Ep 41: Take Back Your Time With Google’s Productivity Expert

Women often have a blur of busy days — going from meetings and important phone calls to the grocery store or soccer practice. It often feels like the day goes by in a blink of an eye. This, of course, leaves many of us feeling drained at the end of the day, or inspired to push off our most important tasks to next week — or we forget about them completely. 

So how can we better juggle our busy work days, the challenges of raising a family, and all of the other tasks in-between, while still making time for fun? Laura Mae Martin has cracked the code. She’s Google’s Executive Productivity Officer, and she coaches Google’s top executives on time management and efficiency. 

She offers her take on how to cut out time-suck meetings once and for all, and why discovering our “power hours” does wonders for our creativity and productivity. 

Takeaways:

• Manage your email inbox like doing laundry - sort, prioritize, and focus on one task at a time.
• Use the list funnel method to organize tasks and prioritize based on timeframes.
• Limit and optimize meetings by setting agendas, evaluating their necessity, and providing feedback.
• Identify your power hours and schedule important tasks during those times for maximum productivity. 
• Minimize multitasking and manage email effectively to improve productivity.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

05:24 Optimizing Time for Emails

07:10 The List Funnel

13:58 Working with Executives on Productivity

15:06 Limiting Meetings

19.32 Power Hours and Structuring Productive Days

24:33 The Importance of Flexibility in Work Hours

26:01 Productivity Mistakes: Multitasking and Email Overload

28:06 New Research on Productivity

29:12 Lightning Round: Quick Questions

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