Over the past decade, MSPs have stepped in to play a bigger role in IT security. As cybersecurity threats grew more complex, MSPs evolved. Building security practices, running audits, and, in many cases, operating as MSSPs. It’s been the main way they’ve retained strategic influence as technology evolved.

But here’s the irony: while MSPs are in the business of managing technology, most have fallen behind when it comes to innovation. In a world charging ahead with AI, automation, and ongoing SaaS expansion, many MSPs are still focused on backing up systems, reporting on phishing attempts and resetting passwords.

The tech world is not static. That statement should be self-evident, and we should have already learned this lesson that if MSPs don’t adapt, they risk looking more like custodians than strategic partners.

The rise of SaaS and cloud apps have already shifted control of software decisions away from IT. Most people remember very well what happened in the enterprise when cloud business applications showed up. IT leaders screamed about ‘corporate standards’, ‘security’, and ‘data loss in the cloud’, and the world just passed them by. A similar story played out for MSPs that clung to physical infrastructure for five to ten years after their customers (and the opportunity) moved on.

Whether it was internal IT or the MSP that replaced them, both ended up sidelined.

Business units brought in their own tools, often without involvement from internal IT or MSPs. And while MSPs continued to manage infrastructure and endpoints, they were largely cut out of conversations about software spend, tool adoption, or employee digital experience.

Now, another transformation is underway with AI. And without a shift in how they position themselves, MSPs could once again find themselves watching from the sidelines.

Out of the shadows - rethinking the ‘shadow’ part of IT

The term "shadow IT" has always implied something risky or out of bounds. But the truth is, it’s often just a reflection of where innovation is happening fastest.

For MSPs, how you think about (and communicate) that concept says a lot about the kind of partner you want to be. If your first instinct is to shut it down, you’re reinforcing the very dynamics that pushed internal IT departments to the margins 15 years ago. But if you view it as a signal, an indicator of unmet needs or emerging preferences, you have an opportunity to help clients navigate it intelligently.

Teams adopt tools for a reason. Usually to help them work better. When you bring visibility to what’s actually being used and help evaluate it on merit, you stop being the roadblock and start being the guide.

AI Is already inside the building

From ChatGPT to Microsoft CoPilot, AI tools are becoming part of the daily workflow often without a formal rollout plan or clear measurement of effectiveness. They’re being licensed, trialed, and adopted on a department-by-department basis. Most clients don’t know what’s being used, where it’s helping, or what it’s costing.

This is a major strategic blind spot. And if MSPs don’t help their clients close it, someone else will.

Executives are already asking questions. Questions MSPs should be prepared to answer:

Are we spending on tools that no one’s using?

Are the AI platforms we’ve deployed actually improving productivity?

Do we know what tools employees are adopting without approval?

The answers require data, and that’s where MSPs can step in with a new kind of solution.

Application visibility as a strategic lever

This is where Produce8 makes a difference. It gives MSPs the ability to bring real data into these conversations. With detailed insights into application usage across SaaS and desktop tools, you can help clients see:

Which tools are gaining traction—and which aren’t

Where licenses are underused or could be reclaimed

How teams are adopting tools outside IT’s visibility

Trends across departments that reveal broader opportunities

This is more than just reporting. You should be thinking about it as the path to re-engagement of the MSP. Strategic relevance. When you can quantify usage, surface inefficiencies, and highlight emerging trends, you shift the conversation from reactive support to proactive planning. You become the partner your clients need.

A practical path to higher-value services

So here is the self-serving, shameless vendor plug - and our simple playbook for MSPs:

Deploy Produce8 to give your clients visibility into the entirety of the digital workplace (not just the stuff you manage).

Use those insights to guide QBRs and executive conversations. One topic at a time.

Recommend changes, license adjustments, tool rationalization, and training support

Support change initiatives using Produce8 to measure the impact

Build on early wins to expand your role over time

The MSP space is no stranger to reinvention. As security demands grew, MSPs stepped up. The next reinvention is already underway, and it centers on how work is getting done, what tools are enabling it, and whether those investments are delivering value.

With AI adoption accelerating and app ecosystems growing more fragmented, your clients need clarity. They need partners who can help them understand what’s working and what’s not.

Not every MSP will make this shift (just like the last time)

There will be a clear divide between those who continue to focus solely on tickets and endpoints and those who evolve to help their clients lead through change. One path leads to greater relevance, new revenue streams, and more strategic relationships. The other leads to being quietly replaced.

The opportunity is real for increased wallet share, stronger client retention, and net-new business from companies looking for forward-thinking partners.

We’re both excited and a little terrified about what’s coming next with AI. Your clients probably are too. But we’re here to help you do more than just hang on. We want to help you lead. We can partner on this one. We’ll bring you the data and insights. You deliver the strategy.

You can be an innovator again. You can get excited about “new” again. And isn’t that why you got into tech in the first place?



