Productivity Entrepreneurs, Start Here!
How many hours did you work this weekend?
According to a recent survey, 89% of small business owners work on the weekend after putting in a very long week.
Let’s put a stop to that.
Make the most of your valuable time with these productivity tips to help you manage your small business.
Your Calendar is Your Time Bank Account
Most small business owners use their calendar to keep track of outside appointments. When they’ve scheduled time with a prospect or anyone aside there business it’s on the calendar. Yet they repeatedly neglect to put their own work on their calendar.
In fact, many small-business owners will say that “I do that everyday so I don’t need to remember it.”
What this means is your heading into your day thinking you may have 8 hours but you only have six because you’re not counting your daily chores.
Email takes up time and very few people scheduled that on their calendar.
So think about it like this if you had a car payment that came out every month.
You would never say…
“I don’t count it because it comes out every month”…
and the same thing goes for your calendar.
Your calendar is your time bank account.
Many small business owners just try to out run the clock instead of using their calendar. It’s a battle that you won’t win but it’ll leave you with some scars.
Instead starting looking at what really needs to be on your calendar.
Does it all have to be done by you.
You can scale your business with outsourcing.
It’s much easier than you think.
Many times small business owners think something is connected to their “work” when they could hire a virtual assistant. With some systems and processes in place, you can have administrative tasks associated with your work be done in preparation for you.
Start With The Important Work
Studies show that we are freshest in the morning. This is the best time for us to take on something that requires a lot of focus our attention. Your big ambitions for your company should be done the first hour of the morning.
It’s a change for the entrepreneur mindset that leads you believe you have to dive into your emails first thing. The impulse is to search for fires you have to put out.
Here’s the reality that eats up your decision fatigue and leaves you with a lot of attention residue!
What does that mean? It means you quickly become less productive!
And there are so many demands on the modern day small business owner….there is always something new to learn.
Often small business owners try to complete training for something new at the end of a long day.
Clearly, you’re worn out from the demands of the day in this is not the time to try to take on new ambitions.
Yet, it is a formula that most small business owners subscribe to regularly.
Did you know that you could have your virtual assistant outsourcing take courses for you?
Yes! I show my clients how to do it all the time. It’s amazingly helpful!
Don’t Use A To-Do List
A to-do list is the worst thing for your small business.
To-do lists are really a rotating list of emergencies.
The tendency is to cherry pick items off your to do list. It can give you a sense of accomplishment
But the bottom line is to do list squash productivity on all levels.
You don’t even want your team members using a to- do list.
It’s a recipe for failure for anyone.
To do lists are:
-not listed in chronological order
– not sequential
– they don’t tell you how long a task will take
-you have no idea when you’re off course
-they are difficult to delegate
The bottom line is you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
To do list do not equip you with any information that you can duplicate or scale.
When you’re hiring a va who has experience, they’ll be looking to see if you are running off a to-do list.
It tells a lot about your small business and your entrepreneurial mindset.
Work Backwards
Working backwards is something that we do in our day-to-day life.
But it is something that we don’t utilize in our small businesses.
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you had to be at a family birthday event Saturday at 1 pm.
You would start doing some basic math.
Let’s say the drive is an hour away….
and it will take you time to get ready before that…
maybe organize your family.
You might realize that you have to start getting ready at 10 a.m. to be where you want to be at 1 p.m.
In your small business when you get new projects often you’re so excited about the opportunity you dive in enthusiastically. But there’s no strategy or blueprint to let you know when you’re off course.
Working backwards would change this for you.
For example
If you’re a social media company and you’re producing some content for a client who has a big event coming up….
When is the event starting?
When do they need to proof your work?
When should you have your work ready to proof?
How long does it take you normally to do you work or gather research items?.
You may realize that you have a lot of work to do this week…
to get something effectively done and delivered to the client 3 weeks from now.
But more importantly you’ll never know when you’re off course or how you can approve this process without this type of information.
Regardless of your product or service, working backwards is an excellent way to increase your productivity and stay focused.
Multi Tasking Is The Enemy Of Productivity.
What is multitasking
– I often say “multi tasking is doing two things poorly!
The reality is that you can’t do two things at once.
Your mind simply can’t do it.
Nor can your body run in two different directions at the same time.
We actually can’t multi task at all.
Most people confuse multi tasking with context switching – regardless this behaviour comes with a heavy cost.
Context switching leads to all sorts of problems.
Such as:
-your productivity decreases on average 40%
-you make more mistakes
-you have a distorted sense of time
These results are not what anyone is looking for and don’t create a hugely successful business.
You can’t give any thing your part time attention when you’re running a small business.
Think about this term, you may not have heard…”single tasking.”
If you want to be cost effective with your small business, virtual staff and customer service eliminate multi tasking.
If you feel like multi tasking is how you survive a day that has more than you can manage… then you want to consider benefits of outsourcing virtual assistants.
Outsourcing Filipino virtual assistants is a game change for small business owners around the world.
This allows them to catch their breath, and implement these productivity tips so you can have a business that supports your life instead of consuming it!
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