The 4 Productivity Styles And How To Get More Things Done

Have you ever heard about your productivity style? If not, it's time to learn more about it! This elaborates your strengths, weaknesses, and points for improvements, which you can use to enhance your productivity. This can also improve synergy and cooperation within the team. As a result, you and your team should get things done quickly and more efficiently.

So, what’s your productivity style and how can you get things done? Check out the four basic approaches of productivity styles from your cognitive nature. This is based on the book, Work Simply: Embracing the Power of Your Personal Productivity Style, published by Carson Tate.

The Prioritiser

The prioritisers always look at the facts and analyse processes logically. They see what matters the most and try to stick to it as much as possible. They are laser-focused and like to have a professional working area without too many distractions.

When given a project, the first thing they do is to arrange a timeline and workflow for each task. They set a deadline for themselves and follow this to the best of their ability. They work lightning fast without compromising the quality of the work. They are very strict and competitive, which may seem controlling and rigid to their colleagues.

Strengths:

• Great analytical skills
• Key decision-makers
• Determined to abide by the deadline
• Goal-oriented, decisive, and logical
• Complex problem-solving skills

Weaknesses:

• Small talks - Rather than establishing camaraderie, prioritisers see small talks and chit-chats as a waste of time.
• Long meetings - They can easily space out during lengthy meetings because they should rather spend their time solving the problem than discussing how to solve it.
• Easily misunderstood - Since they like to avoid small tasks as much as possible, they can be easily misunderstood in the workplace as snobby or rigid.
• Can be too competitive - Instead of working with the team, they may see their colleagues as a competitor and refuse to work with them.

Productivity tools:

• Old school journaling, sticky notes, calendars, and markers
• Digital notebooks like Evernote, Google Tasks, Noteshelf, TickTick
• Online calendars like Google Calendar, Zoho Calendar, Calendly
• Timer applications such as 42Goals and Moosti
• LogMeIn Ignition to access work PC remotely

How to boost your productivity as prioritisers? 

It’s recommended to put your competitiveness to the test. According to Tate, timing yourself doing the routines, tasks, and activities can be very helpful. As you become more productive in a short amount of time, beating your own record can help you stay focused. Its major drawback is doing everything you need to do all at once or nitpicking on one unimportant detail.

The Planner

When it comes to being systematic, nothing beats the planners. They’re very organised and focus on every single detail — no matter how small they are. They like to sequence their tasks step by step and their courses of action, rather than wanting to accomplish the project quickly. 

Once they set their plans, they must follow them no matter what happens. Spontaneous projects or deadline adjustments are something that may trigger the planners. When assigned unplanned and rushed tasks, they don’t feel as creative and in the zone. It bugs them that they don’t know what to do next because they don’t have a plan for it yet.

Strengths:

• Great organisational skills
• Practical but detail-oriented
• Project management skills
• Anticipates the worse and actions it fast
• Best at planning, organising, and setting deadlines

Weaknesses:

• Unspontaneous - Whenever they don’t have a plan, they don’t like spontaneous tasks and activities. They’re also not as productive with unplanned projects.
• Missed opportunities - They often let good opportunities pass because those aren’t what they planned in the first place.
• Too process-focused - They stress over following the processes in their plan, even if these aren’t necessary for the goal.
• Rigid - Once they’ve set their plan, they likely won’t accept ideas, suggestions, and feedback on how to improve the process.

Productivity tools

• Journals, notebooks, file organisers, filing cabinets, and other organisational materials
• Habit-tracking applications such as Momentum, Habitica, 42Goals, HabitForge
• To-do lists apps like Wunderlist, Google Keep, Todoist, Remember the Milk, and more
• On-the-go techs like an iPad for quick and easy agenda and note-taking

How to boost your productivity as planners? 

Arrange your plan in a way that lets your ideas flow freely. For example, you can batch tasks that involve brainstorming, encoding, and even breaks altogether. This way, you don’t disrupt your flow and do not waste time switching between your tasks. According to Tate, creating a to-do list that can be finished in 15 minutes or less is also effective.