Stepping off the Sidelines: How MSPs Can Regain Relevance in the Age of AI and App Sprawl

There’s a silent drain on your clients’ productivity - and it’s happening in their calendars.

While meetings are intended to drive alignment and collaboration, new research shows they’re one of the biggest culprits behind employee fatigue, lost time, and disengagement. But because meeting culture is such a normal part of work, most companies don’t know how bad the problem really is—or how to measure it.

That’s where Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can help. And no, you don’t need to become a productivity coach to make a difference. You already support the tech stack that throws off the data that can illustrate the problem. You just need to help your clients see it.

The Meetings Problem

A wave of research has confirmed what employees have felt for years:

Professionals spend over 11 hours per week in meetings, often exceeding 30% of their workweek (Fast Company, 2024).

71% of meetings are considered unproductive, costing U.S. companies $37 billion annually (Harvard Business Review, 2024).

Microsoft’s Work Trend Index found that inefficient meetings are the #1 barrier to productivity in hybrid environments (HBR, June 2024).

A 2025 New York Post article dubbed the lingering cognitive drain from back-to-back meetings “meeting hangovers”—where the fatigue lasts hours after the calls end.

A ScienceDirect meta-analysis (2025) identified “feeling trapped” in meetings as a key psychological cause of Zoom fatigue.

These aren’t isolated studies—they paint a consistent picture: meeting overload is real, it's widespread, and it's measurable.

Why Should MSPs Get Involved?

Because your clients can’t fix what they can’t see—and the data that reveals the problem is flowing through the platforms you already manage.

You support Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Teams, Zoom, and Slack. These tools generate logs of every calendar invite, every recurring meeting, and every video call. With the right visualization tools, you can help your clients:

Quantify average time in meetings (internal and external) per employee, team, or department

Identify departments or roles experiencing the highest meeting density

Track trends over time to support reinforcing changes like reducing recurring calls

You're not stepping outside your lane—you're helping clients optimize what they already use. Your job is to provide the data points.

How to Start the Conversation

We get it—talking about productivity might feel like unfamiliar territory. But the pitch here isn’t “let’s fix your culture”—it’s:

“We can show you how meetings are actually impacting your employee’s workdays using the data you already own in the systems we manage.”

Here are a few ways to ease into the conversation during your next QBR or sync:

“We’re seeing a lot of teams lose hours each week to unproductive meetings—would you be open to looking at your organization’s calendar data to identify inefficiencies?”

“Your platforms can show you where time is going across Teams, Zoom, and Outlook. We can help you surface that.”

“This isn’t about cutting meetings—it’s about making them count. Let’s start by seeing how much time meetings actually take so you have a data set that you can use to track how much progress your teams are making.”

And if they need MORE convincing? Just point to the research:

“A 2025 study found that time in meetings is one of the strongest predictors of burnout—stronger than workload itself.”

What the Data Reveals (and Why It Matters)

Here’s what your clients can track in Produce8 as part of the really inexpensive Essentials package:

Average meetings per day/week per employee (anonymous)

Time in internal vs external meetings

Time spent in meetings vs. time blocked on calendars

Time in virtual calling systems (potentially ad-hoc meetings)

Trends in meeting time by role or department or companywide

Once clients see this data, they can begin experimenting with the vast number of initiatives that can help tackle the problem - reducing redundant calls, switching to async check-ins, and protecting focus time. With your help they can measure the impact of those changes at a high level and in a really simple way.

From Tech Partner to Strategic Advisor

As an MSP, you already help clients modernize and manage the platforms where digital work happens. Now, you can also help them optimize how that work gets done.

By helping clients understand their meeting overload problem you become more than a support provider. You become a strategic ally in solving a problem that affects every knowledge worker on their payroll.

And the best part? You don’t have to fix the problem yourself. You just have to help them see it. You can stay in your lane on technology conversations, but now you can talk about the impact of tech on the workday.

Reach Out

If you are interested in what Produce8 can do to position your MSP as an advisor to companies that wish to transform digital workplaces, please reach out to our team for a quick demo.

MSPs, Your Clients Have a Meeting Problem - Now You Have the Fix.

AI is rapidly reshaping how businesses operate—from internal workflows to customer-facing experiences. For small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), this transformation brings both opportunity and uncertainty. They’re looking to their MSPs not just for technical support, but for strategic guidance on how to navigate this shift. That’s where a new model is emerging - one that reframes what it means to deliver value in the age of intelligent automation.

Channel Leader Pax8's Vision for Agentic AI and MSP Transformation

At the recent 2025 Pax8 Beyond conference, CEO Scott Chasin emphasized the rapid evolution of AI, noting that "AI capabilities are doubling every four to six months." He highlighted the transformative potential of AI, stating, "We’re on the cusp of AI reaching human-level intelligence and beyond." This acceleration is not just about technological advancement but also about redefining the role of MSPs in the AI era.

