PRODUCTIVITY SPECIAL .....Secrets of some of the world’s most productive people

Secrets of some of the world’s most productive people

PRODUCTIVITY IDEA

 JANELLE MONÁE

CEO, Wondaland

Ask Janelle Monáe how she gets everything done—the critically acclaimed albums, the world tours, the film roles, the activism—and she’ll answer with a single, slightly unexpected word. “Slack!” she says, with a cheerful laugh. “Email used to stress me out. Now I can organize every conversation, and I go into the channel when I need to—I don’t check it every hour. Like, when I get up, the first thing I do is not look at my phone. The first thing I do is I take at least 10 deep breaths.” She demonstrates, seemingly shifting her mind from the cacophonous, dimly lit restaurant, where she’s occupying a prime corner table, to a mellower internal place: “Inhale . . . exhale; inhale . . . exhale. That really calms you down.”

PRODUCTIVITY IDEA

BETH FORD

CEO, Land O’Lakes

“I work a lot through email and text. I say to my team: ‘Please don’t write me a novel, I won’t read it.’ I just don’t have the time.”

PRODUCTIVITY IDEA

LAURA VANDERKAM

In order to liberate minutes, if not hours, from a tight daily schedule, I recommend establishing the 20/45 rule: Most 30- or 60-minute meetings can be trimmed to 20 or 45, with discipline. That wins you back precious time that you can use for exercise, networking, volunteering, reading, meditating, or any of the other priorities that keep getting bumped from your to-do list.

PRODUCTIVITY IDEA

 JENNIFER DE HARO

Managing attorney, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES)

“After I experience sadness over having lost a case or some awful new policy, like separating children from their parents, I try to find an outlet—either exercise or talking with coworkers. Humor helps.”

PRODUCTIVITY IDEA

CAL HENDERSON

Cofounder and CTO, Slack

“I’ve never exchanged an email with somebody else who works at Slack. I check my email maybe once a day. It’s quite peripheral to how I work . . . A lot of my productivity around using Slack is knowing to prioritize what information I need to see. That means [heavily] muting channels or not joining channels, and “starring” the ones that are really important to me.”

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