Do you own a business? Large or small scale? If yes, you are really favored.
Having to solely dictate your activities and not answer to anyone is a dream a lot of people yearn for but may never have.
Looking for ways to stay productive and avoid being overwhelmed with this?
Listed below are proven ways to ensure you stay productive.
1. Set a goal
Set a goal for yourself and ensure you strictly adhere to it. It should be ambitious, challenging but attainable. Ensure the goals set are specific, have good Returns on Investment, aligns with your long-term goals and has a deadline. You can set this goal yearly and then work towards achieving them.
Likely goals also include sources of income, blog traffic, and social media strategy, amongst others.
2. Draft a plan
Create a plan, preferably for three months. This helps you restructure your schedule from it. You can do this every three months or draft it all at the beginning of the year.
To achieve this, write out three goals to be achieved, assigning a goal to each month. State steps to be taken to achieve them and adhere to them.
3. Plan daily, weekly and monthly
Set aside a day for planning your week. State activities to be carried out giving preference to the urgent ones. From your set monthly goal, further, break this into weekly targets focusing on daily duties.
To set a monthly plan, take out two days to the end of the month to make plans for the next month, and list the action steps required.
4. Structure your time
For maximum productivity, plan your day ahead. You can create a personalized daily routine that works for you.
Let the structuring reflect your routine right from when you wake up, to your activities during the day giving preference to the urgent ones, down to when you retire to bed at night.
Doing this helps discipline you and train your brain.
5. Do brain dumps
This basically involves regularly writing down every task you remember and selecting the ones that best aligns with your set goals.
It helps leave your brain lighter and less cramped.
6. Create content outlines
Mastering the art of creating quality content is crucial.
All you need to do is create outlines for your blog posts and then fill them in while writing. The points to include are a title, catchy introduction, point headings, conclusion, and call-to-action.
7. Begin with smaller tasks
Never attempt to tackle voluminous tasks first as they decrease, rather than increase your pace and productivity. It is always better to begin with the smaller ones and then proceed to the larger ones.
Ensure you break the large tasks into smaller ones to further fasten the process.
8. Manage your time
For effective productivity, learn to manage your time efficiently to get more work done in less time.
Focus on your task, whilst ensuring you take at least a 5 minutes break in-between:
9. Avoid Multitasking
Contrary to the view that it is good to multitask, multitasking damages your brain and lowers your IQ.
Learn to focus on a task at a time. It increases productivity and helps get more work done.
10. Schedule for brain-draining tasks
Understand your brain and when it is most productive, whether during the day or at dusk. Use this period to do the harder tasks.
This helps you work better as your brain is fully charged to undertake certain activities.
11. Conquer your content
Conquering your content cannot be overemphasized.
You need to plan your content ahead to avoid getting drained with the workload. I advise you to use a content calendar for this.
To conquer your content and increase productivity, improve your typing skills and speed, and find a conducive working environment.
12. Segment your tasks
Concentrate on doing similar tasks at a time, instead of clogging up numerous tasks. This has been proven to be very effective and also increases productivity.
If wanting to create posts for your blog, concentrate on that and attend to other tasks later.
13. Keep track of time
Ensure you keep track of time expended in executing a particular task or group of tasks.
If possible, set a timer or make use of a time tracking app. It helps you perfect time management and avoid cramping your daily schedule.
14. Resist your distraction
We often find ourselves struggling to focus on a particular task probably due to various distractions, or should I say ‘A particular’ distraction.
Identifying this distraction will help you figure out ways to curb its effect on your productivity. If it is a social media application like Instagram, set a time to relax with it and ensure you never exceed the time.
15. Outsource and use shortcuts
Investing in profitable businesses with high ROI is ideal as a business owner, and the tools needed are affordable.
You can achieve this by inviting guest contributors to your blog, using shortcuts in your content strategy, hiring freelancers, amongst others.
16. Use dual monitors
Multitasking decreases productivity and damages the brain cells.
In our quest to work on online projects, we often leave a lot of tabs open at a time.
Now while this may not be advisable, using dual monitors/computers will be ideal as it improves productivity. But it is still advised that you concentrate on one task at a time.
17. Time block tasks
This involves assigning tasks to certain times of the day, and helps you meet deadlines. It ensures that tasks are completed at the end of a day.
18. Give room for eventualities
You can never time your tasks perfectly as distractions may arise, or a particular task may take longer than anticipated. Be prepared for such.
Leave an open window per day. It could be 30mins, in which you will either finish a task taking longer time, or begin a short one.
19. Prioritize
The secret to achieving set goals lies in prioritizing.
List all task to be undertaken, prioritizing the ones with higher ROI over others.
Creating a scale of preference for your tasks is very important and shouldn’t be ignored.
20. Optimize meetings
Time, once wasted can never be regained.
Avoid irrelevant meetings! Meetings should be held only when necessary.
If a meeting isn’t going to have a positive impact on your set goals, cancel it.
Conclusion
Do not beat yourself over your poor time-management skills or inability to currently increase productivity. It can be resolved.
Always create a task scale of preference.
To increase productivity, follow the ideas aforementioned.
Still sleeping on this? You better not!