As someone who’s been an entrepreneur for the better part of her life, I’ve toyed around and played around with a lot of different productivity hacks and different things to be more productive. So today I am going to share with you 10 simple productivity tips that you can use as an entrepreneur to be more productive.
Productivity Tip #1: Theme your days
I recommend all entrepreneurs to theme their days. I talked about this extensively in last week’s video How to be more productive as an entrepreneur.
By theming your days, each day of the week has a different theme that has you doing a particular task. Often it’s really hard to switch gears between a sales call and creating content or doing client delivery and handling finances.
In my world, that means that on
- Mondays and Tuesdays, I do all of my front-facing calls
- Wednesdays are content creation days
- Thursdays are usually a leftover mismatch and
- Fridays are wrap up for the week
Figuring out your schedule where you can and theme your days to an extent. This doesn’t always work for all my clients. Sometimes they have to do a theme for the morning and then a theme for the afternoon.
Once you shift your schedule to this, you will see it makes a massive difference in your productivity.
Productivity Tip #2: Use a paper planner
I love using a paper planner so that I can plan out my weeks. I plan my weeks on Sunday and I literally plan out my entire week; every minute of every hour is planned out and I really don’t vary from that very much.
Part of the reason why I do that is that I have time allocated to do certain tasks that move the business forward each week. I take all of the things that I want to get done for the week and physically put them on the calendar to ensure that I have enough time to get those things done.
Productivity Tip #3: Time block
Time blocking takes productivity tip #2 a step further.
If you have to batch create content, you need to be able to put a time block on there. I’m a huge fan of working in 90 minutes or two-hour time blocks because that seems to be the most where people can truly be productive. Time blocks make a huge difference in terms of being able to accomplish things.
I have this saying work expands to time allowed. I always set a time frame for whatever it is that I need to do because if you have three hours to write an email, let’s face it, it’s going to take you three hours to write that email.
Go through and not only put everything on your calendar, but time block, how long that is going to take, and stick with it.
Productivity Tip #4: Turn off the noise
Turn off Facebook, close all the tabs, put your phone on, do not disturb. Block out all that noise and all of those distractions so that you can get work done when it’s time to get work done.
Set time for you to check your voxer messages, to check Facebook, to check Instagram, to check your email because then you can turn off your notifications and don’t have to worry about it.
Productivity Tip #5: Do not compromise the time that you’re working on your own business
I’m guilty of this. I know my clients are guilty of this and many of the entrepreneurs I’ve worked with throughout the years are guilty of this.
It is the easiest thing to do, but please, if you want to grow your business, do not compromise the time that you’re working on your business. When you treat your business like your best client, your business will grow. Do not compromise that sacred time that you have to move the business forward.
Productivity Tip #6: Take care of yourself
Now this might seem a little counterintuitive when it comes to being more productive, but when you prioritize
- self-care
- meditation
- working out
- eating healthy
- drinking lots of water
your productivity and focus get a lot better.
When I’ve taken the best care of myself, I’ve also had the most amazing months in my business and the biggest growth months in my business.
Take really good care of yourself because as a business owner and an entrepreneur, you are one of your business’s biggest assets. Your focus, your ability to get things done is key to success as an entrepreneur and I wish I had learned this when I was much younger so that I had prioritized that.
Productivity Tip #7: Organize what you want to get done before you actually start
It’s really easy for me to grab an email and then before I know it, I’ve gone down this rabbit hole of answering emails and 20 minutes later I’ve eaten into half the time that I was supposed to be giving feedback on a sales page or writing this email or whatever was planned. Get yourself organized first!
It’s really easy to access whatever it is that you need to get done and therefore you’ll actually be more productive.
Productivity Tip #8: Delegate and create systems
This was a game-changer for me.
I tried to automate via technology or via people so many different things and oftentimes we as entrepreneurs, believe like we’re the only ones who can get it done best. It’s hard for us to delegate. We think that it will take too long to teach somebody else how to do this.
We have this self-limiting mindset that doesn’t allow us to move forward and therefore we hold ourselves back because we don’t delegate and we don’t create systems.
Delegate and create systems because they are a game-changer for your world, especially if you want to grow and expand your business.
Productivity Tip #9: Work expands to time allowed
If you have four hours to do YouTube videos, it will take you four hours to do all of those YouTube videos. However, if you only allocate two hours, it will take you two hours to do those videos.
It is a weird mental mindset thing but give it a try and you will see it makes a huge difference.
Get those time blocks on your calendar and say, hey, I only have 30 minutes to do this and truly focus on getting that done.
It makes a huge difference in your business.
Productivity Tip #10: Calendar everything
I calendar everything! Email time, social media time, voxer time. All goes on my calendar and I live by my calendar.
This allows me to increase my productivity, increase my focus and everyone on my team knows that if there is an emergency how to get a hold of me. (Let’s face it in all of my 18 years of business there’s only been one true emergency with a client!)
When you think about how you can focus and all the distractions that come up, be sure to just put everything on the calendar so that you can truly focus and get a lot of work done.
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