Here’s 62 Time Management Tips For Work (Panel Notes & Infographic)

Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, so what makes some people so much more productive than others? The Arizona Technology Council partnered with Chris Ronzio, CEO of Organzied Chaos, to moderate a time management and personal productivity panel at the Biltmore Fashion Park’s Blanco Tacos + Tequila.

Below are the answers from the panel of local Phoenix executives on ways to free up more time and get more done. We discussed time management best practices, delegating, outsourcing, and cutting-edge software that helps make business and life easier.

I want to thank Zach Snader for taking copious notes.

There’s No Such Thing As Busy – Arizona Technology Council panel

Let’s meet the moderator:

Chris Ronzio, Organized Chaos – Founder of Trainul. His software creates an online training manual for your company. Finally you can train employees, contractors, salespeople, interns or vendors with the click of a button.

Let’s meet the panelists:

• Kendall E. Matthews, Vice President of Global Marketing & Communication – AppointmentPlus – Software as a Service executive who has built multiple growth-focused teams using concepts from neuroscience and direct-response psychology.
• Scott Offerdahl, Founder – Awesome Institute – A lifelong entrepreneur, Scott has owned many companies over the past 20 years, from Silicon Valley to lower-tech and real estate. He currently has four companies: Total Airport Services, Quick Space, Compelling Investments, and Awesome Institute.
• Adam Arkfeld, CEO – Paracore – His company, ParaCore, uses custom web solutions to help businesses create automated solutions for marketing campaigns, internal processes and general web-related problems.
• Zach Ferres, CEO – Coplex – An interactive agency that focuses on truly collaborative design and development. He’s been in the online marketing world for over 9 years and am heavily involved in building startup communities. He’s also a co-founder of Huddlewoo, a video chat platform.
• Anessa Burnside, Founder – Ask Anessa – Specializing in offering personal assistance for the busy professional, small businesses, dedicated socialite, seniors and families of all sizes

How are some people more productive than others?

• Do the thing you want to do the least when you wake up. Magic Morning Time! – Scott

Take naps! Don’t let anyone see you though. – Kendall

• The Alexander Technique. 15-minute lie down, book under your head, hands in your lap, sit and control breathing. Good for reflecting and winding down. Equivalent to taking a two-hour nap. Jim Coates is a local mentor. – Zach
• Stressed and anxious when I have a lot of tasks. Plans next day with tasks and blocking it out on his calendar. – Adam
• Productivity page. Prioritized projects for the day and bullet points. Who do I need to contact today, who do I need to hear from? What are my musts for today? Do not check email immediately. – Anessa
• Checking email first thing in the morning throws you into reactive style. – Chris

What do you do when you need to eliminate distractions?

• Note: A classic alarm clock is better than a phone to avoid distraction in the morning. Set your space first thing in the morning. Block your calendar with a buffer day. – Anessa
• Stolen trick from Jon Cottrell. Do not hold meetings on certain days. – Zach
• Leave the office and go to a place where you won’t have distractions, like the Target cafeteria. – Kendall
• Coffitivity helps the white noise factor. – Chris
• Book a flight to the Czech Republic. – Chris

Create a Not To-do list. – Anessa

How do you process everything that is coming at you?

• Hire people to do those things for you. Manage projects in a communicative environment. – Kendall
• Other people have great ideas. Channel them. – Scott
• Slack, Trello, Asana. – Anessa
• Many things competing for attention. Slack, open workspace, etc. – Adam
• Have to find balance between free time and cranking away. – Zach
  

  One of the reasons Apollo 11 was successful is because they sacrificed work with contextual understanding. – Zach

How do you remove yourself from bottlenecking and learn how to delegate?

• Everyone around me but me wanted me to let go of more. The biggest thing for me now is to make a list of things I actually have to do myself. Once I got over myself, things became a lot easier. I also had to hire better. It’s a relief to give things away. One of my main organizing principles is freedom. – Scott
• One of the things I’ve talked to my teams about is that I refuse to do everything. If we say yes to it all, we become the bottleneck. Establish expectations on the first day. – Kendall

How do you start delegating?

• As an entrepreneur, you need to plan to give up 70% of what is on your plan. By empowering others, they will do more for you than they originally set out to do. If someone is not proactive, it can be very difficult to train them. Create a foundation for them to build from. Have specificity of what the outcome should look like. – Anessa

Level two delegation is automation. How do you automatically delegate things?

• A lot of it is about process. We use some connected services, like Zapier, but it’s about setting processes and sticking with them. Our productivity comes from doing the same way every time. – Adam
• Biggest thing is to not shortcut the process yourself. – Scott
• No one will ever become as great as you if you believe you are irreplaceable. – Anessa

How do you stay aligned with the big picture and make sure you are creating progress every day?

