Maybe your day is one giant hole.

Is there a way to make your day airtight and solid?

In this post, you’ll see why a daily productivity review can help you.

What is a daily productivity review?

Think of the daily productivity review as a roundup of what needs to be accomplished and how you’re going to do it.

This involves to-do lists, projects, tasks and even random reminders that are lying around. A daily productivity review will help you at the start of your workday and at the conclusion.

It’s like a supercharged to-do list.

Yes, a to-do list is definitely part of it, but it’s also taking stock of every little task that you must do as well-from checking email to making a few phone calls.

Benefits of a Daily Productivity Review

1. Little things become evident.

Awareness is key to closing up those cracks in your days. And for that, you really need one place for all of your information. This is easier said than done, but ClickUp provides you with a place for personal task management and work projects as well.

With mobile, desktop and browser apps, ClickUp goes wherever you are.

You can set up projects, tasks, and assignees in ClickUp. More details will follow in this post to help you get organized.

2. Focus Your Time on Your Most Important Tasks. Once you evaluate your tasks, it’s time to order your tasks based on the time you have.

You’ll be more focused on the tasks that matter. No more distractions and overload. Your productivity review will show you how many tasks you finished.

3. Prioritize towards your goals. Once you have your goals established, you can start aligning your tasks and projects towards those objectives. Your highest priority goals will stay top of mind, not just take up server space in the HR department’s inbox.

Those goals will trickle down to your daily productivity review and how you work each day.

How To Do a Daily Productivity Review

Before you can review the work, you have to do the work.

But to accurately gauge the work you’ve done, you must have a way to know what you’re working on and a way to measure it.

Try a certain system if you need more specificity, but most of those systems follow these steps:

1. Collect necessary info

Before you set your daily to-do list and tasks, it’s important that you gather all the information that you need. These are where tasks, info and events are communicated most often:

• Slack / Team communication tool
• Notifications in ClickUp
• Messages from texts or other social media
• Notes and reminders from Notepad by ClickUp or other note-taking apps

With ClickUp, I depend on notifications for any immediate tasks and then check due dates for tasks across all of our projects. I then make a List and can check off what needs to happen for that day.

ClickUp provides as much granularity as you need. You can create big tasks (Make Powerpoint Deck) and then include subtasks (Find images for Powerpoint Deck).

Or you could make smaller tasks within your PowerPoint List. ClickUp gives you a lot of flexibility for how to arrange your tasks and work.

2. Batching tasks

This is grouping similar tasks together and then completing them together.

For instance, if you need to respond to several emails, do them all at once instead of spreading out your responses throughout the day. Or dedicate two blocks of time during the day for email responses.

When is your next meeting or lunch appointment?

What can you begin even for a little while before that appointment?

ClickUp offers easy ways to plan your time in the day.

3. Assigning tasks

Now, if you know what needs to be done, it’s time to decide if it’s for you to accomplish. This is where a project management tool like ClickUp works wonders.

4. Prioritizing

Using priorities helps you and your team know what to work on first, especially if many tasks have the same due dates.

5. Measure with Reporting

How much did you accomplish and what did you work on?

This is where the value of ClickUp really shines and where the daily productivity review takes shape.

• Number of tasks completed
• Number of tasks worked on
• Time Worked On vs Time Estimated
• Number of overdue tasks
• Number of uncleared notifications
• Total points

This is great for team collaboration, but can also be used for personal tasks.

Even if you didn’t “complete” a task that day, you can evaluate your work. You can see the number of tasks that you worked on, or track your time to know how long you worked on something.

With the reporting in ClickUp, you can measure the number of tasks you completed for the day, week or month. This will help you gauge your progress each week and day and see if you’re making incremental improvements.

Conclusion: What if You Were 1% More Productive?

Yes, getting organized and starting a daily productive review will take a few extra minutes of your day.

You’re creating a great foundation for your workday and your company. The 10 to 15 extra minutes it takes will have a lot of benefits.

Progress may be slow at first. What if you’re only 1% more productive each day using this method?

Originally published at https://clickup.com on April 2, 2019.

This story first appeared on the ClickUp blog. Get the forever free plan and join 50,000+ amazing teams on ClickUp.

