Slides from the Webinar "How to Clerk Smarter, Not Harder"

1. Clerk Smarter, Not
Harder
By John Fagan, CEO at Scribe
Productivity Tips for Parish and Town Clerks

3. The Role of the Clerk

4. Whats your style of time and task management?
Firefighter - constantly putting out "fires", and “busy” working on 10 tasks at
once
Perfectionist - everything must be perfect. Don't quit while ahead.
Time Martyr - fulfill requests from others, instead your own
Procrastinator - delay all tasks, and deliver under pressure
Distractor - random request is likely to catch your fleeting attention
Underestimator - rarely live up to your optimistic deadlines.

5. Which of the following challenges do you most frequently face?
Time Management Struggles - Missed deadlines, always rushing, and working overtime.
Work Quality Concern - Encompasses making mistakes and lack of concentration.
Work-Life Imbalance - Covers skipping breaks and poor work-life balance.
Emotional and Physical Issues - Stress, burnout, irritability, frustration, unhealthy habits, anxiety.
Motivational and Attitudinal Challenge - lack of empathy, loss of motivation, and poor job
satisfaction.
Decision-Making Difficulties - indecisiveness and lack of clarity in making choices

6. I will be sharing
10 Tactics &
10 Tools
+ BONUS ChatGPT
that will help you Clerk Smarter, Not Harder

7. #1 Clear Your Mind
Basic working principle
Get things out of your head
When a task enters your mind,
immediately store them
somewhere else (paper or
digitally) for later prioritisation
Keep your mind clear so you can
reduce stress and anxiety,
enabling you to have a clear and
focused mind

8. ● If a task takes 2 minutes, then do it
immediately
● Consider the cognitive load/effort
for task management…
○ Processing
○ Documenting
○ Scheduling
○ Remembering
● It's quicker to just to get it done
immediately
#2 Two Minute Rule

9. #1 Do it
Serious deadlines or crisis
Ideally you want to avoid things getting to
this point.
#2 Schedule it
Tasks aligned with your long-term goals
This is where you want to spend most of
your time
#3 Delegate it
Task that often masquerade as #1, give us a
false sense of productivity
Use assertiveness or software tools to
minimise
#4 Delete it
Distractions that make you feel worse
and/or are unproductive
Add some of these in the your calendar to
end of your day or be assertive about value
Urgent
Not
Important
Important
Not Urgent
#3 Organise your mind using The Eisenhower Matrix

10. #1 Do it
● Emergency incident - health, legal, security, fire,
accident, technical outage
● Scheduled tasks that have a regulatory deadline
● Important enquiries - email, calls
● Onboarding new starter or councillor
#2 Schedule it
● Finances - admin, budgeting. forecasting, audit, bank
reconciliation, Year-End annual statement, VAT
return
● Meetings - Agenda, Minutes & Actions
● Quotes - Insurance, maintenance etc..
● Communications - email, voicemails, written
● Self improvement - learning, fitness, fresh air, mind
space
#3 Delegate it
● Manual or repetitive tasks that can be automated
● Responding to all enquiries
● Lengthy phone calls, discussions and meetings
● Answering frequent questions
● Responding to correspondence that is related to a
committee or trust
#4 Delete it
● Social media, news & TV
● Eating unhealthy foods because too busy
● Perfectionism and over analysis
● Gossip and speculation
● Responding to frequent complainers / time wasters
Urgent
Not
Important
Important
Not Urgent
#2 The Eisenhower Matrix

11. Pick out your most important, or worst task (this is
your "frog"),
Tackle it first thing in the morning (plan it the day
before)
When you have consumed the "frog", you can move on
to other tasks for the day, but not before.
Combine with:
● Pareto Analysis - also known as the 80/20 rule)
is that 20% of our actions are responsible for
80% of outcomes (your frog)
● Deep work - professional activities performed
in a state of distraction-free concentration that
push your cognitive capabilities to their limit
● Parkinson’s Law - see next slide
#4 Eat that Frog

12. #5 Combat Parkinson’s Law
The law states that work expands so as
to fill the time available for its
completion
Principle highlights our tendency to
inefficiency when we have more time
than we really need.
Set a deadline. Give yourself a set time
to do something—and then cut it in
half.
Create a shorter term meeting with
people to discuss the results of your
work (before you start the work).

13. #6 To Don’t list
DON’T visit social media between 9-5pm
DON’T look at email between 11am-4pm
DON’T have meetings longer than 1hr
DON’T call family during working hours
DON’T leave your phone nearby
DON’T spend time gossiping
DON’T …….

14. #7 Follow the 1-3-5 Rule
Today I will accomplish…
1 BIG THING (“Eat that Frog”)
● Create and publish meeting minutes
3 MEDIUM THINGS
● Get Insurance quotes
● Attend Clerk Smater, Not Harder training
● Add November transactions and reconcile
5 LITTLE THINGS
● Water the plants
● Meet Jan for a walk
● Review low priority tasks
● Call Cllr Andrews about vandalism incident
● Prepare for tomorrow (‘shutdown ritual’)
Tasks lists can be overwhelming and insurmountable
Find comfort in the fact you have limited time in a day
Try following the 1-3-5 rule
Keep your daily to-do list to just those 9 items.
If you often get unplanned tasks thrown at you, leave
some blank slots
Single task focus — try and remain focused on completing
your task before moving onto next
Combine with:
● Pomodoro Technique - Set a timer (e.g., for 25
mins), focus on the task at hand, take 5 mins break
& repeat (take longer breaks after 5 iterations)

