INTHEBLACK September/October 2025 - Magazine - Page 68
Productivity tips
for busy finance
professionals
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WORDS SONAKSHI BABBAR
“Look at your optimal couple of hours in the day,
and make sure you protect that for your most
impactful or intensive work.”
PODCAST
Donna McGeorge, author and productivity expert
For years, the finance world wore busyness like
a badge of honour. Back-to-back client
meetings, overflowing inboxes and endless
reports were seen as marks of productivity in a
culture that valued hours spent over real results.
But that mindset is shifting. Over the
last decade and through the pandemic,
it has become clear that hours alone don’t
measure productivity.
MANAGE ENERGY, NOT JUST TIME
Author and time-management expert
Donna McGeorge says the key to productivity
in a high-stakes finance world is not managing
time, but managing energy.
“The majority of people are what we
call early birds,” she explains in a recent
INTHEBLACK podcast episode. “They tend
to peak, from a brainpower perspective,
anywhere between 8.00am and 1.00pm.”
For early risers, morning hours are prime
for focused, high-impact work. On the other
hand, around 20 per cent of people are night
owls, hitting their mental peak later in the day.
“Recognising whether you’re an early bird
or a night owl is step one,” McGeorge continues.
“Then look at your optimal couple of hours in
the day, and make sure you protect that for
your most impactful or intensive work.”
USE STRATEGIC SUBTRACTION
When faced with complex problems, most
people instinctively add more — whether
68 INTHEBLACK Sep/Oct 2025 SPECIAL EDITION
it is meetings, headcount or policies.
McGeorge promotes strategic subtraction:
removing what is unnecessary to clear
space for meaningful work. She illustrates
this with an activity called “red brick thinking”,
based on research. Faced with an uneven
building block bridge, most people add
a brick to make it even. But the smarter move?
Remove a brick from the other side.
“When you’re presented with a problem,”
McGeorge advises, “ask yourself, ‘Is there
a red brick I could remove?’” The goal is
to ask the right questions and identify what
can be dropped, freeing time and energy
for higher-value work.
SMALL GOALS, STRONG MOMENTUM
Productivity is not just about working harder
or longer — it is about working smarter, starting
with setting clear goals. One common mistake
in this, McGeorge says, is setting goals that are
too big or vague.
“If we’re looking for a promotion, the goal
wouldn’t be, ‘I want to get a promotion’,”
she says. “It would be, ‘I want to learn these
specific things and have these specific
experiences in the next six to 12 months’.”
Focusing on smaller “micro wins” and
tracking progress builds momentum, McGeorge
asserts. “When we make our progress visible,
we tend to work harder to reach those goals.”
LISTEN
to the full
podcast episode
