Are you an entrepreneur who has a handle on your daily to-dos? Do you make the most of your business day? Or, at the end of the day do you ask yourself, “Where did the day go and what exactly did I accomplish?” In order to be a productive and efficient entrepreneur you need to have a plan in place to address your priorities.
Making the most of your business day also means you know what to delegate, to whom to delegate it and when it makes financial sense to delegate. We know that delegation isn’t easy because your business is your “baby” but when you measure your hourly rate against how long it takes you to do a taks that may not propel your business forward, it’s time to delegate.
Make The Most Of Your Business Day
Guard your time. Block off time in your calendar to focus on your priority tasks. If you work in an office, set aside time where your door is closed and you know you will have uninterrupted time to focus fully on the tasks at hand. If you are continually aware of the possibility of an interruption, you will be half aware of that and not fully aware of the work at hand.
Set up time savers. If you answer the same email almost daily, set up a “canned response.” Set up systems that will help you get things done more quickly. If you do many of the same tasks regularly, these should have systems in place to make them rote.
Done is better than perfect. If you wait for perfection, you won’t get anything done. You will spend too much time tweaking and not enough time launching. Aim for 90% perfection then let it go. Nothing is so set in stone that it cannot be reworked once it’s live.
Make decisions. When you put off making a decision, you’re procrastinating the inevitable — in many cases — and this decision will weigh on your shoulders and pull emotional energy from the task at hand. Write a pros and cons list if you need to in order to pull the trigger and either say, “yes” “no” or “I need more information.” Don’t forget that “no, thank you” is your friend!
Five minute rule. Are you trying to create a new habit or rid yourself of a habit? Set aside five minutes per day to commit to doing it, or to not doing it. After a week, add additional minutes until this new habit is part of your routine — so much so that you don’t even think about it any longer. Remember, you can always fit five minutes of a habit into your day, no matter how busy you are. Couldn’t you devote five minutes to your health by getting on a treadmill and walking for five minutes per hour? We’ll bet you could.
Check off the small tasks. Sometimes you just get so overwhelmed that the priorities you’ve set for yourself can lead to being frozen in place. When this happens, take some time and complete some small tasks. Choose a small task that is part of a larger project or coal and do that tiny task. Taking immediate action and seeing that check mark that denotes a task was completed will help your forward momentum.