In this episode, Veronica and Jillian discuss strategies for enhancing productivity by discerning between busyness and true efficiency, emphasizing the value of strategic scheduling, accountability, and prioritization. They advocate for leveraging technology, optimizing creativity, and efficient meeting management to avoid burnout and maximize time effectiveness.
Today, Veronica and Jillian's discussion aimed at maximizing productivity through a balance of scheduling, accountability, and prioritization. They emphasized prioritizing tasks that add value while distinguishing between busyness and actual productivity.
Veronica shared insights on optimizing creativity by allowing time for rest and inspiration, while Jillian highlighted data-driven decision-making for improved productivity analysis using tools like Toggl.
Both speakers stressed the importance of strategic padding between meetings to avoid burnout and group physical meetings efficiently, enhancing time effectiveness. They recommended leveraging automation tools for meeting preparation and follow-ups, and setting aside buffer times.
Practical tips include utilizing technology for reminders, structuring meeting agendas, and aligning daily schedules with energy levels for effective workflow streamlining.
*Special Offer: Veronica & Jillian are teaming up to offer live brainstorming sessions for listeners of this podcast. Listen until the end of this episode for more details. Here is the link you'd like to apply: https://bit.ly/CCP-brainstorm
People & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About Veronica Guguian
- Website: https://spinideas.nl/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-guguian
About Jillian Vorce
- Website: https://thejilliangroup.com/better
- Website: https://jillianvorce.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianvorce
Credits
- Music Composed by BeeLa Music
- Voiceover by Amanda Balagur
Veronica Guguian: Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 30. And everyone knows I do like round numbers, so very happy to have, again, Jillian with me today. And today we're going to talk about maximizing productivity and how that looks for us and what we can do to maximize what we are doing to be more productive. So, Jillian, I know you love productivity.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yes. I think of it as scheduling for productivity and also accountability, because for me, those three things go together. So if I want to be productive, a lot of things go into that. It's not just, oh, I'm going to be productive. Great. What am I going to do? I don't want to just be busy. I want to be actually productive.
Veronica Guguian: That's a good differentiation.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah. So I kind of fold those three pieces together, the accountability piece and the scheduling piece. So that's kind of how I think about it. How do you think about productivity?
Veronica Guguian: Well, I will separate myself before being an entrepreneur, actually me years ago versus me. And it's very in line with what you said. We tend to confuse being busy with being productive. And that's a big difference. So the longer your to-do list, the more things you do, you're more productive and I kind of understand that and that was my mentality. Like, I just need to do more and more and more because that's the society we live in. This is where culture, like, we kept on discussing about these things. The more busy you are, that means you're successful and you're productive and you're creating things. However, the older I get, the wiser I get. I prefer to think wiser than older. You realize that being busy is actually not necessarily productive.
Veronica Guguian: And we do have the 2080 rule as well that states the same thing. So a lot of the tasks that we are doing are actually not really needed. Or you can do them better or optimize or delegate, and then you can put your time into something. Sometimes actually not doing anything could be much more productive for your company than being super busy with, I don't know, emails and whatever, because that time will allow you to rest your brain and come up with the right solution for your clients, especially if there's a creative solution that we both are very busy with that, right? Our marketing and also business involves a lot of creativity. And if your mind is busy, that's impossible to be creative, at least for me.
Veronica Guguian: So I will probably be able to come up with something, but I know the value of that idea is 20% of what it will be. If I had a good night, for example, or if I go for a walk and get inspired. So I think, funny, I had a meeting with a client two days ago about some articles that he wrote and a specific topic, and I was like, how about we start? I always start by defining the terms because what I understand by productivity and efficiency and what somebody else understands are different. So maybe we could. What does productivity mean for you?
