Studies show that 96% of us check our phones within the first hour of being awake.
61% check within the first five minutes!
If you are a small business owner you’re likely diving into your emails immediately.
The entrepreneur mindset is that hard work and constant action will yield big results!
Actually, it works against you and your small business.
It doesn’t give you the quick start to the day that you’re looking for.
It’s actually quite counterproductive
Going in and out of your emails wears you down with decision fatigue very quickly.
This means that your brain power similar to the battery on your phone start decreasing immediately
Here are five tips but highly productive people stick with to leverage their time.
Your First Hour Is Productivity Gold!
The first hour of the work day is your golden hour.
Spending the first hour of every day doing the work that requires the most attention or focus will yield you the biggest results.
So much efficiency is wasted when you dive into your emails and other administrative tasks.
It takes your brain into dozens of different directions.
Some small business owners argue that they are more effective in the evening.
Science does not support these findings.
This belief is usually based on some relief of getting through the day.
Late at night when the world is quieted down and there’s less interruptions, you may feel like you can focus better. This usually stems from psychological perceptions versus productivity.
Most small business owners start the day diving into their emails believing they can get them out of the way and then get on to the real work.
The reality is this is a set up for failure.
Aside from the deteriorating brain power, important work continuously gets pushed off.
This is why they find themselves trying to learn new courses or do important work late into the evening
As well when you are working on a bigger project it’s much easier to execute when you have consistency in your schedule.
Understanding where you left off because you revisit the project every day at the same time is incredibly helpful. This will also improve your short and long-term results
If you are passionate that you need to check your emails first to avoid any issues this is representation of a bigger problem.
As a small business owner your number one priority is to execute your ideas.
Scale your business with outsourcing is a great way to get out from underneath the busy work.
Hiring a virtual assistant will give you some relief so you don’t have to be reactive. Outsourcing Filipino virtual assistants is an amazing resource for small business owners.
It will eliminate the tasks to be done and you can stop saying “I have so little time.”
Starting A Business: 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 or our project management!
Let me give you an example.
Let’s say you had to be add a family birthday event Saturday at 1 pm.
You would start doing some basic math.
Perhaps the drive is an hour away, you have to get ready an hour 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 our blueprint let you know when you’ll be off course.
What would be very helpful is if you work backwards.
Say 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 start date?
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.
Basic systems and processes with a series of steps can let you work backwards.
Tasks that require working backwards are woven throughout your day but it’s hard to see when always chasing a todo list!
Calendar is your time bank account
Most for 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 fail repeatedly to put their own work on their own 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.
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 well I don’t count it because it comes out every month!
The same thing goes for your calendar.
Your calendar is your time bank account
Virtual Assistant Outsourcing Will Help!
The above strategies are important and no one is talking about them.
Most follow the archaic formula of the outdated corporate world.
Even when hiring.
The practice is to hire someone and check on their work.
It’s a parentified plan where you check on someone’s work like a parent/child or student/teacher.
The benefits of outsourcing virtual assistants is endless.
If you set your virtual staff up for success.
They can’t fix you if you’re running around full speed reacting to your todo list.
Start using the above practices today. It’s easy to implement and it’s free.
Then you can bring on Filipino virtual assistants or improving things with your existing team members.
Would you like to know how to get time back?
Take our quiz!
It’s been designed to show entrepreneurs, and small businesses their blind spots and provide instant, actionable steps on how to improve
It takes just 2 minutes
It’s completely FREE
Receive customized results instantly