Pax8's research report, The Agentic Inflection Point, introduces the concept of the Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP), positioning MSPs as strategic partners who curate, orchestrate, and govern intelligent agents to drive business outcomes for SMBs. This shift underscores the need for MSPs to evolve from traditional service providers to proactive enablers of AI-driven transformation.

What’s an ‘MIP’ in Practice?

The hypothetical ‘Managed Intelligence Provider’ is about more than just managing tools—it’s about providing visibility, strategy, and structure as AI becomes embedded in daily work. According to Pax8, MIPs will:

Help clients orchestrate AI solutions across workflows

Monitor and optimize AI usage and adoption

Deliver business results, not just uptime or ticket resolution

Their upcoming Managed Intelligence Toolkit will support this shift, offering a framework for managing AI at scale across SMB clients.

How MSPs Can Start the Shift to Intelligence Providers

You don’t need to wait for new tools to start becoming more strategic. Here are four ways to help clients adopt and manage AI—right now.

1. Measure Adoption of GenAI Tools using Work Analytics from Produce8

Whether it’s ChatGPT, Jasper, or other emerging tools, most organizations are experimenting with GenAI. But without visibility, it’s hard to know what’s sticking.

Use analytics tools to track:

Frequency of use across departments

Drop-offs or signs of abandonment

Team-level engagement patterns

A dataset that illuminates the adoption curve of new tech that helps companies support (without stamping out) employee innovation efforts.

This helps shift the conversation from anecdotal to structured and measurable insights.

2. Measure the Impact of Embedded AI on People

Tools like Microsoft Copilot or embedded AI features in apps are harder to track. But their impact shows up in employee work patterns:

Are focus hours increasing?

Is the related app’s (i.e. Microsoft Word) usage changing?

Are employees spending more time in different applications indicating that time has freed up?

Is the digital workday becoming more efficient?

Pre- and post-rollout comparisons with Digital Work Analytics can reveal whether embedded AI is helping or just adding more tools and inefficiencies in the way work gets completed.

3. Guide AI Policy Creation

Many clients lack AI policies altogether. MSPs can support policy efforts by:

Identifying which AI tools are in use (even unapproved ones)

Helping draft clear guidelines for usage and access

Flagging Shadow AI that could pose a risk

This Writer.com article offers a great starting point.

4. Use Work Analytics to Demonstrate ROI

Tools like Produce8 help MSPs give clients measurable, privacy-respecting insights into digital work patterns:

Understand usage of collaboration and productivity tools

Detect inefficiencies like meeting or messaging overload

Measure whether AI is improving productivity or creating distractions

These insights can kickstart better QBRs, spark license audits, and help teams improve how they work.

Why This Matters

Clients aren’t just asking “What AI tools should we try?” They’re asking:

Are we wasting money on apps?

Are we using AI safely?

Is it helping us get more done?

What should we stop or start doing?

These are questions the proposed MIP concept could answer with data, structure, and strategy. This isn’t about reinventing your business. It’s about extending your current value into a new era of work.

At Produce8, we are here to help MSPs lead these conversations. For some concrete examples of our tools at work on AI-related use cases, check out our recent partner webinar or reach out for a demo or info on our MSP (or maybe I should say ‘MIP’ :P) partner program.

The Dawn of the ‘Managed Intelligence Provider’: Helping Your Clients Manage Transformation in the Digital Workplace

Vancouver, BC – Produce8, a leader in digital work analytics, today announced the launch of Essential Insights, an innovative reporting system designed to empower businesses with real-time data on employee digital workflows while enabling Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to deliver unprecedented value to their clients.


In today’s fast-paced digital workplace, organizations struggle to understand how employees interact with technology, manage their time, and collaborate efficiently. Essential Insights simplifies this challenge by providing real-time, anonymized analytics that drive data-driven decisions, improve productivity, and support overall workforce well-being.


“Essential Insights was designed to seamlessly provide organizations with real-time business data,” said Marco LaVecchia - CRO of Produce8 “With its ability to reveal patterns in productivity, collaboration, and technology usage, businesses can create better workdays for employees, while MSPs can elevate their role as trusted strategic partners in driving digital efficiency.”


Unlocking Workforce Productivity with Essential Insights

Essential Insights delivers four key reporting dimensions that provide organizations with an in-depth understanding of their digital work environments:

Quality of Work Life – Tracks digital working hours, focus scores, and employee sentiment, helping businesses balance productivity with well-being.

Collaboration Time – Analyzes time spent in meetings and calls, identifying opportunities to improve communication efficiency.

Application Discovery & Usage – Provides insights into app usage, interaction patterns, and shadow IT risks, ensuring businesses maintain secure and efficient digital environments.

Team Benchmarking – Enables comparative analysis of departments and teams, identifying trends and disparities to optimize resource allocation and collaboration.


