5 TIPS FOR TIME MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTIVITY
Goals are great but without action, they won’t come to fruition. Starting and scaling a business is hard work and requires consistent effort and focused attention on the task at hand to ensure progress is made. One of the biggest challenges I notice with myself and my business coaching clients is how to best manage their time in order to run the backend of the business, maintain effective marketing strategies, find customers and deliver the actual product/service to clients.
When the buck stops with you and you’re wearing all the hats required to keep the business afloat, it’s no wonder that we struggle to find the time for everything that needs to be done and can quickly become overwhelmed with the never-ending lists of things we need to do and/or know we should be doing. If you’ve felt yourself feeling overwhelmed of late and are in need of some help getting your time in order, I got you.
Here are my top 5 tips for better time management and increased productivity—
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Manage your focus not your time
When it comes to time management the first thing to remember is to focus on doing quality work over lots of work. I know it can be easy to slip into the belief that ‘if I just sit at my desk and do more then my business will work’, trust me I’m very guilty of this. But I’m sure many of us can also relate to those flow like states when we set ourselves to a task and time flies by, we achieve large amounts of work with what feels like minimal amount of effort? Typically I’d say that is when we’re doing what we love, or our most favourite parts of running our business.
We can’t always replicate that state, let alone sustain it but we can learn that when we are in a focused, flow state we can achieve what feels like a superhuman level of productivity. The trick is to figure out what working environment is best for you to access this state. Some of the tips below will help you to offload the tasks that drain your time so that you can focus your energy on what you do best and work with more ease. You’re better off applying uninterrupted, focused energy towards a task for a short amount of time than burning yourself out for hours on end. The more we can find our flow states and master our focus, the less likely we are to fall out of love with our businesses which enviably leads to procrastination or worse, giving up.
Time block
The best way that I’ve found to optimise my time and inspire productivity is to ‘time block’ my work week and days. This isn’t a one size fits all and will be different for everyone depending on your personal commitments, goals and the amount of time that you have available.
The aim of the game is to figure out all of the tasks that are required to run your business or that are on your plate/to-do list then categorise them into blocks of work. You’ll then need to allocate those blocks to the time that you have available in your work week and my suggestion is to do it based on when you feel most inspired or motivated to work on those tasks. When you’re able to stay focused on a certain style of work at a time and not jump between things, you’ll optimise your focus to stick at it and I personally find that giving myself boundaries inspires me stay focused for a set period of time and then celebrate when I get through it.
Here are a few tips to help you get started:
Make a list of everything that you need to do/be in your business
Categorise them into blocks e.g marketing, meetings, content creation/writing etc
Allocate how much time is required each week for each block
Find when and where in the week you have time and focus to complete these tasks
Set realistic goals
I’m personally a little obsessed with this tip because I went really deep into research studies about it and have been teaching to everyone I know ever since. The research shows that if you set yourself a goal too high, too soon, without having the necessary skills and resources to achieve that goal or come close to it then you’re more likely to quit trying. That is why I suggest people to firstly make a 5 year plan of all their big dreams and goals then work backwards to set yearly goals that will compound over time to get you to where you want to be in five years.
You don’t have to do it over night, that’s not how successful and sustainable business models are built. I always suggest to my business coaching clients to start small, get some wins on the board, build your confidence, learn from the process and prove to yourself that you have what it takes. Then you can move the bar a little more each time and eventually you’ll be living your wildest dreams. But whatever you do, don’t try to do it all at once, you’ll set yourself up for some big self-doubt which will impact on your productivity. Start small now with what you have available to you and grow from there.
Get outside support
If you’ve found yourself procrastinating over and over and can’t quite get out of your funk, now would be a good time to reach out to someone outside of your business/idea/head to get some help and a fresh perspective. It could be a friend, mentor, coach. Whoever it is make sure they’re aligned with you and your goals and aren’t just going to tell you what you want to hear. Preferably you’ll want someone who has achieved the goals or pathway that you’re wanting to take so that they can give you insights into how they got there and can help you to see what you might be missing.
It’s hard to manage it all and I don’t know of one successful person who hasn’t had help along the way. There is no shame is asking for help and if you really want to make your dreams come to life, then you need to find a way to move through the procrastination as quickly as possible before it festers and tries to convince you that you can’t do it. Get the pep talk, pay for a coach, ask for an outside opinion and get back on the road as quickly as possible.
Keep lists
I personally have a daily/weekly to-do list, an ideas list, content creation list and big goals list. Getting your tasks, ideas, goals out of your head and putting them on paper or wherever you choose to store them is going to save you on brainpower. When we have a million things spinning around in our head at once, we quickly drain our daily supply of cognitive load (think of this as the battery power we are given each day.)
When we offload our thoughts and ideas, we alleviate our brain of the task of having to remember it all and it allows us to better focus on the task at hand and not get distracted every time we think of something else. If you haven’t already, organise your to-do lists into short (daily/weekly), medium (1-3 months) and long term (12 months+) goals, you might also like to add a creative big dreams list as well which I always encourage my clients to do when we first start working together.
Bonus Tip: Outsource
I get asked about what to outsource and when all of the time. I find it to be really specific to each person based on their business model, income, time and goals. If you finding that you really need help with this then a business coaching session could be the best place to start. Some things I would suggest when figuring out when and what to outsource:
What’s stopping you from growing/taking your business to the next level?
What specific tasks or jobs need to be done that you just aren’t doing because of time, lack of experience or inspiration to do it?
Who is someone who would love this task/job and do it much quicker and more effectively than you?
How much would it cost to outsource this task?
How much time would you save from outsourcing this task and what could you be doing with that extra time?
Do you really need to be the person who is doing this task?
If I were no longer doing this task, I would feel…..?
What will you gain from outsourcing this task?
