Goal: Rockstar Productivity

How to work smarter, not harder (another goal!)? There’s an entire webinar on how I wrangle all aspects of social media management as a one-person show. But that’s only a portion of my day. Like you, I balance many roles in my day and varying sets of expectations for those roles: significant other, caretaker, friend, employee, sibling, etc. … and then there’s the every day tasks to manage.  Sharing my favorite tips for getting organized, being productive and taking yours in the comment section below – please share your best tips or tools! Tweak and apply the productivity tips below for your own situation.

Don’t waste time, money or your energy by being disorganized. You will have more time for “go with the flow” and spontaneity if you’re prepared and organized. Huh? Sounds crazy, right? If you’re not putting together a plan, you won’t know when you have the free time and the flex time to take on new projects or opportunities that come up. My favorite way to plan is to do a 3-day forecast – lay out the deadlines, meetings, calls, classes I’m teaching – and keep a running list of what will go in the days, weeks & months to come. I use Google Calendar to sync timed events to my phone and TeuxDeux to plan my 3-day project & task lists. Like paper? Great – use a planner! Finally, great advice from a fellow IIN classmate: end the day comparing what you finished and what needs to move tomorrow – carry it over as needed.

If you delegate tasks (whether to people hired or people helping), there are ways to make the processes more effective and less time-consuming. Spend a day auditing all that you do and ask those who work with you or for you to follow the lead. Compare and contrast your lists. Make sure you’re on the same page and being clear about the direction you want to go. Eliminate tasks that are not serving your time or purpose. Knowing who does what or how you do what you do makes it easier to take time away from the office (ahhhh mental health!). You cook. You clean. You do the laundry. You bring home the bacon. Or the “Bac’n“. If you’re trying to do everything for your home and your business, there will be a day when you want to scream and say “forget it all!”. Learn what you can do and what you can afford to outsource. My example: I hate cleaning house. Spending my weekends cleaning our home was NOT my idea of quality free time. Solution? We hired a house cleaner. No more squabbling about who should clean what AND my significant other and I have more time together. Money well spent. Maybe your “chores” are book-keeping, accounting, trying to create your website or manage social media. Check out options for hiring freelance help. You may be saving yourself both time and money, especially if you find these services for at least 25% less than your normal hourly rate (chances are you can).

Do you know where you’re bleeding? Figure it out fast! Use smart and free tools like Mint or Adaptu to track your expenses. These tools allow you to categorize, monitor and track trends in your expenditures. Spend 15-20 minutes every other day checking your finances and know where your money is spent. You will be less inclined to spend it in the wrong places. I was spending close to $150 a month on coffee … and kicked the (spending) habit in place of a once-a-week treat at most. Not so much – hold it right there. You waste time and energy by trying to do EVERYTHING. Be focused in what you do, whether you work for an employer or are the employee. Saying you want to be the next Oprah is unfocused and impossible for most of us. Identify your ideal market, your ideal client and court those people. They are the ones willing to pay a fair price; they value your service or business; they will be your repeat buyers and send referrals your way. Define your niche, be successful and then develop products or services for other markets.

Ugh… this area is totally my Achilles’ Heel. Email, social media, phone calls. I’m supposed finish my work with these more fun things in front of me? The readily available forms of communication can be overwhelming. I had to put myself on a schedule (sigh), but it seems to be working and making the distractions of the day seem like less of an interruption. No, I really don’t need to comment on the Facebook thread about my friend’s dog right now… I check my email and social network sites at schedule intervals throughout the day and turned off notifications on my phone (we lived without this before – trust me, you’ll be fine). There are tools to catch the time sucks of your day if you need reinforcement – check out Anti-Social or RescueTime. Or simply use your calendar to set up reminders throughout the day.

There’s the item on your to-do list that never seems to be crossed off…it simply moves over to the next day or the next week. Chances are there’s a very good reason. Procrastination can be a coping mechanism when it comes to projects we feel are too daunting. It can also be a sign up burnout (hello, time for a vacation?). Break things down into more manageable, small steps. When revamping my website, the thought of trying to finish it all-at-once was paralyzing – I wanted to push it back to “another week”. Planning to spend one hour each day per section over a few weeks led to its completion more quickly than I expected and with much less frustration. Break a big project into 30-60 minute blocks and say good-bye to procrastination. You may or may not find this strategy to be helpful. Find a group of peers – people who understand you and what you do – and meet once a week. Go over the things you’ve been doing (you have your list from #2) and find out if it makes sense to them. Having a peer who knows you, knows your service or product and can offer insights and feedback is a helpful for explore areas you can improve. Conversely, you offer feedback for them. Keep these meetings short and to the point; maintain a small group (no more than 3-4 people). As Franklin Covey said “It’s not that you don’t have the time, it’s how you use the time.”.

Items 1-8 you require you to be your best in every sense – physically, mentally and emotionally. Make time eat well, to move, to meditate – whatever it is that keeps you doing everything you need to do. This is the most important bullet point on this entire list. The quality of what you do is directly proportional to the quality of how you feel.