The Discord app is on fire.

The chat app for video gamers amassed a whopping 130 million users in a short span of 3 years.

That’s not all.

While Discord has been slaying big brands like Caffeine, Curse, Teamspeak in the video game communication space, it has also expanded into business team communication space, competing effectively against legacy services such as Slack and Skype.

What’s more?

After raising $150 million in funds from its existing investors in 2018, Discord has topped the $2 billion valuation mark.

What’s the secret?

Dig in as we take a closer look at Discord’s game plan.

A Snapshot of Discord’s Growth

From Discord Twitter

Discord: A Brief History

This was not the first time that CEO, Jason Citron, Founder of Discord, struck gold.

Jason had already tasted success when he co-created and successfully sold OpenFeint, a social gaming platform for iPhone gamers for $100 million in 2011. He was also the founder of Hammer & Chisel, a game development studio.

So, what is Discord’s origin story?

While working on developing a free-to-play iPad game, Fates Forever, Jason encountered numerous issues with the existing VoIP options.
To overcome these, he started working on a chat service that could provide a secure voice and text messaging service for his internal team. This was the beginning of the chat app for multiplayer mobile gamers, or, Discord.
When Jason’s team failed to monetize the much-anticipated Fates Forever game, released in 2014, they persisted with Discord. Soon, they decided to market Discord as a free voice and text chat application for gamers who want to talk to team members during a game.

The gamble paid off.

Discord with a low-band, high-quality VOIP audio that offered a non-interruptive channel for gamers to communicate soon catapulted to the top from the time of its release in 2015.

The numbers speak for themselves.

Messages sent through Discord in a month rose dramatically to 15 billion in 2018, from 6 billion in 2017.

By strategically partnering with Fortnite, a popular video game and Twitch, a streaming platform with a massive viewer base, the company grew to acquire a user base of 8.9 million daily active users by 2017.

Riding high on a growth wave, Discord has now partnered with Esports, Spotify, and Xbox to amplify its reach exponentially.

How did the initial growth come about?

Predominantly due to word-of-mouth marketing. (Hard to believe, but true!)

Gamers loved the ease of use and a useful app that did not hog their CPU storage. Interestingly, much of Discord’s initial success is attributed to its envious tech stack.

So, let’s take a closer look at the technology that powers Discord’s advancement.

The Tech Behind Discord’s Growth

Discord’s strength lies in 2 critical factors:

1. Ability to handle thousands of server communications without glitches.
2. A multi-platform support namely web, standalone app, phone.

Unlike its competitors that are clunky, heavy and outdated, Discord has low latency and supports large network groups.

Discord supports multiple platforms by implementing audio and video features using WebRTC.

WebRTC is a guideline that specifies the standards for audio and video communication in real time. Additionally, Discord gateways, Discord guilds, and Discord voice are instrumental in forming a robust backend architecture that makes it possible to scale seamlessly.

One of the most critical differentiators that makes Discord the go-to app for video gamers is its open-bot friendly ecosystem.

The Discord bots need a special mention here.

They are a key factor that aided in anchoring the brand’s identity among the gamers and their community.

Although most bots are used for automating everyday administrative tasks, they have a natural language system inbuilt. Since most gamers are tech-savvy, the freedom to tinker and customize bots using cutting edge technology is alluring.

Not surprisingly Discord bots are quite diverse depending on their function — from Dyno bot that moderates server to Dankmemer that creates quirky memes.

If gamers can dream it, Discord allows them to build it.

Tracing the Growth Trajectory

The Discord team was put off by traditional marketing methods of buying ads and user acquisition models.

So, how did they pull off the astounding growth success?

Let’s analyze.

1. Build it, and they will come

The core strength of Discord lies in its tech stack that enables gamers to communicate without any hassles.

Seamless voice chatting while gaming was an area left unattended for long. The chat apps before Discord were slow, not user-friendly or hogged the performance of the CPU. Discord addressed this pain point quite adequately.

Similarly, a low barrier to entry meant anyone could start using the discord app, create several channels, allocate different access permissions and start engaging with the fellow gamers within minutes.

Where legacy chat apps failed as the users ramped up, Discord’s database system was able to handle billions of messages with ease.

