A few productivity hacks to help your association chapter this programing season
Updated: Oct. 9, 2023 | Categories: Board Productivity, Board Overload
Everyone, from your board to your members, has a ton going on in their work and personal lives, in addition to everything they do related to the chapter.
We’ve pulled together several productivity hacks (e.g., simple easy-to-apply tricks to improve productivity) – and a bonus tip -- that can make what they’re involved in a little less stressful. Try these, suggest them to your association chapter board members and share them with your overworked members. The easier you can make it for everyone, the easier it will be for them to get involved in your chapter and stay involved.
Email
How many emails do you get each day? How many do you really need to respond to exactly when they come in? Probably very few. Set some limits around when you review new emails and how and when to respond.
Plan a few small blocks of time during the day to check your inbox. If you can respond to an email in a minute or two, do it. Otherwise, set a reminder and come back to those longer emails when you can devote enough time to them to give the proper response.
You may also want to set up an automatic responder that lets people know you only check and respond to email at certain times during the day and you’ll follow up within X time. You could also include directions for contacting you or someone else for time-sensitive issues.
Email fatigue is a real thing, for your board and for your members, which is why it’s even more important that the emails you send from the chapter be valuable and relevant to the people receiving them. Recipients should want to engage with your emails and not groan and hit Delete when they see a message from your association chapter in their inbox.
Meetings
“This meeting should have been an email.” Think about the number of times you’ve said that after a meeting. Before you look for time to meet on peoples’ calendars, think about the most productive way to handle the item you want to meet with your board or committee about. Could it be resolved by email, a quick virtual meeting or even quick survey?
If you do need to meet, before you default to an hour, does it really need to be an hour? Maybe 15 or 30 minutes would be sufficient. And do you need as many people as you think? Set your agenda (and send it out) before the meeting and only invite those who really need to be there.
Time Management
That meeting got cancelled. Great – now what can you get done instead? Even if you know you won’t be able to finish something in the 30 minutes you just got back, or the 15 minutes you have between meetings, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t start it. Those “found” blocks of time can be great for cleaning out your inbox, reaching out to a contact, doing some research or catching up on industry news.
Get things done in chunks and the next thing you know you will have gotten more of the tasks on your 1-3-5 list (more on that below) done.
Distractions
Avoid multi-tasking. Research shows that multitasking doesn’t work well, if at all. Trying to focus on multiple things at once, like going through emails and watching a webinar at the same time, and mistakes happen. Both tasks will take longer – including as you go back through the webinar for things you missed the first time- and you won’t do either well.
And, as odd as this will sound coming from us, set some chapter free time. We’re thinking about all the time you spend engaged in chapter business. To keep enjoying your role in the chapter, and avoid burnout, set time when you don’t focus on anything chapter related. Doing this helps keep you interested and more focused when you do work on chapter business.
Bonus Tip: Follow the 1, 3, 5 Rule
Instead of creating a long To Do list and getting frustrated when you don’t get it all done in one day, gather a list of more manageable tasks of different intensities. In a single day, you can probably complete: one big thing, three medium things and five small things. Keep your daily To Do list to those nine things and watch your productivity increase, especially when you add in some of the other hacks we’ve mentioned here.
0 Comments