A Game-Changer for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

Essential Insights is not only a powerful tool for businesses—it also presents a transformative opportunity for MSPs looking to expand their value proposition and service offerings.

Deepen Client Relationships – MSPs can move beyond traditional IT support by delivering actionable insights that make them indispensable business advisors.

Drive Growth & Revenue – By offering DWA-powered insights, MSPs can expand into HR and operational analytics, opening new revenue streams.

Differentiate Services – Essential Insights helps MSPs stand out in a crowded market, delivering next-generation analytics that drive business success.


MSPs have traditionally provided IT expertise, evolving from network management to cloud adoption and cybersecurity. The next logical step in their evolution is Digital Work Analytics (DWA)—a fast-growing sector that helps businesses optimize workflows and retain top talent.


“Organizations invest 8-10% of their OPEX budget on IT, but up to 75% on human resources,” Janice Siddons - President of Produce 8 added “Essential Insights enables MSPs to bridge the gap by showing clients exactly how their technology investment impacts their most valuable asset: their people.”

Seamless Integration and Adoption

Produce8 has made integrating Essential Insights into MSP service offerings effortless. The tool can be deployed in just three simple steps:

Show Clients the Report – Demonstrate how DWA analytics uncover productivity patterns and inefficiencies.

Easily Deploy Essential Insights to Client Base – No complex integration is required—Essential Insights works seamlessly with existing IT infrastructure.

Incorporate Reports into QBR Meetings – Use insights to fuel quarterly business reviews (QBRs) and strengthen strategic conversations with clients.


To support MSPs, Produce8 offers an MSP Partner Program with dedicated resources and training, helping them scale Essential Insights as a core business offering.

Unlock the Power of Digital Work Analytics


Essential Insights is available now for businesses and MSPs looking to enhance workplace efficiency, illuminate new growth opportunities, and drive data-backed decision-making.


Join the Essential Insights Launch Webinar


Date: January 30, 2025 | Time: 2 PM ET
Register Here: Produce8 Essential Insights Launch Webinar
For more information, book a live demo or learn about our MSP Partner Program


Produce8 Launches Essential Insights, a Breakthrough Digital Work Analytics Reporting Tool for Businesses and MSPs

Produce8 is proud to announce the launch of Essential Insights, our new Digital Work Analytics (DWA) Report System designed to empower knowledge workers, enhance business efficiency, and support Managed Service Providers (MSPs) in driving growth.

The modern workplace is increasingly digital, making it essential for businesses to understand how employees interact with technology, manage their time, and collaborate. Essential Insights brings clarity to these areas, offering detailed, anonymized reports that enable data-driven decisions to optimize productivity, foster well-being, and scale operations.

Transforming the Workplace with Essential Insights

Essential Insights Reporting leverages real-time analytics to deliver a comprehensive view of the employee digital experience across four critical dimensions:

Quality of Work Life: Tracks digital working hours, focus scores, and employee sentiment to balance productivity and well-being.

Collaboration Time: Analyzes time spent in meetings and calls, highlighting areas for communication efficiency.

Application Discovery & Usage: Provides insights into app usage, interaction patterns, and shadow IT risks.

Team Benchmarking: Enables comparative analysis of teams, identifying trends and disparities to align resources effectively.

“Essential Insights was designed to easily offer organizations real-time business data” said Janice Siddons, President, Produce8. “With its ability to reveal patterns in productivity and collaboration, businesses can create better workdays for their teams, while MSPs can elevate their role as trusted strategic partners.”

A Game-Changer for Managed Service Providers

For MSPs, Essential Insights represents a transformative opportunity to expand their value proposition:

Deepen Client Relationships: By offering actionable insights, MSPs can transition from being IT providers to indispensable business advisors.

Drive Growth: The tool opens doors to new services, enabling MSPs to tap into HR and operational challenges.

Differentiate Services: Essential Insights helps MSPs stand out in a competitive market with next-generation analytics capabilities.

Key industries such as technology, professional services, healthcare, and financial services are poised to benefit significantly from these insights, making Essential Insights a versatile solution across sectors.

Seamless Integration and Adoption

Produce8 has made adopting Essential Insights Reporting easy for MSPs, requiring just three simple steps: introduce the tool to clients, deploy it easily, and incorporate insights into regular business reviews. The platform also offers a Partner Program to provide MSPs with the resources and training needed to maximize their impact.

Unlock the Power of Digital Work Analytics

Produce8’s Essential Insights is now available to help businesses and MSPs illuminate opportunities, improve efficiency, and foster sustainable growth. To learn more, book a live demo at Produce8’s website.

For additional information, contact Produce8 at info@produce8.com and join our launch webinar on January 30th (2pm ET): Essential Insights - Introducing Digital Work Analytics Reporting for MSPs.