2. Empower your customers

From early days, Discord laid the foundation to provide ample opportunities for its users to customize.

With a vast repository of custom emoji, advanced server channel organization, public bot integration, discord facilitated communities to thrive on creative freedom and showcase individuality.

By appealing to gamers’ imaginative mentality, Discord’s offerings became almost irresistible to its audience.

3. Strike the right partnership

After the initial growth spurt from word-of-mouth marketing, Jason’s team had to come up with a strategy to reach out to a larger audience.

They partnered with Video game streamers such as Twitch. This integration resulted in more visibility allowing more gamers to adopt as well as invite others to join the community.

4. Enable interconnectivity

Discord leveraged heavily on the basic human need for contributing towards a community.

The strength of Discord lies in its ability to cater to the growing needs of large web-based communities.

Paying heed to the communities’ demands, Discord continued to refine and create tools like guided bot or bots that could fetch player stats.

These small tweaks and continuous improvement acted as a ripple effect resulting in accelerated growth.

5. Free forever pricing plan

Until recently, Discord charges were zero. Most of the services offered by Discord came at no cost for the gamers.

What happens when a free application offers significantly better service than most paid services? Gamers are instantly attracted to the free app. That is exactly what happened with Discord.

The app has now introduced two subscription-based plan — nitro and nitro classic.

However, Discord’s core features continue to stay free.

Discord Vs. Slack: How the Chat app Competes with the Popular Team Messenger

Here’s what happens when you facilitate scores of communities to mushroom as you propel your way to the top — you spillover into domains that you never intended to enter.

Discord is specifically designed for gamers. However, as the popularity grew few teams saw it fit to use Discord for business communication as well.

This posed a threat to existing team communication software services.

For example, Slack is almost synonymous with team communication. However, Discord’s free plan combined with brilliant tech resulted in many businesses making the switch from Slack.

The primary reason for the customer churn was Slack’s limited file and message (10K) storage capabilities.

Not to be left behind, Discord has also been belting out features and API integrations targeted towards developers.

What does it mean?

It’s simple: Business teams are finding it harder to ignore Discord as an alternative to Slack.

Discord Growth: 5 Takeaways to Replicate in Your Business

1. Your brand must resonate with your audience

Pay close heed to your targeted audience. Conduct an in-depth analysis of the current players in your market. Design a hyper-specific solution that caters to your niche.

Discord is not the only app that offers VOIP communication capabilities to gamers. There is Ventrilo, Teamspeak and then Skype. But what makes Discord stick is its sniper precision in addressing the root problem.

While Skype and Ventrilo lack in their in-game overlay features, Teamspeak’s browser support and text chat support features are insufficient. Discord strategically combines the best of features and serves it to the right audience.

2. Invest in incremental innovation

Study your audience and innovate creative solutions fast. However, don’t stop there. Keep innovating.

Discord continued adapting their solution to support the exponentially growing needs of their community.

When companies listen, customers love it. It is one of the surest ways to hook your customers.

What’s more?

Happy customers turn into product evangelists helping the business grow multifold.

3. Join forces with right partners

It can be tough to break into a new market. If you are counting solely on word-of-mouth marketing, you will grow. But at a snail’s pace.

Collaborating with big players catering to a lookalike audience can give your business an instant boost. It renders credibility as well as visibility to your brand.

Discord set off to a roaring start when it cleverly partnered with Twitch and Youtube streamers.

In Jason’s words, today thousands of partner streamers use Discord with Twitch.

4. Engage and grow your community

The Membership economy is real. The term coined by Robbie Kellman Baxter has caught on.

Capitalize on the need for customers to connect, contribute and be a part of a larger social group. The benefits are huge.

Capturing their attention and effectively keeping them engaged helps brands evolve.

Discord’s community members had a sense of not just belonging but one of ownership. This played to Discord’s advantage.

The community did most of the heavy lifting, driving more customer acquisition at relatively lower costs. It is now considered to be the Facebook for gamers.

5. Crushing the barriers to product adoption

How soon can your customers get started with your service?

The ease of integration plays a crucial role in moving the needle at the product adoption stage.

Pricing is another potential friction point. Do you offer a free trial? Or do you have a competitive pricing plan in place?

