Blog > 5 top tips to super-charge your productivity today!
Feeling hair-pullingly frenzied and overwhelmed? In this increasingly fast moving, consumer driven world, people are processing information and tasks at a much greater pace than years gone by.
What does that mean for small business owners like ourselves? We need to be fast moving too! But I can’t move any faster! Help!
The answer is to be ever-more resourceful in terms of our time management, so we maximize our productivity (and our profits!). We also need to be resourceful to preserve our energy – we need to ensure we don’t burn ourselves out, as we lack the safety net a bigger organisation can provide.
As a small business coach it is my mission to give you the clarity, confidence and the strategies you need to boost your business and make it the best it can be. So this month I’m sharing with you my 5 top tips for supercharging your productivity without supercharging your exhaustion!
Tip 1 – Look, honestly, at how you are using your time. Assess these three key areas – Progress, Maintenance and Procrastination.
o Progress tasks are those that move you forward, hopefully in leaps and bounds – developing a new product, entering a new market, refreshing your business plan.
o Maintenance tasks are those that keep you from going backwards – day to day things you do for your clients, answering emails, paying invoices.
o …and procrastination, well it is something that is often too well known to many of us…
I can guarantee that you are not doing enough Progress tasks (these are often harder and need more thought or a leap of faith).
How can you change things so that you are doing more progress and less procrastination? How can you manage your maintenance tasks with more efficiency…and do you use some of them to procrastinate from doing progress tasks? What are your other procrastination habits – how can you change those habits?
Check in with yourself regularly to ensure that you are being productive and that the tasks you are focusing on are actually contributing to your overall profitability.
Tip 2 – Have a clear vision for your business. One major Progress Task is ensuring you have an up to date vision. This will guide you in your every action because you will know exactly what it is you are working towards and what you have to do to get there! If you do have one – is it recent / refreshed enough?
Tip 3 – Plan, Plan, Plan. Once you’ve identified your key progress tasks in relation to your vision, make a quarterly, monthly or weekly plan – whatever works best for you. What do you need to do more of to reach your vision? What do you need to do less of? Set deadlines and focus on the task in hand 100% to completion.
Plan to do your progress tasks at the time of day when you work at your best.
Plan in your rewards (in addition to the increase in profits) – we are more likely to work towards a reward – what could you treat yourself with to say ‘well done me’?
Plan a cut-off point at the end of the day – working 24/7 might feel productive but it’s not – and if you never switch off you don’t give your sub-conscious the time to do some of the thinking for you!
Tip 4 – Multi-task. If you have down-time in between phone calls or when waiting for a document to print, use this time to complete smaller tasks. You may like to create a reminder list of small tasks that can fill these moments.
For example, I have a folder in my email account with interesting articles or newsletters I would like to read. I dive quickly into this when I have a spare moment.
Tip 5 – Learn to delegate. Spending time on tasks that could easily be outsourced, often at much less than your hourly worth is NOT a valuable use of your time! Learn to leverage other people’s time and expertise to help you on your way to increased profits – you’ll feel much calmer as a result!
What are your top productivity boosting tips? What times of day do you find you are at your most productive? Let me know here on the blog, I always love to hear from you!