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Well, it's funny listening to you because it reminds me of the kind of pattern. I think a lot of us can get into a pattern of doing the things that we always do because these are the things we always do. So I was in that kind of flow for, I don't know how long, probably too long. One thing did happen for me that really helped to shine a light on this issue of time and productivity and accountability, et cetera. When I went on maternity leave, I expected that to be, I had planned on that to be four weeks and it ended up being eleven weeks. So coming back to work and talking with my team and clients after an eleven-week departure and finding that things had continued to run in my absence was, on the one hand, a relief and really exciting.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): But it also made me feel like, wow, what have I been spending my time on all of these years? So it really was a big shift for me to begin to explore and really start to think about how I spend my time so fast forward from there. I think one of the things I actually had to do to shift gears on that and to think about it differently is to be far more proactive and kind of go back to the drawing board, so to speak, and really first identify what are the tasks that need to be done, what are the objectives, the business goals, like what are the things that need to get done. And then starting to apply a layer of data and a layer of honesty, like truth to that. Right.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So the data piece is looking at certain things that have to get done. How long do they take? Not the arbitrary number or amount of time I just put in my calendar or just guess, but how long do things actually take to happen for me and for my team? So knowing the actual time, like time ranges or what have you, is really helpful. And the second thing in terms of the honesty part is, I think it's easy for, I'll just say, a lot of us to get into kind of a habit of doing things like activities that we will say are like business building, or we're working on our business, but we're sharpening our pencils. Really, it's an abundance or an inordinate amount of time spent on supportive tasks that aren't really ultimately moving the needle.
Veronica Guguian: I love that. And actually, I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to give examples because I realize we keep on talking about this, and for the listeners that can say, okay, I understand, but what exactly is that? And I know from my experience because I heard before when I was busy, not productive, but I really wasn't able to properly make the difference between them.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Sure.
Veronica Guguian: So how about we give some examples? Yeah.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): For me, I can look at, share some specific things. So I think two categories of things were junk drawers.
Veronica Guguian: Oh, I love that.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Right? Yeah, we all have a junk drawer. So two categories for me, one is learning things. So that's like reading articles or listening to podcasts or attending webinars or things like that to learn. Because for me, I have this never-ending cycle, this dog chasing the tail routine. Like, just learn a little bit more, learn some more. And that will help me. I can apply those to my business, which is true, but it's not realistic, it's not sustainable, it's not a good, sound business strategy, in my opinion, to spend too much time on that every week. So now I have a time budget. It's generally 2 hours a week for me that I spend. Granted, some weeks it's more if there is a conference or something, but generally it is 2 hours a week that I spend.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): And then to go off the deep end for a second as I come across articles or podcasts or things over the week, I will then drop those links into those schedule blocks. So when it comes time for me to learn, or I just call it learn, then I have the articles all teed up. So then I go and I read those articles and I do what I do. So that is one kind of bucket that was a major time suck for me. So I have converted that now I've got a structured amount of time and a process to know what I'm going to be learning or reading about at that time. That's one. The second is networking and building relationships with people, and that's probably a more difficult one for me because I love connecting with people. I'm really wired that way.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): It's my default to connect with people and to always look for opportunities to help them out or connect the dots and connect resources, et cetera. But I can't spend too much time doing that. Right? So I've also looked into the different categories of networking. Is it actually business development-oriented? Is it like a meet and greet? Is it a catch-up? So I have very specific categories. So I did a nice deep dive in the data to look at what are the types of meetings and conversations that I've been having, and how I could create subcategories for those and then prioritizing accordingly. So now I know how much time to spend on each kind of category of networking. And I also take it one step further, which is the reason I connect this all to scheduling again, is I have specific calendar links for certain groups of people.
Veronica Guguian: You mentioned that before, I think we have.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Just with varying availability. So therefore, if it's a meet and greet, there's only so many available if it's the same thing across all those categories. So that's a really important piece for me to delineate. Yeah, so that's my answer. So you asked for something specific, so hopefully that's specific enough.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah, and I'm actually happy I asked and understood, because for me they're slightly different. I never really put the learning part necessarily in my business schedule. So I see that, for example, podcasts, I listen to that before going to bed, or like I'm allocating half an hour, 1 hour, and that's when I listen to them and I don't really consider them as learning, even if. Yes, it's learning, actually, the webinars, yes, those you can't really move. So if they are during the working time, yes, they will be part of that. But for me, what I changed is the amount of time I'm spending in meetings, prioritizing the type of meetings, not necessarily having different ones, because I know our brains are different. So I know that works perfectly for you.
Veronica Guguian: For me, starting and arranging all of that, I'm adding a complexity that for me, that makes my life not being productive. For example, I'm spending too much time creating things that I prefer. Like I'm having a 30-minute call and that's it. And those 30 minutes can be shorter or longer. And for really working with my team, there will be 45 minutes. But the moment I switched from 1 hour to 45 minutes or even shorter, you know what happened? It wasn't that we couldn't solve things, actually, we became much more efficient. Yes, because you don't need 1 hour and that doesn't mean we didn't do a check-in or I don't know what is happening with my team, but we're more to the point. And we became more respectful, I think, of the time.
