I talk a lot about time management and how to boost productive hours in your business, so I wanted to boil it down to four easy to answer questions which I ask myself and which go a long way to give my productivity a boost. I hope they will do the same for you.
1. What can I eliminate?
At the end of my business day, I take a moment to journal my activity. This gives me the opportunity to look back at what was most effective for me, and what I could do less of. Equally as important as taking a retrospective look at my activities is planning the week ahead. Is everything in my calendar helping me towards my goal? This prevents distraction, laser-focuses my attention to the success drivers and ultimately helps me achieve what I set out to do.
This helps me to identify what I don’t have to do, how I’ve been distracted and what can then be eliminated from my future to do list.
If I spend 15 minutes a week planning my activities, I can save around three hours.
2. What can be simplified?
Once I have a clear view of the priority tasks for the week, I look to see what I can make simpler. Logistics of moving between meetings, business processes and procedures and content creation for my newsletters and social media for example.
Having a clear document outlining the steps to follow for producing a piece of work ensures you don’t miss something and prevents those all-important hours of unnecessary thinking!
3. What can be automated?
I now have a clear set of priorities for the week, so I look to what I can automate. Automated invoicing, auto response emails, templated follow-up letters, newsletters… Every business is different, and so I would encourage you to think about what can be automated, or even outsourced to free up your valuable time.
4. Speaking of outsourcing…
Who can you bring into your business, or who already exists in your staff that can take on your delegated tasks? I can straight away identify certain elements of marketing, accounting and bookkeeping that can be outsourced to professionals who make that their priority and would encourage you to develop staff to a point that you confidently pass on other elements of your business.
Ask yourself these four questions today and you’ll find you’re left with only the tasks you want to do and the ones only you can do, tomorrow. For change to happen, you need to break a habit and replace it with a new, productive one. If breaking habits is daunting for you, or if you’d like to investigate what you could eliminate, simplify, automate and outsource, book a free, no obligation mentoring session with me. I look forward to making your life easier – Mike