Find out more about Essential Insights reporting

Produce8 Launches Essential Insights: Revolutionizing Digital Work Analytics for Businesses and MSPs

At Produce8, we believe that meaningful change starts with intentional action. That’s why we’re excited to introduce our latest feature, Organization Challenges, designed to help you drive and measure impactful change across your business.



Driving Transformation, One Challenge at a Time



What do we mean by challenges? Whether you’re revamping meeting culture, tackling email overload, or reducing distractions from messaging tools, Organization Challenges empowers your organization to set company-wide initiatives. 

This feature brings visibility to the link between change efforts and impacts to everyone in your business using the Produce8 app, ensuring that your team is involved and engaged with not only their contribution, but to the overall outcome for the business.



Measure What Matters



Understanding the impact of your initiatives is crucial. With Organization Challenges, you can track before-and-after anonymized metrics that show the impact on the average employee. This allows you to see the percentage changes in work habits, helping you gauge the success of your challenges.



Support for Change Champions



No matter who’s leading the charge—internal teams or external experts—Challenges offer a robust toolset to socialize the initiative, engage your workforce, and report on progress. The Produce8 personal dashboard makes it easy to monitor and communicate the results of your efforts.



Stay Connected and Informed



We’ve made it simple to keep track of active and completed challenges. The new Challenges homepage, accessible from your user menu, displays all ongoing initiatives. Plus, the new Challenges resource center on our website offers guidance on maximizing the impact of your productivity and wellness initiatives.



With Organization Challenges, Produce8 is giving you the tools to create lasting, positive change in your organization. Ready to start your first Challenge?

Engage Your Entire Business in Productivity Initiatives 

Managing email overload has become a critical skill for professionals seeking to maintain efficiency and sanity in the workplace. According to Microsoft, some employees dedicate approximately nine hours every week to emails. That’s more than a full workday!

While some roles necessitate responding to incoming emails promptly, many workers check their inboxes impulsively even when their focus should be on other tasks. There are several reasons why knowledge workers feel beholden to their inboxes, including FOMO, the instant gratification of small accomplishments, and poor time management skills.

Constantly checking emails interrupts workflow, making it difficult to maintain concentration on important tasks. This leads to a loss of time and energy. Additionally, this habit can increase stress and anxiety in workers, especially when anticipating new messages and feeling the pressure to respond quickly.

If your team is seeking a way to improve employee well-being and recover time from the inbox, then this article is for you.

Identifying Email Overload

It’s essential to recognize the signs of email overload before tackling it. Here are some indicators that you or your employees might be overwhelmed by emails:

High Interactions in Email App: Regularly checking emails indicates that workers are disengaging from their tasks to attend to messages.

Increased Work Hours: Spending excessive time outside of regular work hours dealing with emails suggests that email management is intruding on personal time.

Insufficient Time Spent on Main Tasks: A decline in productivity occurs when time is spent managing emails instead of focusing on primary tasks.

Want hard data to help identify your team’s email overload problem? Get Produce8. We can show you crucial data and help you fix the issue before it gets worse.

Ready to make some changes? Here are a few approaches you can use to improve email management across your organization.

Improve Email Management

1. Email Batching

Email batching involves grouping your email tasks into specific intervals rather than constantly checking your inbox. This technique can significantly reduce distractions and increase your focus on important tasks. Here's how to implement email batching effectively:

Designate specific times during the day to check and respond to emails. Batches could be first thing in the morning, after lunch, and before the end of the workday.

Disable email notifications to prevent interruptions outside of your designated batch times.

Commit to your email-checking schedule and avoid the temptation to check your inbox in between these times.

2. Time Blocking

Much like email batching, time blocking is a time management technique where you allocate fixed blocks of time to specific tasks or activities. This method can help you manage your email more efficiently while ensuring you have dedicated time for other important tasks. Here's how to use time blocking for email management:

Schedule specific time blocks in your calendar dedicated solely to checking and responding to emails. For example, you might allocate 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon.

Focus on high-priority tasks outside of your email blocks. Do not allow for email distractions.

Measure your productivity and adjust these time blocks if necessary. The goal is to find a balance that works best for you.

3. Implement the Two-Minute Rule

The two-minute rule is designed to streamline your email management process and minimize time spent on each email. Here’s how to integrate this rule into your daily routine:

Take Immediate Action for Quick Emails: If an email can be responded to in two minutes or less during your designated email blocks, address it immediately. This approach prevents small tasks from piling up. Quick actions might include confirming meeting times, forwarding information, or providing brief answers to straightforward questions.

Schedule Time-Consuming Emails into Your Calendar for Dedicated Time Blocks: Some email responses take more than two minutes. If you don’t want to forget about them, schedule them into your calendar using apps like Gmail and Outlook.

In Gmail, open the email and click on the three-dot menu at the top right corner. Next, select “Create event” to open Google Calendar, where you can set a specific time block for responding to the email.

Similarly, in Outlook, you can drag the email to the Calendar icon to create a new event or appointment. This method allows you to allocate dedicated time to address complex emails, ensuring they receive the attention they need without interrupting your workflow.

