payoff first. By applying this mindset to your and your team’s tasks, you can guarantee a boost in productivity, (and maybe even profits!).

2. The Eisenhower Matrix

Dwight D. Eisenhower is famously quoted as saying, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”^[5]

The purpose of the Eisenhower Matrix is to assist with time management. It provides a framework with which to assess your tasks in terms of their importance and urgency, in order to prioritize effectively. This in turn helps you be more rigorous when approaching your to-do list.

The matrix consists of four quadrants:

1. Important/Urgent: Tasks that are done immediately by you.

These tasks need to be done, no ifs or buts. They’re usually the ones that keep circling in the back of your mind when you’re trying to watch a movie or enjoy some downtime. Often, the best medicine is to “eat that frog” and get those tasks out of the way first, so you can get on with your day.

Examples include: meeting those crucial deadlines; responding to last-minute urgent work requests or incidents.

2. Important/Not Urgent: Tasks that are scheduled and done by you.

We often drop the ball on these tasks the quickest when we have other tasks competing for our attention, but they are in fact essential to allocate time to. This is because they tend to have long-term goals that bring a high level of reward and fulfillment in the long run.

Examples include: building and sustaining personal relationships; planning out a long-term project, exercising regularly; finding time for personal hobbies and recreation.

3. Unimportant/Urgent: Tasks that are delegated to others.

These are tasks that need to be done, but are not high-priority like the ones in the Important/Urgent quadrant. For these tasks, it’s best to delegate or outsource them to a colleague. Just remember to check their capacity to take on the task first, and to provide a detailed brief for them when you hand the task over, otherwise you may spend more time taking them through how to do the task than you were anticipating!

Examples include: non-essential meetings which can be delegated to a colleague, who can bring key learnings from the meeting back to the team; admin tasks like organizing business travel arrangements; helping colleagues with time-consuming aspects of a task.

4. Unimportant/Not Urgent: Tasks that are considered time wasters – these are simply taken out of the equation and deleted.

We all need a distraction from time to time, and these tasks may provide welcome entertainment and that temporary dopamine high in the short-term, but they have no deeper intrinsic reward like working towards your long-term goals and ambitions.

Examples include: browsing social media; constantly checking emails and message notifications, busywork.

If you use project management tools like Jira or Trello, a good exercise is to assess your task list or Kanban board in light of the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize your tasks. Not only will this tidy up your board and improve your oversight on tasks, it will ultimately help you stay on track with the important tasks that matter.

3. Productivity Venn Diagram

Productivity Venn Diagram (source)

Often when people think of being productive, they think of taking on or doing more. However, that’s only part of the picture – if you spend time redoing or refining something because the quality is lacking, or you waste a lot of resources while churning out tasks, you’ll quickly find yourself slowing down, and the time taken to complete tasks will inevitably increase.

The productivity Venn diagram visually represents the intersection of three key elements necessary for optimal productivity: quantity, quality, and efficiency. It’s a delicate balance between the following:

1. Quantity: Completing a good number of tasks and enjoying the satisfaction of ticking them off.
2. Quality: Doing a job to a high standard. It’s better to focus on one task and do it well, than flit between multiple tasks and try to achieve the same level of excellence in each.
3. Efficiency: Doing a job well while minimizing waste (in terms of project management this can be effort; in terms of physical production this can be wasted materials, for example).

When all three aspects are aligned, you essentially have the holy trinity for productivity. This visualization serves to draw a team’s attention to the importance of balancing these three aspects – without one of the three pillars, you will not be able to achieve a sustainable level of productivity in your workflows.

It’s good to keep this Venn diagram in the back of your mind, and regularly ask yourself when you are on task: am I dedicating enough time to this task? Am I doing it to a reasonable standard that I am happy with? Am I applying lean principles to my work, to work efficiently and avoid waste?

Keep the cogs turning

These infographics are great to refer back to time and time again to assess your and your team’s workload, and identify ways to improve. By integrating these infographics into your workflows, you can improve task management, enhance your productivity, and ultimately, achieve better business outcomes.

For more resources to help with productivity, see:

• Need a quick org chart?
• Speed, accuracy, power: 5 tips to optimize your draw.io diagrams
• Up your marketing strategy: add draw.io diagrams to your Team Playbooks

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