• Step away every 50 minutes and make sure you are staying in check. Hold yourself accountable for your projects. Use alarms to make yourself have to do things. – Anessa

How big of a role does health play your day?

• The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working. Read this. The jobs we have today are not just jobs where you rinse and repeat, they require problem-solving and innovation. Diet, nutrition, naps, they discuss these things in the book. The foundation of productivity is to be healthy. – Zach
• Repetitive lack of sleep is a chronic problem with entrepreneurs. – Scott
• I check to make sure I have an average of 8 hours of sleep every 72 hours. – Anessa
• When I’m training for a race or setting a goal outside of my work life, it’s rejuvenating to complete personal goals and feel in-control even if work doesn’t go well. – Zach

Are there triggers that help you get in a productive mindset?

• When Stephen King writes, he sits in a certain chair or drinks a certain tea. – Chris
• If you don’t have fuzzy slippers, have something block out any bad light. – Kendall
• Become increasingly aware of how you’re doing. Give yourself permission to fix it. Treadmill desks can be great for this. Put yourself in the right mindset. – Scott
• Be comfortable. Where something that will keep a good mindset, like my dragon shoes. – Kendall

Looking fly makes you confident. – Zach

I can justify spending money on just about anything if it will make me more productive. Any purchases that work for you?

• TempurPedic Sleep Number Bed and a bed mask. – Kendall
• For me it’s more mental. What will make me feel good today? When you look good, you feel good. – Anessa
• One of the best investments I’ve ever made is to have an assistant at home. I have someone come in two days a week, does cleaning, light meal prep, read and file my mail, etc. It’s efficient and provides me with stress relief. When the toilet paper is folded…that’s one of my favorites. $180/week and I get 10-15 hours per week. – Zach
• What can I tell you to buy? Buy time at your home. – Anessa
• Have a lifestyle by design. Remove a lot of things outside of your life. I want a lifestyle that is flexible. Live beneath your means. – Kendall
• If things become too expensive, strip them away. – Adam
• I either work from home or at one of my companies. I have to be productive when I work from home. It took three years, but my commute is zero. I made it my space, my thing, and enrolled the people in my life to understand that. It took time, but it’s a skill. – Scott
• Worked from home for about a year managing about 60 people. It stilted innovation and shared contextual understanding for our company because it impacted the culture. – Zach
• If you do work from home, keep a Not To-do list. – Anessa

How do you protect your availability and avoid distractions at the office?

Set clear boundaries. If you don’t tell your team how you want to work, they will take advantage of it, even if unintentional. – Anessa

• Make it hard for your team to find you. Make sure you are moving around. My office is wherever I am at. – Kendall

What resources have been influential to you on productivity?

• Zapier. Automatic triggers when I get a new lead. – Anessa
• Productiveapp.io Read four books in 28 days at just 30 minutes per day. I don’t want to end that streak. It has blown my mind. – Adam
• Having someone else to hold you accountable. Something about having someone keeping you honest (make sure it’s not your spouse). – Scott
• As a global marketer, I need to understand different cultures. For people who want to learn a different language, I use Duolingo.  – Kendall

Who are some of your biggest productivity influences?

• Tim Ferriss – The Four-Hour Work Week.
• The One Thing – Gary Keller
• Motivation Manifesto by Brendan Bouchard
• Alliance by Reid Hoffman

Are you good at focus?

• Yes. Discipline over focus. – Anessa
• Routine is the core of staying disciplined. – Adam
• You’re not busy. It’s a choice. You choose to do this over that. – Kendall

I can probably get 4-6 focused hours of work per day. How many hours does it take me to complete that focused work?

• Choosing to focus is a muscle I’ve learned to develop. – Scott
• What are you going to do in those 4-6 hours? That keeps me focused within the Strategy, Training, and Revenue blocks. – Kendall
• Develop a relentless ability to say “no.” – Scott

How do you say no to yourself?

• We focus on the outer journey, but we wrestle with the inner journey as well. Wish there was a magic answer, but there’s not. Build awareness and work with others. I’m good at problem solving, but I’m also good at denial. If I’m aware of what’s going on with me, I’m able to fix it. – Scott
• If you feel something is a sacrifice or you are procrastinating, you should be delegating or outsourcing it. – Anessa

How do you handle something when you don’t do it well?

• Fail forward, fail fast. – Kendall
• Take stock of why you failed. What should the outcome be next time you try something? – Anessa
• We are learning to celebrate failure. It is easier to say than do, but fear of failure holds us back. There’s no ill intent to our failures, so we need to celebrate and learn from them. The ideas that work far outweigh the ones that don’t. – Scott

“I had a wonderful series of failures in my life. Tony Robbins. “

I struggle with declaring failure. How do you know when to cut the cord and make it ok?

• Be up front. What is success and how is it measured through your metrics? How can we improve things the next time around? – Kendall
• Courage not to mess with metrics once you set them. – Scott