Productivity tips for entrepreneurs

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Do you find yourself with a list of things to do but not getting anything actually done? It’s time for a change. Being productive is about doing the work that matters. Productivity is a strategy for accomplishing goals or plans that relate to your life and time.

But if you’re not organized, lack discipline, don’t know what’s important, and find yourself getting nothing accomplished – it can seem impossible! And exhausting. But, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost! There are some easy ways to get back on track with these productivity tips for entrepreneurs.

Pick Your Priorities

Prioritizing your life enables you to see the big picture and get a better understanding of what needs to be done. By prioritizing, we can make sure important tasks are accomplished without sacrificing precious time on less urgent activities that don’t have as much impact on our lives.

Prioritization begins with organizing current activities in order to see exactly where there are problems needing attention. Once these have been dealt with, it becomes easier to divide tasks into categories such as business-time vs family-time; urgent matters requiring immediate action versus ongoing responsibilities which need long term planning; items due today vs those due next week, etc, until all priorities become clear and manageable

It can be hard to transform from the chaos coordinator to the calm, confident boss babe you set out to be. We’ve put together some tips and techniques you can begin to implement right away to begin being more productive.

Decide What’s Important

Prioritizing what is important and not just urgent helps you be more productive towards your own goals. People have a tendency to complete tasks that have a short deadline attached to it instead of doing less pressing tasks that have a bigger reward.

It’s natural to want to get tasks finished that have a deadline. There’s no doubt it frees your mental to-do list. The problem is your most meaningful tasks are less likely to have a deadline. You need to determine what is important and prioritize it into your schedule.

Example tasks with no deadline might include:

• Carrying out tasks that fit your values such as spending time with your children, volunteering at church, or surprising your husband with a lunch date
• Improving your skills through education such as taking a course in Savvy Tech
• Achieving dream-like writing and publishing a book
• Preventing problems like scheduling a dental cleaning or mammogram

Delegate & Eliminate What’s Not So Important

Many tasks are easy to see whether they’re important or not. Some may be somewhat important but not crucial while others aren’t that big of a deal when it comes to prioritizing your life and achieving goals.

For example, something like posting on Instagram or Facebook. How is this impacting your business? Can you hire someone else to do that for you? What about hiring a ghostwriter for your blog posts?

Activities that are repetitive, boring, or reduce your productivity regarding your prioritized tasks need to be streamlined. For example, do you create emails to clients from scratch every time you want to send one? Instead, create or have created email templates you can use by dropping in your information and hitting send. Save yourself time and frustration.

Stay Off The Internet & Clean Your Office

Mindlessly surfing the internet, and getting pulled into social media drama should be avoided when focusing on productivity. Why? This is because these things don’t help you reach your goals and accomplish the things on your priority list.

Material stuff that clutters your space can also inhibit your level of productivity. If something doesn’t help your productivity, it hurts it. Get rid of the clutter, especially if it’s things you don’t need or love.

Multitasking vs Monotasking – Know the difference

Batch your work, but don’t multi-task. Batching tasks involves doing related tasks at one time. For example, you need to get out your tools, sewing machine, fabric, and pattern each time you need to sew something. You have to clear the table and lay everything out each time you need to do this. If you do this prep-work two or three times a week, you waste time. Instead, set everything up once to enable you to do all your sewing at once.

Monotasking, as opposed to multitasking, puts the focus on one task at a time. This strategy helps you avoid burnout. In addition, you tend to get more done on the task at a hand.

Now you begin adding things you enjoy. Schedule time to relax, read, spend time with family, or whatever else you enjoy doing. These can be added throughout the day or in the evening. For example, if you finish a task, take a short break to walk around the room. Scheduling fun tasks gives you a little extra wiggle room in your schedule when things don’t always go according to plan.

How To Find Free Time

Now that you have your schedule set up with the important tasks, it’s time to find ways to free up some of your time to focus on your goals. Finding extra time in your schedule might seem like a daunting task. However, there are most likely many little things you can eliminate or do away with to put more time into your day.

5 simple ways to find free time in your schedule

1. Reduce the number of meetings you have and the ones you do have keep the length of time to a minimum. Set a limit to the number meetings you attend out of the office. Get to the point quickly when in meetings.
2. Outsource, delegate, or hire someone else to do the less important tasks. This can also be done for the tasks that you can’t easily do. Hire someone to mow your lawn, clean your gutters, or do your housework to free up your time. Outsource to a virtual assistant if you work from home tasks like responding to emails, social media management, or content creation.
3. Get rid of it. Are there things in your schedule that don’t really matter? Abandon them. Do you find yourself spending time searching for things? Maybe it’s time to clear the clutter and organize everything.
4. Turn off notifications, television, internet, or games on your devices. You might be surprised by how much time you are actually spending mindlessly watching, browsing or responding to these devices. Cut your time down to just a few minutes a day.
5. Automate, streamline, or use templates whenever possible. This can be as simple as setting up an autoresponder for your email messages.

Bonus tip: Use gap time between meaningful activities such as waiting in line to do small things. Read a book while waiting for appointments, listen to podcasts or audiobooks, or use it to be creative.

There many things you can do to add a few minutes to your day. Each of those adds up to give you the free time you desire, to work on our goals.

The Next Step

1. Evaluate how you are currently spending your time. Look at what activities bring you the most results, what makes items make you happiest and the time that helps you move toward your goals.
2. Cut out time wasters, or busy work.
3. Focus on the most important things in your business, personal, and home life.
4. Work on priorities rather than your to-dos. Instead of following a time-based daily to-do list, create a priority list. Your priority list is based on your mission or goals so these important tasks are first.
5. Reduce meetings and cut back on how long meetings are. Unproductive meetings can be a time waster. Only attend essential meetings if possible.
6. Do time blocks, task bursts, and micro-tasks, instead of attempting to do a project or task for long periods. Take a break when you reach a natural stopping point or every hour.
7. Don’t multitask. Instead, batch your tasks together that can be done at the same time. Like fitting all your errands for the day into one trip, for example.

Prioritizing your life to boost productivity isn’t just about doing things faster. It’s about doing the right things for your priorities. It’s about being aware of the value of each activity brings towards your life and goals.