The Arranger

Got office conflicts? Let the arrangers handle these for you. Unlike the first two productivity styles that are both analytical and logical, they tend to focus on their emotions and intuition. This extends to their work ethics too. The arrangers are natural-born communicators.

They’re very dynamic and are known as team players. Whenever they have a project, they encourage the team to work together and help each other if they encounter difficulties. They give a nice flavour to the team as they add personal human touches, rather than focusing too much on facts and data. They love their small chit chats and talking to their colleagues.

Strengths:

• Effective communication skills
• Empathetic with their colleagues
• Strongly aware of others’ emotions
• Encourages the team when hard time strikes
• A good teacher and mentor
• Excellent persuasion skills

Weaknesses:

• Can be too talkative - While this can be great for them, other people like to skip the small talks and focus on their work instead.
• Too much involvement - Instead of letting people tackle their own problems, they may come off as being nosy rather than being helpful.
• Value people over the goal - They value team dynamics and teamwork, but they can also easily lose sight of the goal.
• Lack of other people’s work styles - Encouraging the team is all good, but some people just want to be left alone to do their job.

Productivity tools

• Collaboration tools such as Join.me, GoToMeeting, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more
• Aesthetic office supplies like different-coloured pens, dotted journals, sticky notes, etc.
• Focus-enhancing tools such as StickK, Brain.fm, StayFocused, Self Control, and more 

How to boost your productivity as arrangers? 

Schedule your time with the team. Arrangers tend to help the team all the time to the point that they compromise some of their work. That’s why it’s very important to set aside time for your colleagues, or you may end up not accomplishing your tasks in a workday. Schedule these times as a coffee break or even a short snack time.

The Visualiser

Do you have co-workers who are always up for a challenge? They’re probably the visualisers! They are very intuitive and creative with their ideas and solutions to problems. Working under pressure is a piece of cake for them, and they get bored easily when there aren’t things to do.

Whenever the team has a hard time solving a problem, they’re very much willing to help in connecting the dots for you. They have a lot of ideas that can both be really helpful and borderline ridiculous or impossible. However, these open fresh perspectives on how they should move forward with the projects.

Strengths:

• Creative, innovative, and quick thinker
• Sees the big picture of things
• Excellent problem-solving skills
• Strategic thinker and mentor
• Connects the dots with ease

Weaknesses:

• Too idealistic - They can easily get caught up in the possibilities and ideas, which can make them lose track of the process and the outcome.
• Tendency to overlook details - As they see things in a bigger picture, they may fail to pick up on some very important details in a project.
• Excessive impulsiveness - Impulsiveness can help in quick thinking, but it can also backfire as they often don’t think things through.
• Failure to plan ahead of time - As they like to think of the possibilities, they may fail to plan their courses of action and fail to submit their work on time too.

Productivity tools

• Post-it notes, coloured notebooks, folders, clipboards, pens with a variety of ink colours
• Mind-mapping software such as iThoughts, Mind Genius, Microsoft Visio, Milanote
• Ad-blocking tools such as Adblock Plus, Popper Block, uBlock Origin, Coggle
• Focus-enhancing tools such as StickK, Brain.fm, StayFocused, Self Control, and more 

How to boost your productivity as visualisers? 

Completing all your tasks in one run isn’t ideal for you. Rather than finishing all your tasks, it can bore you and prolong your job even more. The best thing you can do is to break the cycle! Take breaks whenever you feel like being unproductive. While this can be a distraction for other styles, this can actually be fuel for visualisers, says Tate.

Remember: Productivity style is a spectrum

Your productivity can be defined by just a single style, but it can also be defined by multiple styles. It’s a spectrum, which means you can lean on one side for doing certain projects and on the other side for accomplishing other tasks. You may be a prioritiser in the sense that you don’t prefer chit chats and a planner in a way that you always schedule your tasks.

To get more things done, make sure that you have the right attitude towards your productivity style. Pair this with your personalised tools too. This way, you know exactly how to get things done according to your productivity style. Most of all, ensure that your broadband plan is fast and reliable all the time for the ultimate productivity at work!

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