Seven tried and tested productivity hacks to wring value from every day

My career has taken many exciting twists and turns, from semi-professional athlete to self-taught coder, to a decades-long career pursuing my love of IT delivering digital technology solutions, building and selling three technology businesses for close to $400 million including ARQ, one of Australia’s leading digital consultancies which was acquired by Singtel subsidiary NCS in April 2022.

Through the decades I’ve learned a lot about myself and my body, about teams and how to inspire and motivate them, and how to wring every drop of value possible out of each day (and have fun doing it). 

Life is lightning fast, so staying healthy and grounded is essential. But if you’re keen to really trim the fat from your day, I recommend you try these seven tried and tested productivity hacks.

Embrace tech

As a self-confessed ‘techie’ and tech founder, of course, technology excites me, so I’m a huge proponent of working with it to improve my life and business and in developing solutions for our partners and clients.

AI isn’t taking over anytime soon. It simply isn’t evolving in the same way our brains are or can — yet — and the fear-mongering is unnecessary. Remember autonomous cars, 2019, 2020? How many of them are on the road in Sydney or Melbourne? None. There are probably a couple still putting around California, but the progress hasn’t been nearly as fast as we thought it would be.

I’m a fan of automation tools UI Path and Power Automate which help me automate a lot of workflows that I just don’t enjoy doing while reminding me of tasks that I may forget to complete for Singapore HQ like timesheets and expense approvals. 

I use Generative AI to summarise my written documents and emails so that there are fewer words, which makes it easier for people to read and digest. Another area I’m just starting to look at is predictive analytics and AI for my own wellness and longevity activities.

Tech breakthroughs like AI are exciting but it takes time (usually many years) for us to really adapt and integrate them into our lives. So embrace the change!

Know your limits

Know your own limits, and respect others’. I’ve always been an adrenalin junkie. I got into the triathlon scene in the early 90s. I ended up competing globally at the Maccabiah Games, but not before I bore witness to the bridge disaster that killed four Australians and injured many others. I was 17 and went on to compete, yet the trauma of the event came at a profound personal cost.

Tristan Sternson, CEO of ARQ. Source: Supplied

I placed third, but at what price?  I pushed myself so hard that I literally don’t remember the last 10 kilometres of the race. I learned a valuable lesson about limits that day that has stayed with me for life — your body isn’t expendable. Striving for goals and being ambitious requires commitment and discipline, but understanding your limits and how they frame what you’re capable of is just as important.

Family matters

I started my career in the consulting industry in an era where work came before everything else, a tradition carried forward from our parents’ generations that many would argue still exists in some industries.

Since then, I’ve made sure that staying connected to family (and later on, my two young children) was my #1 priority. I work hard to create a routine that supports me in balancing work with time at home with my loved ones, which helps me to recharge physically and emotionally.

Practice, practice, practice

On routine and discipline, ‘practice makes perfect.’ In business, particularly in tech, it’s easy to forget how important practice is to success. Especially in the younger generation, and not to diminish anyone’s ambitions, it’s common to see recent graduates racing to take on a senior management role, or even CEO, within a year. 

I used to wonder why would someone like LeBron James need to practice. But in sport as it is in business, you have to learn your craft, you have to train hard and consistently, you gain knowledge from mentors and so on, to make those incremental improvements that will evolve over time into success.  

Get your priorities straight

I’m an analytical person so when I get into making a big business decision, I want to really research and understand the data behind the decision-making. But if you don’t filter big decisions through your gut instinct too, you can get carried away by numbers and lose sight of what’s important or what’s right.

Steve Jobs talked about decision fatigue. Prioritising helps you save your energy and focus on the decisions that really matter. Like, do you really need to be involved in choosing the right snacks for your office? Or could you be working on the iteration of generative AI that’s going to take over the world instead?!

Guard your time

I’m big on time-blocking, even for a low-key trip to the coffee shop with whoever’s around. It might feel like wasted time but scheduled breaks like this give you and your team an opportunity to ‘talk shop’ casually, which can help reduce the time people then feel is needed to meet 1:1 more formally.

I’ve also trimmed the traditional 30-minute or 1-hour meetings down and encouraged staff to do the same. Want an hour with me? You can have 50 minutes. Half an hour? You can have 25 minutes. Trimmed meetings and power ‘huddles’ of 15, 20 minutes instead of long meetings, to which people bring their A-game every time, minimise waffle, and are far more productive.

Invest in your health and wellbeing

We spend good money servicing our cars annually or even bi-annually, so it surprises me when people don’t put the same energy or investment into their health and wellbeing. I invest in learning about my body, preventing illness, and staying fit and healthy by exploring a range of different therapies, all of the benefits of which are then carried into my professional life.

I’m also a big fan of green powder (my favourite is Vital All in One), which I pop in my morning juice or smoothie and is great for immunity and wellbeing, and a daily Ice Plunge in the morning to sharpen my focus from the moment I wake up.

Productivity is essentially a daily practice of and commitment to incremental improvements with a view to affecting larger, longer-term gains. So, even just by showing up every day for yourself and others, you’ll be closer to fulfilling your true potential.

Tristan Sternson is the global co-lead of NCS NEXT, as well as the CEO of ARQ.