15. Routine makes tasks almost automated
Build up healthy habits
“5 little things” could be routines
Same tasks at same time and days
Add these timeboxes to your calendar
Types of tasks
● Work - Email, Voicemail, Messages, Social
media follow-ups, learning
● Play - Fitness, eating, drinking, sleeping
Include Rewards - checking email and having
coffee and snack (elevenses)
#8 Create timeboxed daily habits

17. The Best Way to Build New Habits
Get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on
one page and hang it on a prominent wall.
For each day that you do your task, put a big
red X over that day.
After a few days you’ll have a chain, and watch
it grow each day
When you get a few weeks under your belt.
Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
“Don’t break the chain”
#9 The Seinfeld Method

18. #10 Increase self “service”
Always think about how you can
● Engineer yourself out of a task
● Increase the ability for people to find the
answer themselves
● Automate tasks
See example (on the right) where a simple email
auto reply message provides lots of opportunities
for the recipient to “self serve”
● Website FAQ
● Registration forms - google forms
● Community support - Facebook Groups
● Book a meeting - Calend.ly
Constantly update your content and links to
improve your “hit rate” in enabling recipients to
self serve

19. 10 Tools
Delegating to Software
(also known as “Digital Transformation” or “Modernising government”)

20. #1 Use your Voice Assistant
Demo to audience
Most people have a smartphone or
smart device
All devices now have a voice assistant.
Voice assistants are a great solution to
instantly get things out of your head
● Setting reminders
● Remembering things
● Dictating messages/emails
Have a play with your voice assistant for
work and personal needs.
I now use voice assistants daily for
managing reminders

21. #2 Note taking apps
Move from written notes to digital
notes. Stay away from complicated
systems for note taking.
I use “Simplenote”
● Very simple
● Just text
● Available on Windows, Mac,
iPhone, Android, Web
● Syncs across all platforms
● Very quick to use
Others
● Googlekeep
● Microsoft ToDo
● Evernote
● Onenote
Demo to audience

22. #3 Task management app
Notes eventually become tasks.
Use a task management app. Like Asana
● Easy to create and prioritise
tasks.
● Assign and set due dates
● Chat and collaborate
● Run full projects
Other solutions
● Trello
● ClickUp
● Height
● Monday
● Office 365
Demo to audience

23. ● Faster way to communicate, and
more likely to be read
● For low level communication
● E.g. Reminders to submit Agenda
items
● Make sure it doesn't spill over
into discussing agenda items
● Messages that require a formal
decision or resolution are always
backed up by email (or letter)
● Make sure all councillors have or
want to use group messaging
● Look up Mistley Parish Council
WhatsApp policy
● Can expand to “Communities”
Enterprise chat tools Slack, Teams,
Google Chat, Discord
#4 Message instead of email

24. #5 Google Docs - online colloboration
Demo to audience
Stop using desktop apps and desktop storage and
migrate to the cloud using Google Workspace
Login in from anywhere, anytime.
Share files and collaborate together, Never attach a copy
of file again
Comment and edit same file
Full version history
Great for GDPR compliance
Data backed up
Easier to use than desktop apps
Alternatives
● Office365
● Zoho
● Dropbox

25. Delegate sending, sharing
and scheduling to software.
Emails - try mailchimp
(manages GDPR too)
Social Media - try
Hootsuite
Meetings - try Calendly,
Doodle
#6 Scheduling Stuff
Demo to audience

26. #7 Quantified Self
The Quantified Self movement
defines the self-tracking,
measurement and quantification of
all aspects of daily life using
technology like applications and
wearable smart devices, such as
activity trackers, sleep monitor and
app tracking.
● Apple or Google Fitness
● Strava
● App Screentime (personal)
● Rescuetime (work)
Measure what you are doing, then
improve

27. #8 App integration and Automation
Apps often integrate with other
other apps (to streamline workflows
and reduce admin)
For example easily add tasks to
your task management system
● Forward Email to create task
in Asana
● Google Form Submission
creates a task in Asana
More advanced automation using
● IFTTT
● Zapier
Demo to audience
add tasks

28. #9 Scribe Accounts
Running the cashbook at the
administrative level is IMPORTANT,
but NOT URGENT
Tasks related to producing reports
for meetings, completing VAT
Claims, budget submission, year-end
and preparing for internal audit tend
to escalate into IMPORTANT and
URGENT
The higher up the pyramid the more
stress and anxiety,
It does not have to be that way

29. #9 Scribe Accounts

30. Add rocketfuel to your productivity
with multiple applications or
seamlessly integrated.
Unlimited users enables your team to
work collaboratively and efficiently.
Products include:
⚖️ Accounts
🪦 Cemetery Management
🏛🪦 Venue Hire
🪦 Allotments
All data in one place, backed-up and
compliant.
#9 Scribe Apps

31. #10 Bonus top 10 tools
1. Canva - create brochures, posters &
social media posts and much more
2. Veed.io - create videos
3. Expensify - capture your expenses
with receipts and create reports
4. MindMeister - mind mapping
5. Loom - screen recording and sharing
6. LastPass - password management
7. Instapaper - save articles from the
internet to read later
8. Grammarly - grammar and spell
checker
9. Mural - brainstorming, collaborate
and think visually
10. HabitShare - habit tracking (“don’t
break the chain”)
11. Youtube - learn anything and
everything, including fitness and
wellbeing