Veronica Guguian: And another thing that actually changed for me was I realized I was spending a lot of time. It is still very important for me to react quickly to my clients. But how you define quickly, actually again, is different for me as the email came, I need to answer immediately. But if you're in a creative mold then, and you're doing something, that means you're breaking from that cycle, you're responding and it takes you longer to get back into the rhythm of creating whatever you're creating. Right. But the moment that I know I'm going to answer all the emails in bulk and I'm going to do that whenever I feel like either morning or evening or lunchtime, depending on also how I feel, that changed a lot. Something else that I'm actually doing now more and more is listening to my body.
Veronica Guguian: Even if I do agree with what you said, I'm always starting my day with a to-do list. So these are the important things that need to be done today and they are non-negotiable. So this needs to happen today because of deadlines, whatever. Right. And I'm very realistic with the amount of time. I always tend to add maybe a little bit like 510 minutes extra just to have something go wrong. But what I don't do, I'm not saying that needs to be solved in the morning or in the evening because I tend to listen to my body. Maybe I had a ben. I sleep so I'm slower in the morning. So it will be better for me to answer emails in the morning than being creative.
Veronica Guguian: Or if I had a very good night's sleep and I feel very creative, I went with my dog for a walk and just feel full of energy because like, today is sunny, then it's better for me to actually stay and do something creative in the morning because that will be my energy. And by switching that actually, that helped me be more productive. Insert flexibility in a tight schedule, if I can call it like that.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So what that reminds me of is how I think of it as a kind of proactive scheduling, which maybe sounds like the opposite of flexibility in scheduling, I'm not sure. But it made me think of that because one of the things you mentioned is like emails and whatnot, and I think that's a trap for a lot of us. We lose our train of thought or lose the thing, like losing that thread because we respond to an email and then we respond to another email, and next thing you know, we're in the rabbit hole and all these things and an hour has gone by. It's like, oh, and then you lost your train of thought. So I have also been guilty of that, which is why I know about the rabbit hole.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So what I did for that is also to proactively schedule again the different tasks that need to happen within my business and also just work style-wise. So I also schedule specific time for administrative things, which sometimes that's replying to emails and things like that. So I have times that I also will do that. So I can go in and do all the emails, take care of all that, and then move on. So I'm not just doing Onesie twosies here and there and feeling scattered. So the other thing that I also do, which sounds similar to yourself, is I realized, thinking about my work style and managing the time, the priorities, and then the energy. So I know myself, I have my.
Veronica Guguian: Kind of.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Therefore, I set up my schedule to do that type of work at the beginning of the day. So that's something that I've learned to work towards or to build into, proactively build into my schedule. And then another thing I do to kind of be proactive with scheduling is we had kind of mentioned this, but having certain days that are for meetings and certain days that are off limits for meetings, that are my thinking days where I have longer chunks of time to get fully immersed in certain projects again because for me I need to make sure that I'm allocating the proper amount of time for all the things I need to get done. So I'm trying to kind of manage the energy and the time available.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): And the same thing goes for larger projects that I'm working on, is I look at the smaller pieces or the approximate amount of time or what the deadline is or something, whatever the metrics are, and then proactively schedule those blocks in my calendar every week or however long it is so that it's already there. And then I build everything else around those priority things. So that's why for me, so much of productivity requires some kind of personal accountability. And for me, proactive scheduling.
Veronica Guguian: I like that accountability is a very important part as well. And there's personal accountability that for me that is done by my to-do list and what I have to do. And if I cross them, if everything is crossed, at the end of the day, I feel happy. If something is not, I'm trying to be kind with myself and understand why it didn't happen, or maybe half of it happened, or maybe whatever. Maybe what really helped me especially, and that will be advice for the younger entrepreneurs, or not younger in terms of newer entrepreneurs. What really helped me at the beginning was having an accountability partner like someone else. And I did that several years actually, including last during the pandemic.
Veronica Guguian: Just meet once a week and can be very simple as to state what I need to achieve this week and the fact that you have to meet with that person or a group of people. I did it once, but also in a group. And you need to say, I did it or not. I don't know if it's the shame, responsibility, I don't know exactly what feeling you are, but you're like, no, I made a commitment towards that group that I'm going to finish this ABCD. So that really helped because let's be honest, I think productivity and this part of our brain to train it is a muscle, right? You need to train, you need to create these habits of working. And exactly like going to the gym, I know once that I get into the rhythm, it becomes addictive.
