It seems that in this time of lockdowns and quarantining, work life has become more intense for many people. We’ve had to rapidly adapt to new work systems, a changed work environment, and a different style of communication. All this takes time and energy, the result of which is usually more stress. We’ve had to create new content or products, and assess what to lay down and what to carry on with. Time was always precious, and being in a worldwide pandemic has made it more so.

It’s surprising how many small or micro tasks can eat into your time; from moving files, sending invoices, receipting, and responding to emails, to sending confirmations. All these tasks eat into your day, disrupt your flow and force you to shift focus. Switch tasking (which is doing multiple different tasks that aren’t directly related to the same outcome) is a problem and means you have to refocus every time you switch. For example, having to move from invoicing a customer to booking a room, then checking your emails and finally updating Linkedin. Each time you shift you are using more mental energy that we’re sure could be put to better use.

Asana recently published their ‘anatomy of work’ a report on how workers spend their time, in which they surveyed over 10,000 people. The reading is not joyful, they have discovered that workers spend 60% of their day – ‘on work about work’. This includes searching for information, attending meetings, and chasing approvals—instead of actual work. This can have a big impact on morale and staff wellbeing; time spent on the mundane rather than achieving the things they were hired to do can make people feel bored and disheartened.

Step in automation. Let’s be clear, it won’t eliminate all your ‘admin’ with the swish of a wand, but it can make a pretty big dent in your portfolio of repetitive tasks. At InnovateNP it is our ultimate time saver and efficiency gainer.  Time is precious, so why are we spending it doing a task that can be done in the background? If you automate just one task, you can save your brain the energy of ‘switching’ as well as the actual time taken.

We love process and will work with you to design automations that suit your needs, giving you more time back in your day so that you can get on with the work you’re actually passionate about. I bet that your answer to the question ‘how much is your time worth?’, is that actually it’s worth ‘quite a lot’.