883. Rachel shares how the productivity conversation has evolved - and what actually drives getting things done today.
883. Rachel shares how the productivity conversation has evolved - and what actually drives getting things done today.
Modern Mentor is hosted by Rachel Cooke. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Are you looking for productivity hacks in the app store? You may be looking in all the wrong places. Let's talk today about what's really driving productivity in 2026. Hey, I'm Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.
I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, where we help teams work better by design. We deliver the tools and frameworks to help ensure that work is productive, profitable, and energizing for the human spirit.
I would love to come speak at your next event or offsite to deliver the clarity, confidence, and tools your leaders need to bring this shift to life. Reach out today@leadabovenoise.com/connect.
So fun fact about this podcast, some dedicated listeners may know this and many won't, but this show is actually an evolution of a show that used to be called the Get It Done Guy hosted by Steve Robbins.
And that show was largely about productivity, tools, hacks, systems for getting more done in less time.
Modern Mentor is designed to be a conversation more broadly about achieving workplace success, but of course, productivity is certainly an element of that. How do I get more done? How do I manage everything on my plate?
How do I stay on top of it all? These questions haven't really changed over the years, but the answers they kind of have. You know, because of the whole world flipping upside down and everything.
So today I thought it might be useful to talk a little bit about productivity and what's really driving it in 2026. Because the work itself has changed, the volume has increased, the pace has accelerated, the complexity has multiplied, and we're all navigating uncertainty that didn't even exist a decade ago. So if being more productive is on your mind, let's talk about where you may wanna be investing.
First, chilling with AI. I did a deep dive back in episode 868 on how I'm using AI these days. I really do believe it's a huge productivity driver when we understand how to engage with it.
Not expertly like don't ever trust my expertise in technology, but casually and comfortably and strategically. Don't outsource to it. Partner with it.
Use it to help you think a little better. I use it to unstick myself when I'm writing. I use it to stress test my ideas before I present them, to role play difficult conversations so I feel really prepared, to spot patterns I'm missing. The productivity gain is massive because the bottleneck isn't around executing anymore. It's around thinking and making sense of things.
And AI can really help you do these things better and faster. So if you're not playing with AI, you're likely working harder than you need to.
Start small. Pick one area where you tend to get stuck regularly and experiment with using AI as a thought partner, not a delegate.
Next, asking better questions. Most of us are pretty good at doing things. We tend to have stamina and endurance, but that's not what should be fueling us. Being busy in a state of doing isn't always productive.
In fact, sometimes it's the very thing that keeps us from being so. What we should be doing is slowing down when we get a new, okay, several new requests coming in. Before we start, we should pause and really ask the right questions.
Is this request the most important thing to focus on right now? Is it aligned with our goals and priorities, as I understand them? Am I the one who's best positioned to be working on this?
Are we comfortable pushing something else down the priority list, so I can give this the energy and focus it needs? Do I need anything? Context, resources, decision authority, in order to make this successful.
Doing a bit of a pause upfront and asking the right questions early can really help momentum come quickly over the course of the work.
It ensures you're equipped to run fast, and it minimizes the chance of a false start and the need to start again, which is a huge productivity bummer.
Next, sustaining a meaningful community. The world is so, so heavy right now. We are all trying to keep up, to take in current events, manage our emotions, track what is and isn't safe to talk about at work. And also I guess we're trying to do our full-time jobs.
We are collectively exhausted, and it's really hard to do our best, our most impactful work from that place.
Having real community like a crew of folks we can open up to, but also brainstorm ideas and collaborate with can really be a huge driver of productivity. Moving further, faster does not have to be a solo sport.
Bringing a team along can change the game. When you don't have community, you are carrying that weight alone. So find your people.
Maybe it's a small group at work where you can talk openly about what's been hard.
Maybe it's peers in your industry who get what you're dealing with, or maybe it's joining a professional community where you can share and swap best practices and ideas. Create regular touch points with them. Don't let community be soft or extra.
Let it be rocket fuel for moving forward.
Next is knowing when to ship. A long time ago, I used to work for a shipping company. Thousands of packages were moved through our warehouse every day, and it was not uncommon to find a random box often with a label just sitting on the floor.
First time this happened to me, I brought it to the shipping manager, and I asked what I should do with it. And his quotable response was, "when in doubt, ship it out." It always stayed with me.
The rhythm of course, but also the sentiment. We, the royal we, have a tendency to wanna hold onto something until it's perfect, but really this is an incredibly inefficient way of working.
Know what really requires a hundred percent effort, maybe the client proposal or the surgical plan, but that email to a colleague or the first draft of a customer email, get it to 80% and let it go.
I'm not suggesting a tolerance for carelessness, but that third round of editing or polishing is really often a means of procrastinating. The question isn't, could this be better? Because the answer will pretty much always be yes.
The better question is, is making this 1% better the best use of my time right now? Because often that answer not so much. So what could you be doing if you let this ship unpolished?
I bet it's pretty great.
And finally, fixing bleep inside your control. We kind of have this victim history with work like there are always things wrong or broken or inefficient. We just need to wait for someone to fix it.
Every time we need to submit a request for data that takes three days to turn around, or every time seven people's work is being held up by that one decision maker who has deprioritized this project.
Every time we hear that same customer complaint and we try to tell product about it and they tell us, put it in that database that we all know no one ever looks at.
Every time these things happen and we say nothing, we make no move to suggest a correction or an efficiency. We are hindering our own productivity, and we don't have to be victims of our own inefficient workplaces.
There's nearly always something we can influence here. We can request an advocate for our own access to the system holding our data.
We can pull together some summary info to make making that critical decision as simple as possible for that leader. We can raise the customer issue with our leader, highlighting the frequency of its repetition and the cost to the company.
Are these actions guaranteed to create change? No, they are not. But if even one is successful, imagine how much further and faster you could go.
Productivity in 2026 doesn't just live inside tools and apps anymore, not exclusively. So much of that rocket fuel resides in the choices we make. So if you're feeling ready to dial things up, give one of these a try. You can follow Modern Mentor on the Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Find and follow me on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening and have a successful week! Modern Mentor is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.
Thanks to the QDT team! Audio engineer Dan Feierabend, director of podcasts, Holly Hutchings, ad operations specialist, Morgan Christiansen, marketing manager, Rebecca Sebastian, podcast Associate Maram Elnagheeb, and our marketing contractor, Nat Hoopes.