4. Manage Your Email Process

Adjust your email management processes to streamline your inbox. This ensures you spend less time organizing and sifting through emails. Here are a few methods you can try:

Use Filters and Labels: Gmail and Outlook both offer filtering and labeling options. Set up filters to automatically sort incoming emails into categories such as urgent, important, and low priority. Labels and folders can also help you identify and manage different types of emails.

Unsubscribe from Unnecessary Newsletters: Over time, your email can become cluttered with newsletters and promotional messages. Schedule a time block to unsubscribe from emails that no longer serve a purpose. This will reduce the volume of emails you receive daily.

Use Templates for Common Responses: For frequently asked questions or recurring topics, create email templates. This saves time, ensures consistent responses, and prevents you from having to write the same message repeatedly.

5. Leverage Email Management Tools

Consider using email management tools and apps that integrate with your email system. These tools can help you track, prioritize, and automate email tasks.

Here are a few email management tools to test:

Superhuman offers a streamlined, minimalistic interface that boosts email efficiency by using features like fast keyboard shortcuts, snooze options, read receipts, and advanced search.

Spark allows team members to discuss emails privately and work together on responses.

SaneBox filters and prioritizes emails, automatically sorting less important messages into separate folders.

Boomerang allows you to schedule emails to be sent later, set follow-up reminders, and temporarily archive emails until you need them.

Clean Email helps you organize and declutter your inbox by grouping similar emails together and then archive or delete them in bulk.

6. Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is a productivity approach aimed at keeping your inbox empty or near empty at all times. This method helps you stay organized and ensures that no important emails are overlooked. Here's how to achieve Inbox Zero effectively:

Set Up a System: Organize your emails into folders or label them for easy access and sorting. Use categories like “Action Required,” “Waiting on Response,” and “Reference.”

Process Emails Regularly: Dedicate specific times each day to process your emails. During these times, sort your emails into the appropriate folders, delete what’s not needed, and respond to or delegate actionable items.

Use Email Management Tools: Use tools or features like filters, rules, and templates to automate and streamline your email processing.

Maintain the System: Regularly review and clean your inbox to keep it organized. Ensure that new emails are processed promptly to avoid backlog and maintain your Inbox Zero status.

Measure the Effectiveness of the Change

Email overload can be managed with the right strategy. By implementing productivity techniques like email batching and time blocking or making changes to your email management processes, you can significantly reduce interactions with your inbox, allowing you to focus on important tasks and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

However, it’s also possible that productivity hacks for managing emails might not work. For example, Inbox Zero may heighten your email interactions.

Whatever changes you choose to implement, it’s essential to measure their effectiveness. Regularly assess whether these changes are actually helping you manage your inbox more efficiently. Remember, the objective is to find the approach that works best for you and your team.

Use Produce8 to track your progress, measure the impact of your changes, and continually refine your approach to keep improving.

How to Prevent Email Overload at Work: Email Management Tips

Is your team managing time efficiently?

As organizational leaders striving to enhance team performance, it's essential to recognize that not all meetings are created equal. Unfortunately, some are more likely to disrupt the workday and cause employees to lose valuable focus time.

This article explores the traits of disruptive meetings. This knowledge will assist you in establishing the changes necessary for better time management and empower your employees to improve collaboration.

By understanding which types of meetings negatively impact your team, you can implement strategies to minimize these disruptions. Addressing these factors will enable your teams to maintain focus, improve productivity, and foster a more efficient and engaged work environment.

Meetings that cause interruptions

Frequent interruptions in the form of meetings can significantly disrupt an employee's focus and productivity.

Ad hoc meetings, often scheduled spontaneously to address immediate issues, can cause interruptions in the workplace. These unscheduled sessions break the flow of planned work and force employees to shift their focus abruptly, leading to a significant loss of time. By minimizing ad hoc meetings and finding alternative ways to address urgent matters, organizations can preserve the focus of workers.

By identifying these meetings, addressing whether they are a problem, and implementing strategies to manage their frequency and timing, businesses can help employees maintain better time management throughout their workday.

Consider introducing asynchronous collaboration or having a meeting-free workday.

Produce8 is a digital work analytics platform that enables you to understand how you are currently running meetings and whether the changes you’ve made are having the desired outcome.

Poorly scheduled meetings

Poorly scheduled meetings — especially recurring meetings or cross-functional meetings — can significantly disrupt productivity. If not regularly reviewed, these meetings can become habitual and hinder peak productivity periods.

Many recurring meetings, such as daily stand-ups, team huddles, and regular check-ins, while brief, interrupt the start of the workday and impede focus during an employee’s most productive working hours. These meetings act as anchor points that employees anticipate, preventing them from getting into a flow beforehand and requiring time to mentally refocus afterward.