One of the reasons why Discord was able to careen past its competitors, in more than one domain, was primarily its free forever plan.

Conclusion

Discord’s meteoric rise can be attributed to its disruptive tech stack and uncanny knack of reading the audience’ pulse, thanks to the founding team’s in-depth knowledge of the gamers mindset and insight into industry trends.

How can you replicate this success story for your business?

Hit the right niche, allow your customers to take the rein, promote community engagement and voila, you have a winner!

Originally published at clickup.com on February 18, 2019.

Amazon. Dell. Dropbox.

Google. Microsoft. Netflix.

Samsung. Spotify. Twitter.

These are just a few of the companies that use OKRs to set and measure individual goals for employees.

Creating OKRs has become a fundamental way for employees to help companies meet and match their company goals.

But creating goals isn’t something new. What makes OKRs different?

In this post, you’ll learn what OKRs are, how to set goals as successful OKRs and what makes them actually work in your company.

Note: Start with ClickUp Goals right now for free!

What are OKRs?

Let’s define that acronym.

O = Objectives.

KR = Key Results.

The objectives are what you want to do and key results are how you’re going to measure each part of the objective.

If it sounds like a few engineering words stuck together, then you’re right.

Andy Grove was a manager at the chip-maker Intel in the 1970s and developed the OKR methodology for his team.

One of his engineers, John Doerr, learned the model and essentially popularized it. He kept his slide deck and presented it to companies around the U.S. Doerr later wrote a book about the topic, Measure What Matters.

Intel CEOs (from left to right) Gordon Moore, Craig Barrett, Andy Grove and Paul Otellini

The popularity of OKRs then spread once Google began implementing them in the 90s.

Here’s how Doerr defines OKRs:

“The objective is what I want to have accomplished. The key results are how I’m going to get it done. The objectives are typically longer lived. They’re bold and aspirational. The key results are aggressive, but always measurable, time-bound, and limited in number.”

Companies have objectives that usually last longer than a few months or a year.

Targeting a new market for your product to break into is not easy. Setting a goal like that will typically take a few years before it bears fruit.

And if you’re in product or marketing, that may be your department’s responsibility. It’s your objective and your goal.

However, you can take concrete steps towards making that objective a reality. And those are the key results. These are actionable and measurable steps that may be difficult to meet, but not impossible.

The Basic OKR Equation

To create a goal with an OKR, use this simple formula that Doerr uses:

I will:

As measured by:

The measurement is important because it provides the bounds for how you will know if you accomplished the goal. A lot of times we have goals, but don’t know what the outcome should be.

Let’s use a personal OKRs example first. Say you want to lose weight. That could be an objective.

I will: Lose weight

That’s a great goal, but how will you measure it? And you may want to redefine it to be more specific to help it be measurable. This is the Key Result part.

As measured by: Losing 15 pounds in three months.

Is that ambitious and aggressive? Possibly, it depends on your current patterns and routines.

Now, there are also several ways you could get there. You could eat differently, exercise more or do a combination of both. How you get there is up to you, as long as you meet the Key Result.

“If it does not have a number, it is not a Key Result.”

That’s what former Yahoo CEO and Google VP Marissa Mayer famously said in In the Plex, a book about how Google works.

Does our Key Result number meet the test? It has a number. Two in fact. “15” and “3.”

But the same person could have the same Objective and the same Key Result, but achieve the goal in different ways.

That’s where the freedom comes in. You may have to create a few more action steps to make the goal a reality.

However, you may want to have a counter Key Result that balances out the other Key Results.

In our example, it would be an unhealthy thing to lose weight by pursuing or developing an eating disorder. Yes, that would accomplish the goal, but then so much more is lost.

So you could refine the Key Results like this:

I will: Lose weight

As measured by:

• Decrease weight by 15 pounds in 3 months
• Lowering calorie count by X
• Exercising 5x more often during the week

Those now provide healthier counterbalances to our extreme example.

Personal Goals & OKR Examples For Your Company

Now that the theoretical is out of the way, let’s dive deeper into developing what a real OKR could look like for your company and how it could help its strategy.

Example: Product OKR

ClickUp recently developed an online notepad Chrome extension tool. So let’s use that as an example. Our objective could be “Create a new Notepad Chrome Extension.”

