Speaker 1: Hey Jeff, yeah, how long until the slides are done? Um, I probably need two days, two days. Really? Aren't you supposed to be some sort of productivity person thingy? Yeah, no, that's just for show. Um, definitely need two days, maybe three actually, uh, to be safe. Let's get started. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. In this video, I'm sharing my top five productivity tips for work, where I'll be using specific examples from my day job so you can clearly see how they work in practice. Diving right into productivity tip number one, steal with pride. Chances are you have a colleague who creates beautiful presentations, a manager who maintains a super clean spreadsheet, and a teammate who writes really effective emails. Steal those with pride. In my work at Google drive, I literally have a folder called to reference where I save presentations, spreadsheets, documents that I've come across that I might need to use in the future. Pro tip, if you use PowerPoint and Google slides, you can actually choose to make a copy of only selected slides and choose to remove all the speaker notes as well. This saves me so much time at work since I never have to start from scratch when creating new presentation. For example, there's just no need to reinvent the wheel when there's something you can use right away. So if you feel uncomfortable with this concept of stealing, first, you're probably adding your own spin to it and not copying word for word. Second, show your appreciation by giving credit to the original creator. Number two takes this first tip to the next level, and that is to template all the things. Notion users are probably familiar with the template feature where you can generate a prebuilt page with a single click. This can obviously save a lot of time since you don't need to create the same section headers and checklists over and over again. Applying this concept at work, I manage a budget spreadsheet that needs to be updated regularly. I took three minutes two years ago to create this structure. So now I can just right click, make a duplicate of this template tab at the beginning of every quarter. Pro tip, it's best practice to include a read me or start here tab so new joiners don't message you with annoying questions. And even if you leave the team, the template lives on. So as you can see, we don't need a specific generate template button like Notion has to take advantage of this tip. I recommend identifying one repetitive task you're responsible for, for example, a monthly recap email. Take the time to create a structure you can use again and again. Which brings us to productivity tip number three, automation for the win. Staying within this budget spreadsheet, which I'll link down below so you can steal with pride. You'll see the cells up top here update automatically based on inputs from below. Taking a step back to give some context, as the owner of the spreadsheet, I'm responsible for reporting these top level numbers to leadership. And in order to do that, my lovely colleagues need to input their budget forecast down below. To make it as easy as possible for both myself and my colleagues, I use formulas like SUMIF, features like data validation and conditional formatting to semi-automate the input process. For example, Warren currently has $90,000 left in his budget. If he forecasts another a hundred thousand, this cell turns red and he can easily see he's over budget and by how much. This is user-friendly for him and minimizes the manual calculations for me. Pro tip, if you copy and paste a table from Google sheets onto a Google slide, you can choose to link to spreadsheet. So this way, if a number changes in the original table, let's say 200,000 now, you can simply click update without having to reformat or create a new slide. Real talk, it kind of sucks sometimes, but the reality is your colleagues are much more likely to help you if they see you've made the work easy for them. I mean, hey, working professionals, tell me that's not the case at your job. If it isn't, are you hiring? On this note, let me know if you'd like to see how I manage a typical project at work using work apps and feel free to drop a like while you're down there. Productivity tip for work number four, don't be the weak link. Many viewers might remember this productivity tip from Tiago Forte, always organize information by where you will use it, not by where you found it. So what I like to do is to reserve a space within a product document and add relevant links for easy access. For spreadsheets, I like to have the links in an overview tab. For slides, they're usually in the first page. And for documents, they're on the first page in a separate section. I used to organize these links in bookmark folders, i.e. where I found them, but I always forgot to use them. So now whenever I need to quickly reference something, I know exactly where that related link is. Pro tip, if your project involves multiple documents, for example, a spreadsheet to track action items, a slide deck for presenting in meetings, and a Word doc to capture notes, make sure they're all linked to each other. So if you share one file with a teammate, they have access to all related documents and won't bother you with, hey, can you share that one file again? Pro pro tip, hyperlink and bookmark whenever appropriate. For example, if you're trying to share a specific section of a lengthy document, add a bookmark. For example, Google Docs is at bookmark and copy and paste this instead of telling the person, hey, yeah, it's a takeaway section on, uh, on page three, four, three, same deal with hyperlinks. If an agenda item for a team meeting or one-on-one refers to a specific document, link to the document so that all parties can quickly open it up to discuss. This is made even easier. For example, in Google Docs, you can literally just type at the file name and there you go. And this brings me to work tip number five, make pre-reads great again, or mapka, not as catchy as maga. Meetings already take up a lot of our time and it's even worse if nothing productive happens during that meeting and you're forced to have a follow-up conversation over email or worse, another meeting. I have an entire video on how to run effective meetings, but basically the meeting owner should always make attendees aware of the objective and agenda through, you guessed it, pre-reads. Pre-reads don't have to be boring or even long. I usually just have one sentence around the context of the meeting, one sentence on the objective and sometimes a third sentence on why this meeting will benefit the attendees. In the book, Make Time written by two ex-Googlers, there's a great quote around how we should not mistake being more productive with just reacting faster to other people's priorities. So if you are a meeting participant and you don't receive a pre-read email or see a clear agenda in the calendar invite, it's now your responsibility to protect your own time by challenging the meeting owner, hey, what's the purpose of this meeting? Do I have to be here? Written in a much nicer way, of course. I have loads more tips like this for work, so let me know in the comments if you want more. Check out this video on how to run effective meetings and in the meantime, have a great one.