Did you get as much done last year as you wanted to? We know that 2020 and the coronavirus pandemic threw many business owners for a loop and tossed many well-laid plans off track. Now is the time to determine how to get more out of your workday.
I worked with some clients in 2020 who saw their businesses boom! I worked with others who saw their businesses bust. There were still others who were treading water and are still in business but they know they need to do something, anything – everything! – to stay that way.
How To Get More Out Of Your Workday
I have put together some tips and advice for you to make your workday as productive and effective as it can be. It is easy to get distracted and to go down a social media rabbit hole, but to grow your business you need to stop those practices, and implement some of these.
- Reward yourself with social media time. Do your social media tasks, then sign out. Turn off notifications. Once you have completed what you had on your to-dos for the day – hop online and have fun! It is so easy to say, “I’ll just get online for ten minutes… then an hour later, you are still there.”
- Get up early. Rise early and take care of marketing, planning the day and week. Get work done before the phones start ringing.
- Don’t check your email first thing in the morning. “Train” your clients to understand that you don’t answer emails until… say, 10 am… unless it’s an emergency. Once you get into email, you are giving up control of your day.
- Get up and get away from your desk. Take a couple of mental vacations a day to clear your head and boost productivity. You need to get up and get moving for mental and physical well-being.
- Work on your most difficult tasks when you are at your peak. Some people thrive at 5 am, others at 5 pm. Know when you do your best work and concentrate on it then. Use your non-peak emotionally productive times to do marketing or admin tasks.
- Look to automation and move your tasks to be on autopilot. If you can batch schedule your social media, for example, you can get it all out of the way on a Monday and then you only need to spend minutes a day interacting with followers.
- Write. It. Down. If you don’t write down what you want to accomplish – from small tasks to large goals – they won’t get done. Days, weeks, months will slip past and some of your goals will remain unrealized.
- Set deadlines for tasks and projects. A vague, “write a white paper” will likely get moved from day to day and remain unfinished because you didn’t give it a deadline for completion. Without a deadline, a task takes on the role of seeming unimportant.
- Delegate and outsource what doesn’t make you money. Also, know what your hourly rate is and decide whether you, at your hourly rate, need to be on Twitter and writing blog posts. If you can delegate and outsource at a lower rate so you can concentrate on your core values – do that.
- Don’t waste pockets of time. Imagine what you can get done in several fifteen-minute pockets of time a day. Four fifteen minute pockets equal an hour. Don’t waste that hour.
If you’re not getting as much done as you want to, or need to, to grow your business, reach out to Rex Richard and talk about his coaching services and how he can help you with focus, marketing and strategy.