Sounds like a good idea and a great product, but a little vague. There are no timelines or deliverables or specifications. Much of that would come with the project plan and Sprint.

I will: Create a new Chrome Extension

But since ClickUp has already released a Chrome extension, maybe a good OKR would be about speeding up the development process (we’re already super fast so this is definitely a theoretical example!). How can you measure progress?

We can compare it to the development time of the last one. We can track it with a ClickUp time tracker, time estimates and due dates.

But if we do create something faster, we don’t want it riddled with bugs.

Maybe there’s a measure in there for QA tests as well. Our final OKR could look something like this.

I will: Create a new Chrome Extension tool

As measured by:

30% faster Sprint time compared to the previous Extension

30% fewer bugs found in QA

With that combination, it creates a much faster and hopefully better Chrome extension release.

Example Customer Service OKR

If you’re working with a customer service team, their OKR could look like this.

I will: Improve customer satisfaction score in client interactions

As measured by:

• Raise average rating by 5%
• Reduce overall response time by 10% compared to year prior

Those numbers account for better overall ratings, while also aiming for great response times.

The Key Results provide specificity to the Objective to indicate progress. Different key results could be used to attain the same Objective.

Use Initiatives to Start Your Key Results

Okay, if you have written OKRs, what’s the next step? It’s time to add practical action steps.

These are called initiatives.

In ClickUp, initiatives are represented by tasks. The tasks are linked to Key Results giving you the steps you need to take to achieve those metrics.

Why link initiatives to Key Results?

• You can show how your work matters and the difference that it’s making.
• You’ll see the real progress you’ve made.
• You can be judged (for better or for worse!) on your contributions.

4 Benefits of OKRs

1) Fast to Create

Many companies take months trying to create a goal or objective, only to lose time that should be spent obtaining the goal. OKRs are faster and easier to create. They are clear yet specific.

2) Simple

OKRs provide a direct way for measuring the goal so that teams know if they succeeded or failed. They aren’t nebulous. Teams are forced to break down ideas into measurable goals or to re-craft and re-think the objective.

3) Strategic But Not Cascading

OKRs are meant to be used in every part of the organization. For instance, top-level OKRs could be set on an annual basis, while departments may set quarterly goals and then teams could create monthly ones.

OKRs work for all levels of the organization with different Key Results that reinforce the key company-level objectives.

However, this doesn’t mean that all OKRs have to directly reflect and be approved from the top-down. Any of the OKRs that differentiate from the strategic company OKRs will stick out.

4) Aligned and Strategic OKRs

Because of this tiered approach, OKRs allow for organic bottom-level development. The top-level goals can be met with specific tactics, and managers can blend these smaller objectives to match the company’s overall strategic OKRs. All levels of the organization should be able to participate in making OKRs work.

This empowers employees to make their own decisions and also places faith in the mid-level manager to properly communicate and refine the goals.

5) High-Level Tactical OKRs

Your OKRs should be specific enough to support the strategic OKRs. To make tactical OKRs, Felipe Castro suggests starting with these two questions:

• How can we contribute to the Strategic OKRs?
• Which of the Key Results included in the Strategic OKRs may we impact?

Creating Key Results around these ideas will help you set up initiatives and tasks that best fit with your tactical OKRs.

Don’t Substitute OKRs for Performance Reviews

OKRs should be separate from performance reviews. But why? People may fail at their OKRs. OKRs should be ambitious and aggressive, and every now and then your employees won’t make them.

And that’s not a bad thing. Why?

• They’re motivated to try bigger things
• They’re taking swings for your company
• Others can learn from their experience

If you want to have a growing company, sometimes that means trying things that won’t work. When this happens, the Objective could stay the same, but the key result may change.

Or maybe they run back the exact same OKRs with a different method for accomplishing it. Everyone should learn from their failure, and performance reviews cut off that experimentation.

OKRs lend themselves better to continuous performance management rather than only on an annual basis.

Conclusion: How To Get OKRs to Really Work

No one likes corporate jargon, except for the people personally invested in creating the jargon.

Your employees won’t want to do something just to check the box and make HR happy. Not in the modern workplace.