Veronica Guguian: Basically, I need to do it. My body tells me, no, this time of the day we need to work out because this is what we are used to and the brain works the same, right? So your neural pathways are created in such a way you create them that, you know, like, okay, this is my creative time, this is my meeting time. This is my learning time, so on and so forth. So once you do that, it becomes easier. However, the moment you have a break or at the beginning when you're just starting and you're still navigating and learning, like what actually works for me, it's harder. So accountability is a very great way to learn and train you, basically how to do that because it does require discipline. It does require a lot of discipline.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Absolutely. I like that you said that. It's like a muscle. And the analogy with going to the gym, that's absolutely the case. I can identify with that. For me, the gym thing is about 30 days. So those 1st 30 days are painful. And then my goal in each of those days is just to simply get there. Yeah, just actually getting there. It feels like success. I made it there. I like that. So the accountability side here with respect to kind of productivity and scheduling. So one thing that I have implemented over the last maybe six months, or, I don't know, six months-ish, is I'm using a tool called toggle and that is really helpful.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): It integrates with my Google calendar and it allows me to get kind of reporting data about how much time I'm spending on certain things so I can actually see my time spent. And it's helpful week over week and then over a period of time to be able to compare because it's so much. I'm constantly trying to strike that balance of being, maximizing my productivity, so doing more with less time and therefore being able to spend time doing other things that I enjoy, et cetera. So I'm really quite hyper borderline, obsessively focused on scheduling because for me, so much of what I can accomplish and how I feel about what I'm doing, et cetera, are all tied to my calendar. And so taking the reins on that and being proactive is a really helpful way to tackle these things, in my opinion.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): The other thing that I do for accountability is using another tool, automations. I set up automated readers prior to meetings and also prior to events and after them. So prior to that would be things to help me prepare. Like a reminder, I have such and such meetings or events coming up in a week or this kind of thing so that I prepared for it ahead of time and the same thing for a meeting. So sidebar every meeting I have, I prepare an agenda to help me get my thoughts together so that I can be efficient. And so I have an organic conversation, but I don't want to talk for 45 minutes. And then at the end realize, oh, I forgot to ask you about this, or three weeks later.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So I try to be very kind of structured and organized with that, but also for events, the same thing. So the preparation and then on the backside, same thing. So oftentimes, depending on what it is, it's either a day later and or often one week, three weeks and six weeks out, the reminders, because of certain things, did I follow up with, did I create that content, did I publish that content, did I reach back out to those people, whatever it is. So I use technology and automation to help me make sure that I'm reminding myself to make sure that I've done.
Veronica Guguian: The things I need to do. I like that. And I want to come back to, for example, the tool that you're organizing in the toggle to actually see how long everything takes. Yeah, I think that's very important. Especially when you start your business middle and more advanced because you want to see progress. You want to see if I used to spend 3 hours on a specific idea. Actually we need to make a differentiation between creation, where it can actually take longer, depending on the projects, but administrative tasks, for example, if it used to take me 3 hours, the longer you make them, they should be shortened. Or you can automate different things and you can externalize something, so you can allocate that time to something that is actually productive to you. And that can be, I said, even a walk to get inspired.
Veronica Guguian: So I love the fact that you are monitoring. How long does it take you and if you're able to shorten that period? Yes, how can you? Very sterile, but more or less it is.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): I'm constantly trying to improve what I'm doing, how I do it, the result, all of those things. So I prefer the decisions I make.
Veronica Guguian: I must say I'm going a lot with intuition. So not necessarily I do follow data, but for some things I will be very impulsive or gut feelings, but in terms of that I do like to follow. Okay. How can you allocate time for specific tasks if you don't know how long they took you before?
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Exactly.
Veronica Guguian: So there are a couple of things that you really need to be realistic. And of course, they will be. Oh, I need inspiration for this or Igreg project. That's different because then it's harder. You can make an estimate, but that can take a day or whatever. So that's harder to estimate because you can't really speed up creativity. However, when you have something like doing your taxes or I don't know, just looking at numbers and doing reports, that's quite straightforward. Right. The process, the steps. So it shouldn't take you that much time or more than it used to.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So I have two last short, little kind of, I guess, tips or suggestions.
