In this episode of the Business Review, Asana CEO and Facebook Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz explains how better time management can help employees focus on what’s important.
When Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz saw the incredible amounts of time wasted just trying to get through a normal business day, he knew there had to be a better way.
“The average worker is actually spending half of their time just doing what we call ‘work about work,’ reporting status updates, finding out information somebody else already has, answering email, otherwise just doing sort of internal communication and collaboration. So they actually have much less than
half their time to actually spend on the real work, the work that matters and drives impact for the organization.”
The software tool he and co-worker Justin Rosenstein developed to streamline collaboration was so effective that they decided to leave Facebook and form a new startup to help other businesses with workflow issues. Using time management tools like Asana can increase productivity by up to 45 percent, Moskovitz says, and being able to prioritize tasks and focus on the work that actually matters can lead to more effective teamwork, enhanced productivity and greater job satisfaction.
“The way that most people work is very reactive, so they’re working out of their email inbox, they’re just responding to things their co-workers are asking them, it’s very recency-biased, and you’re doing things, but you’re not necessarily doing the things that matter. So I think it’s important that people step back periodically, at the beginning of the year to think about their big goals for the year, at the beginning of the month, the beginning of the week, beginning of every day, and think about, ‘What exactly am I trying to accomplish?’ so that they make sure that they get the most important stuff done and not just the stuff that happens to surface.”
The Business Review is a production of KWBU, Livingston and McKay, and the Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University.
