5 Productivity Tips for Business Owners and Entrepreneurs
Whether you are a business owner or an entrepreneur, productivity is key for your success. Habits, lifestyle, discipline, and technology matter.
Here are some productivity tips to become more efficient:
1) Create a To-do List
List your tasks, organize them in order of priority and set deadlines. To-do lists will give you a structure, and a plan to stick to.
Luckily, nowadays you can carry your to-do list on your phone. With digital to-do list apps, forgetting is not an excuse. Make sure you go for an easy-to-use option that lets you share tasks with other people – even if they don’t have an account. Tools like this can help you track your work in one place and get peace of mind that things will get done on time.
Source: efrontlearning.com
2) Get Control of your meetings
Have you fallen victim to the deadly sins of business meetings? Long or pointless meetings that waste your time and your team’s time and solve nothing. They are a source of dread and annoyance for everyone involved. To keep your meetings short and save your business from an expensive exercise in time-wasting, remember to:
- Stand during your meetings. It helps to keep them short. No sitting.
- Have a specific and singular goal for each meeting. Keep all conversation to that agenda.
- Only have the people who must be there present. The more unnecessary people you bring in, the more time is wasted across the board for your business.
- Kill meetings that have no purpose other than “we always have them.” (wheniwork.com)
3) Get in the CLOUD
Using cloud-based apps can significantly improve efficiency. Team members who are on the road or working remotely can work from anywhere, whether on a sales trip or home sick with the flu.
Put your documents (and documentation) in the cloud so your team can read, edit, and share them easily. Avoid using email to send out versions of documents. Save time by making the original accessible by all. (wheniwork.com)
4) Remove distractions
Work is hard. Distractions are plentiful. And time is short. – Adam Hochschild
We are all distracted from our daily tasks several times per day. Negative people, social media, smartphone notifications, and noise are just a few examples.
To stay focused you have to get rid of distractions, and this for sure is not easy. Some recommendations to defeat them are:
- Plan, prioritize your daily tasks and set deadlines
- Turn off your social media and smartphone notifications
- Avoid unexpected meetings or visits (efrontlearning.com)
5) Consolidate your errands and tasks
The errands and tasks you do at your business are different than other businesses, but there is a strong similarity in how you do them.
Think of it like this: when you make a grocery list, you get all of the items at once. You don’t drive back and forth between home and the store for each item. In the same way, you should consolidate your errands and tasks.
Group similar tasks and or project work on a specific day, or time of day. Use the morning to answer your email, and once again in the afternoon, for example, instead of checking your email constantly throughout the day.
By consolidating your errands and tasks, you put an end to distracting multi-tasking and regain the focus needed to actually finish something. (wheniwork.com)
There are several other hacks and tips but this will get you started!