Veronica Guguian: I was about to ask you about those.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yeah, just two last ones. So one of them is, which you already kind of mentioned, and I think it's really important. So I'm going to call it out again because I also do it by using padding around my meetings. So I try to usually schedule a 15-minute padding in between meetings. Therefore, try to avoid back-to-backs, because if one person or one meeting runs over, then there's this kind of domino effect that happens. Or sometimes if you've had too much coffee or drinking your tea, and then all of a sudden, like midway through your second or third meeting, it's like your eyes are floating. It's not fun.
Veronica Guguian: No. Let's be honest. You'll not be able to focus on it.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): The meeting for sure. I think that's a simple one. Again, I use technology for that to build padding in. Actually, I have a great mentor. He talks about the 55-minute hour, which I love. So when he and I meet, we have 55-minute meetings. So we talk about that, the 55-minute hour. So that's a hat tip to flip. Yeah. The last one I have is something that I've done over a number of years. It's become less relevant to me of late, but I still am. Anyway, it's about grouping physical meetings together. So I did this quite professionally for a number of years. Then, of course, during the pandemic and all these things, it's changed a bit. Now I'm trying to get out of more physical meetings because it's become so comfortable and efficient to do virtual meetings.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): But in any case, this idea, so what I always did, and I'm beginning to do again now, is figuring out certain cities or regions or neighborhoods, whatever your situation is, that I was going to meet somebody and then I would look at all the people in that area using my CRM to see the other people in that area that I might want to reconnect with, that it's time to reconnect and. Or that might be a nice introduction to that person that I'm already scheduling to meet with. So I can try to meet, like back-to-back meetings or a coffee group meeting or something like that. So that it's more efficient than schlupping back and forth because, I don't know, wasting time traveling.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Or I feel like having that first time you drive somewhere 2 hours and then they cancel on the way or something. It's like, yeah, don't do that again.
Veronica Guguian: Always happens at least once or twice.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): So I learned I would always stack it so that no matter what I was covered, so that the time spent, the energy, the gas, or whatever it was to get to where I was going to be put to use because I would have some kind of backup. So a contingency plan. So those are my last tips for sure. About proactive scheduling for maximizing productivity and accountability.
Veronica Guguian: I like them and they're very aligned with mine. What I'm also doing online does apply. I actually give myself not five minutes but 15 minutes between meetings. My goal will be half an hour, but it doesn't always work depending on the schedule. So that's what I'm doing differently. And what I'm also doing, combining walking meetings. For example, I have a dog, right? So I do need to walk my dog three times a day. It's a very energetic dog. So today will be a perfect example. I'm going to meet someone while walking the dog and it will be fun. Will be great for building relationships that are already existing, but also catching up and discussing what we want to do.
Veronica Guguian: Of course, you can't meet everyone for a walk with your dog, but you can actually see what are the connections and the stacking of meetings. I keep on doing it now and also for the online and how I apply. That is. For example, I don't have meetings. I have client meetings in the morning, for example, that I will accept. But none of the new meetings or prospects or get-to-know-each-other or the other category will happen in the morning. All of those I have fixed periods of time in which they can book and just to keep it. Okay. So I know I'm not that efficient. My brain is working, I'm good. But I will not be creative between those hours.
Veronica Guguian: So that will be a perfect time to meet these people and be curious about them instead of just feeling like I could have done something else. Because let's be honest, sometimes you just meet someone. I just want to be out of this meeting because it's a waste of my time. We all have that. Then I will not feel frustrated about it. I will actually be able to be there because, yeah, I'm not wasting time. I think that will be a nice end to this productivity, and efficiency.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Don't waste time. That was the closing tip.
Veronica Guguian: Yes. Maybe that should be our title, how not to waste time.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): Yes. All right, so that's our wrap on episode 30. Thanks for listening.
Veronica Guguian: But before we go, don't forget about our surprise for our listeners.
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): You are right. Look at me. Shame on me. How about it?
Veronica Guguian: So probably you already heard in the previous episodes, but we do love collaborations. I think that's the core of our podcast. So this is why we decided to invite one, like several of you, the listeners, to join us here in our podcast and basically use our brains. So, do you have a question? Do you have something that is not really working in your business, or just you want an audit or you want to change something? We have a lovely form. That is, you can find it in the script. And where else? Everywhere, actually. We're going to place the link everywhere and just book a meeting with us and let's discuss how you can better optimize your business by just using our brains. Anything else?
Jillian Vorce (she/hers): A link in the show notes for the application.
Veronica Guguian: Thank you all for listening, and till next time, cheers.