You’ve heard the saying: time is of the essence. This is nowhere more true than for executives with a million tasks to complete in a single workday. You’re in meetings, you’ve got emails, and then there’s the pressure to meet deadlines. It feels like you can’t catch a break, so you probably think you have to just put in more hours. The problem is, there are only so many hours in a day. The actual solution is to work smarter, not harder. Fortunately, technology can help you do just that. Here’s how:
Update Software with Patch Management
One area you might not realize that causes trouble for your productivity lies in your software vulnerabilities. These can leave you exposed to cybersecurity issues that result in ransomware attacks and data breaches. Talk about a time suck. You can end up against downtime and disruptions that throw entire work days out of whack. You simply can’t assume that your IT department is on top of system updates.
What you need are effective patch management solutions that can automatically detect, schedule, and apply software updates across your organization’s devices. They will reduce unnecessary downtime and keep your systems secure and compliant. When you invest in robust patch management, you can eliminate one more headache from your IT landscape. Instead, you can focus on growing your business and leading from the front.
Automate to Save Time
Technology is a blessing and a curse. Virtually everyone who works with digital products has had their issues. But the reality is that the advances available today through automation can indeed save you time and energy. Administrative work keeps you at your desk approving expense reports, scheduling meetings, or following up on repetitive tasks. Sure, each calendar item only takes a few minutes. But there are dozens of them, and that adds up to hours each day.
Automation can cut those hours down to minutes. You should be focused on high-impact work, like building relationships with clients and mentoring your team members. With platforms like Zapier and Power Automate, you can connect different apps and services so tasks happen automatically. You can automate everything from meeting scheduling to invoicing. AI tools like ChatGPT can even draft documents and summarize reports for you.
Use Inbox Tools to Tame Emails
Virtually every office employee knows how annoying it can be to have to spend hours responding to emails. That problem becomes exponentially more time-consuming and annoying when you get to the executive level. Still, it’s how the majority of people in business communicate, so it’s a necessary evil. And when you miss important emails amid all the other noise, you can miss important messages and updates.
You can quiet a lot of that excess noise and manage your inbox with tools like Superhuman or Gmail’s Priority Inbox. These tools will automatically categorize your emails based on their level of importance. They’ll hide the distractions from you, so you can focus on what’s essential, and they’ll help you triage your messages effectively. Even better, you can pair these tools with AI assistants like GrammarlyGO to draft polished replies or summarize lengthy threads.
Send Emails to Cut Meetings
One way email can save the day is by helping you cut way back on the need for meetings. Yes, meetings can be the biggest productivity killer if you don’t handle them correctly. Especially in the executive space, you’re often overbooked with meetings that can certainly be summarized into quick memos, saving you hours each week. Meetings tend to lack structure, going into endless side conversations you don’t need to be present for.
There’s a neat solution that can help you both cut out unnecessary meetings and schedule the most important ones without taking up all your time. This solution is the combination of asynchronous tools with smart scheduling practices. You can use Loom, Slack, or Notion to share updates with your team through message and video threads. Then, take advantage of AI-powered scheduling assistants like Reclaim or Motion to automatically find the best times for meetings around your deep work blocks.
Utilize Knowledge Management to Centralize Knowledge
Searching for files can feel like torture, and it drags your day well into the evening as you mine through Google Docs, Slack threads, or emails. It’s easy to lose track of information, even when you specifically save it for later, because it gets lost among all the other important documents you knew you’d need. You can waste hours looking for the most recent deck, decision log, or final version of a contract.
Automating a centralized knowledge base can fix this issue and speed up your ability to retrieve information. Platforms like Guru and 1up can centralize all of your company knowledge in a single place. Even when you’re dealing with multiple systems, the right tools can index your company’s content across apps and get you answers in minutes. Instead of hunting for a file, you can ask the large language model (LLM) a question and get the document or decision you need in seconds.
Look, you don’t have to be a tech expert, despite the massive shifts and innovations in technology today. You just need the right digital playbook. Leverage automation, patch management, smart email, async meetings, and AI-powered knowledge tools, and your path to working smarter becomes clear. You don’t have to do more. You can do less and do it better. With the right tech stack, you can focus on driving impact, making decisions, and leading your teams with clarity and confidence.