To resolve these scheduling issues, teams and organizations can establish clear guidelines for meeting scheduling, including preferred times and notice periods. Because everyone has different productive work times, encourage employees to block out focus time on their calendars and set meeting-free zones during specific times or days to minimize disruptions.

Additionally, reviewing the necessity of recurring meetings and canceling or combining those that are no longer essential can prevent unnecessary interruptions. We challenge your organization to take the Great Workdays Kickoff for Organizations to identify how scheduled meetings are impacting productivity.

Meetings that run over time

Brainstorming sessions, project kickoff meetings, and strategic planning meetings are prime examples of meetings that extend past their scheduled time, as they involve sharing extensive details and engaging in open-ended conversations.

A common cause for meetings running over time is not having a clear goal at the start or failing to set a time limit to reach that goal. Even with well-defined objectives, relying on a committee to reach a consensus can be challenging. Ensuring that all discussions and decisions stay aligned with the meeting’s objectives can help, but sometimes reducing the number of participants is necessary to streamline discussions. We will go into more detail about this in the following section.

How often do meetings run over in your organization? Analyze the data in the Produce8 workspace timeline.

By recognizing lengthy meetings and implementing strategies to keep discussions focused and time-boxed, businesses can ensure that their employees’ time and energy are spent in the right place.

Meetings with too many participants

If we all know that having too many participants in a meeting can be detrimental, why does it keep happening? Because of over-inclusiveness, unclear roles, and a fear of missing out. Hierarchical pressure and ambiguous meeting objectives can also lead to excessive invitations. But most often, it simply occurs out of habit.

To manage participant numbers effectively, businesses must first understand the average sizes of their meetings and decipher how many hours are spent in meetings with a large participation list.

Produce8 allows you to see how much time is spent in meetings by size — and the average cost to the business:

After you’ve identified the problem, you can have more efficient discussions with your team by keeping meetings to a manageable size. Segment meetings, use representatives, and leverage technology for asynchronous work to help streamline discussions.

Recovering focus time from meetings

Meetings are affecting employee focus time and well-being. We cannot ignore that fact any longer — especially when gathering a group of people together is easier than ever. We must come to understand how we conduct meetings and determine whether changes are actually improving the workday.

By gathering data on current meeting practices, you can pinpoint specific issues such as excessive participation, poor scheduling, or lengthy durations. With this data in hand, bring the team together and come to an agreement on necessary changes. Then implement strategies tailored to address these issues.

By continuing to measure and analyze meeting data, you can assess the effectiveness of these changes. And by committing to data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement, your organization can optimize meeting practices and better support team performance.

We encourage your teams and organizations to measure the time they spend in meetings and start improving their workdays by starting the Great Workdays Kickoff for Organization. Reach out to Produce8 if you’re up for it. We can get your whole organization set up and feeling empowered to take back control of the workday.


Types of Meetings Affecting Focus Time

Understanding the impact of meeting overload on business efficiency is crucial. Meetings are essential for collaboration and decision-making, but excessive and poorly managed meetings can significantly drain an organization’s resources and hinder productivity.

Struggling to help your teams have better workdays? You’re not alone! In this article, we will analyze some of the most shocking statistics around meeting overload and help you examine your organization's current meeting culture. Armed with this knowledge, you can make changes to improve employee satisfaction and overall operational efficiency.

1. There Are Too Many Meetings

The average employee participates in at least eight meetings each week, which equates to more than one meeting per day. This number only increases with seniority, as the average executive manager attends at least 12 meetings per week.

This data underscores the need to evaluate how these frequent meetings impact your workday.

2. Meetings Are Expensive

Unproductive meetings are a significant concern, with an estimated $37 billion lost annually in the United States due to inefficient meetings, according to Flowtrace.

Understanding the financial cost of these meetings can help businesses realize the importance of streamlining their processes. Enter Produce8, which can show you the organizational cost of meetings.

3. Meetings Are Draining

One in four employees suffer from “Zoom fatigue” during meetings, according to Pew Research. This emphasizes the importance of considering the mental and physical toll of excessive meetings on employees.

4. Scheduling Meetings Is Work

Office workers waste an average of one hour and 42 minutes per week scheduling and rescheduling calls. This suggests that improving scheduling efficiency could free up significant time for more valuable work.

5. Meetings Are Getting Longer

Time spent in meetings has been rising by 8% to 10% every year since 2000. Recognizing this trend can help businesses implement strategies to curb the increasing length of meetings.

Produce8 allows your team to easily see the scheduled block for meetings in their Calendar. This enables your organization to have a better grasp on how long meetings are lasting.

6. Meetings Have Too Many Attendees

More than 22% of meetings have at least eight attendees, according to Fellow. This results in over 15 hours of meetings per week on average, leaving little time for execution.

This data shows that smaller, more focused meetings could be more effective.