How do you make OKRs a reality? How do they become tangible for your company or startup?

1) Make OKRs visible

OKRs shouldn’t be something to fill out once a quarter and then file away. They have to be front, center and present. That’s why ClickUp’s OKR system is so valuable. Teams can look at it with their everyday work. It’s not siloed; it’s with them.

2) Push, Pull & Stretch

We’ve already discussed how OKRs should be ambitious. At Swipely, they consider 70% completion as a success. They fail at OKRs 30% of the time. This forces honest conversation about what can be done and re-adjustments can be made. Workers can be pulled and pushed each quarter as they refine their goals and their working habits, helping them to accomplish more even in the same timeframe.

3) Align

This one bears repeating. If you really want your company goals to align with your workers’ OKRs, your workers have to know what the objectives, goals, mission and vision of the company are.

These often get reinforced at weekly and all-hands meetings, but are they communicated among employees? Is everyone really focused on the goal and the tasks it takes to achieve them?

OKRs that accompany company objectives and goals can empower team collaboration. It’s easier to do this when companies are small, placing a lot of importance on company culture and strategy from the get-go.

Guess what’s coming next in ClickUp? A revolutionary new method for managing all your goals — no matter which structure you use.

Our mission of making the world more productive is just getting started — and Goals will be a huge step forward in fulfilling our purpose.

Originally published at clickup.com on February 14, 2019.

ClickUp was on The Profit? Come again?

Zeb Evans, our founder and CEO, and I have been watching The Profit together long before he even started ClickUp and we started the journey to save project management and make the world a more productive place. It’s easily one of our favorite shows because we hate bad business practices and love watching them get solved. Marcus Lemonis, the star of the show, has always embodied and follow processes that we feel truly work in running successful businesses.

Little did I know, Marcus and I would cross paths in one of my prior jobs and we kept in touch. He recently asked me what I was working on next and I told him about ClickUp and our mission to help the world be more productive. He loved everything about it and continued to reach out to me asking more and more about the software as we grew.

Next thing I know on a random Tuesday afternoon I get a text from Marcus asking if we can be in Los Angeles to help a company of his the next day… the next day?

Not just a consultation. He meant being ON THE TV SHOW.

It’s Showtime! Going on The Profit

Zeb and I quickly knew this was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. The very next morning we hopped on a plane and went straight to LA.

With neither of us ever being on TV before, needless to say we were quite curious of how this would all go down. On the plane and at the hotel, we were scrambling to write out a script outline for what we would say. When walking to Marcus’s office in the distinctive in Los Angeles, we were excited and had no idea what to expect.

I felt motivated as soon as I stepped off the elevator! It was amazing to see that so many of the companies we’d seen on the show were truly all working together under one main roof. The camera crew told us this is so Marcus can check on his companies while flying in to film. Two birds. One stone.

Once we got there, I was waiting for someone to tell us how this would all go down.

Where would I stand?

What will I be asked?

What should I say?

No Prep and No Script

I soon learned I wouldn’t figure any of that out.

Apparently, Marcus likes to walk straight in and let things flow naturally. I’d always believed ALL TV was staged until this point. So there we are getting our mics set up patiently awaiting Marcus to walk in.

It was hard not to feel Marcus’ energy. He’s the perfect mix of happy but straight to business. After we exchanged a few words and caught up, he told us about the company we would be helping. (Which I sadly can’t name yet!)

From there, nothing happened as I imagined it would.

This may sound negative, but it was truly amazing! Marcus literally gave us a 10-minute overview and from there we walked into a conference room on LIVE television.

Helping The Everkin Team

We assessed the situation with Charlotte and the team from Everkin.

As you can see in the episode, Charlotte and her team had quick deadlines with several moving parts.

They had to coordinate logistics, marketing, design, financials and more.

Because of the dynamic flexibility of ClickUp, we were able to help her organize all of their projects with one solution…and get them ready for their successful meeting with T-Mobile!

ClickUp is the one tool where you can bring everything into one central location.

Our time on The Profit was unforgettable and it was an amazing opportunity to be with Marcus and the Everkin team.

What did you think of ClickUp on The Profit?

Originally published at clickup.com on January 22, 2019.