A Useful Technique To Help Us Focus on Tasks at Work
Sprints are a useful technique to help us focus and complete specific tasks at work
I recently listened to a great bite-size sales training session about the value of focusing on one proactive task at a time. The trainer talked about working in ‘sprints’. These are 60 or 90 minutes sessions where you focus on one proactive task at a time. In a world full of short attention spans, scrolling, information overload, emails on multiple devices it’s often difficult to really focus on a task and get the job done.
How do you prepare for a sprint?
The warm-up – you need to prepare your sprint before the occasion, like a ‘warm-up’ pre-exercise. I prepare at the end of the previous day, once i’ve finished all my key tasks. Then you are ready to start your Sprint once the clock starts, with no disruptions eating into your valuable focus time.
An example of one of my sprint sessions this week:
1.Organising and diarising a time to sprint
2.Warm-up- I research and collate applicants’ details for an Events Marketing Executive role at the end of the afternoon, ensuring I have found the information I need to prepare for a sprint session the following morning.
3.The next day I’m ready and prepared to start the sprint which is phone and email outreach to all selected applicants for a specific role. I don’t allow myself to be interrupted; my phone is on silent mode and all notifications are turned off (cup of tea and glass of water in front of me). I work through my call list keeping focused on the task in hand.
4.Result – The task is complete and a CV shortlist is prepared for the client.
This technique can be adapted for any task; for an Events Marketer, sprints could be useful when you have an email campaign to prepare and deliver or if you need to find more media partners. For a sponsorship salesperson, a sprint session could be useful for an outreach business development exercise. Conference producers could use the sprint technique when recruiting speakers or booking research calls.
Anyone can use this process, it’s nothing new but I feel we are always so ‘busy’ and so easily interrupted that setting aside a designated time to focus on a specific task is more useful now than ever.
In summary; organise a time to sprint, prepare for the sprint, give your sprint 100% of your focus with no interruptions and complete the task in the time given.
I’d love to hear if you use this or similar techniques to help you focus at work, get in touch and share helen@jbrecruitment.co.uk
Jackson Barnes Recruitment delivers international recruitment solutions within the events, media, and publishing sectors. Jackson Barnes places Graduate to MD level in the following positions:
- Researchers
- Conference producers
- Event Marketing professionals
- Sales professionals – delegate, sponsorship & Business Development
- Event Managers
- Editors
We recruit for organisations in the UK and overseas with success in London, Dubai, New York, Singapore and Australia.