7. Unscheduled and Ad Hoc Meetings

Sixty-six percent (66%) of 1:1 calls are unscheduled, according to HBR. This means that employees’ workdays are often interrupted with spontaneous video calls on apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams. These interruptions disrupt their workflow and focus.

8. Meetings Cause Delays

Seventy percent (70%) of meetings cause delays in completing essential work, according to research from Bloomberg. This aligns with findings that indicate 92% of workers feel meetings keep them from their regular work duties.

Such disruptions highlight the need for more efficient meeting practices, which can ensure that essential tasks are not sidelined.

We Can Fix This

While meetings are a vital aspect of business operations, their overabundance can be a significant drain on time, resources, and employee morale.

Here’s one last stat for you: A Harvard Business Review study found that when companies reduced meeting time by 40%, worker productivity increased by 70%. But we know that the solution is not as simple as cutting out meetings from your schedule. After all, your team still needs to collaborate. Instead, we’re suggesting you stop running initiatives without data.

Produce8 helps the whole team get on the same page regarding the current meeting culture. By linking their calendar and meeting apps, teams can address meeting issues with data-driven insights, allowing everyone to measure the effectiveness of changes.

Interested in seeing how meetings are impacting your organization? Book a live demo with our team.

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Challenges to help you build better habits and get things done

Time blocking is a time management method that involves dividing your day into blocks of time, with each block dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks. This technique helps in organizing your day more efficiently, ensuring that you allocate time to important activities without the day slipping away into less productive tasks.

Effective time blocking will manifest as a well-structured timeline, fewer distractions from low-priority apps, and a higher focus score, demonstrating better productivity and focused work. These KPIs are crucial for assessing the effectiveness of your time management approach.

Time Blocking Challenge Outcome 

Want to have better workdays? We can help!

Time Blocking Challenge

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It breaks work into intervals, traditionally 25 minutes in length, separated by short breaks. These intervals are known as "pomodoros," the Italian word for tomatoes, named after the tomato-shaped kitchen timer Cirillo used as a university student.


Your timeline will distinctly show each Pomodoro work block and break. Engagement with distracting apps should decrease, and when used, it should be more purposeful. Enhanced focus from dedicated work sessions should result in a higher focus score.


Pomodoro Technique Challenge Outcome 

Want to have better workdays? We can help! 

Pomodoro Technique Challenge

Monk Mode is a productivity approach where you deeply focus on your work by minimizing distractions, akin to the focused and minimalistic lifestyle of a monk. This mode involves dedicating extended periods to work intensely on a single task or project, often in isolation, to maximize productivity and quality of output.

With successful Monk Mode application, anticipate extended periods of focused app usage, minimal distractions from irrelevant apps, and better digital intensity and focus scores, all signaling increased productivity.


Monk Mode Challenge Outcome

Monk Mode Challenge

Want to learn more about improving your focus, teamwork and digital wellness?

Wether you are collaborating with your team or solo tackling your day we can help you recover the most valuable asset, time.

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Register for the our next webinar 'The Future of MSP Work Episode 3: The Next Generation of MSP Software'

Great Workdays Kickoff for Organizations

Monotasking, also known as single-tasking, is the practice of focusing all your attention and effort on one task at a time, rather than trying to accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously. This approach stands in contrast to multitasking, where individuals attempt to manage several tasks at once, often leading to decreased productivity and increased chances of errors. Monotasking is about deepening focus, enhancing the quality of work, and improving mental engagement with the task at hand.

You should observe longer durations in productive apps, fewer interruptions from non-essential apps in your timeline, and an enhanced focus score, reflecting improved monotasking efficiency.

Monotasking Challenge Outcome

Monotasking Challenge

The "Eat the Frog" technique is a time management strategy that encourages tackling the most challenging or crucial task of your day first thing in the morning. The concept is derived from a quote often attributed to Mark Twain, suggesting that if the first thing you do each morning is to eat a live frog, you can go through the day with the satisfaction of knowing that's probably the worst thing that's going to happen to you all day.

Successfully adopting the Eat the Frog habit will be evident through early and focused engagement in productive apps, reflected in your heatmap, timeline, and top apps report within Produce8.

Eat the Frog Challenge Outcome 

Eat the Frog Challenge

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Episode 4: Is a 4-Day Work Week for MSPs a Fever Dream?  The Future of MSP Work is a monthly thought-leadership series discussing strategies for growth and what's coming next in the Managed Services industry. This month we are talking with Joe O'Connor, CEO and Co-founder of Work Time Reduction, a consulting and research organization that specializes in reduced-hour, outcomes-focused work models. We will be discussing the possible fever-dream of a 4-day work-week for MSPs and touching on:  How would a 4-day-work-week even work for MSPs?  Are your clients adopting it?  What would need to happen to enable it?

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Are you ready to supercharge your productivity and unlock your full potential?

It doesn’t have to be all synchronous or all asynchronous. Find the balance for your team. Measure what is or isn’t working.

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