As 2019 has ended, it’s time to look for ways to grow your business in a more productive way in this New Year. Just making ambitious plans or unreachable promises is not enough. In order to boost your productivity at the beginning of the year and comply with all obligations, whether professional or personal, it is essential to have a lot of discipline. If you are a home, online or small business owner, the nagging question of “how to be more productive” is probably on your list of goals in 2020.
Before you begin with the 5 different ways to be more productive, you need to understand how you are spending your 24 hours as of late. Observe each day of a week and track what you spend most of your time on. Then try to categorize the activities into 3 groups:
(a) Most importantly – This includes writing and sending the weekly newsletter to your subscribers, calling potential customers, fulfilling orders, performing customer services.
(b) Important – These are activities that are important for your business but do not necessarily bring sales. For example, this may include accounting, email review, posting to social media.
(c) Unimportant – This category includes traveling, chatting with colleagues, checking other social media accounts or other activities that don’t have a positive return on your investment i.e. time and money.
Ways to get more productive
Once you are ready with these 3 lists, here comes the 5 ways to assess them and work more productively in 2020. Check it out!
- Cut the superfluous – Before you can concentrate on what’s most important to your business, you have to start by cutting the least. So, let’s take a look at the unimportant group that you made previously. What would you be able to cut from this list? The easiest one to cut is the time spent on rabbit activities. These are tasks that attract you and draw your attention from what is significant. Email and social media are two of the greatest offenders and the deepest rabbit holes. For instance, you browse your email and see a client request. You think it will be a fast reaction of 2 minutes, however after an hour, you find that you have scanned for an answer and discovered 3 articles that attracted you. Ahhhh! Cut-short time for these activities
For commuting, or talking with colleagues, and visiting them, a Virtual Office is best for you. With a virtual office, you get the time; you spend via car, bus or train. It could mean 10-20 hours of return every week! Simply think about the things you could do with this sort of time for your business. In addition to saving travel time, a virtual office means less distraction between colleagues. You don’t have someone else’s conversation to disturb your focus. You don’t find yourself in a catch-up hour for the weekend. Instead, you remain more focused on your productivity.
- Follow the 80/20 rule – The 80/20 rule maintains that 80% of the results come from 20% of the entries for a given event. For example, it is well-known that 80% of your business deals originate from generally the top 20% of your clients. Likewise, 80% of your business growth originates from 20% of your activities. So, now that your activities are tracked, take look at the most important and important categories to determine which 20% are most productive in driving business growth. These activities at the top of your list are now truly your most important and most productive activities. These are the activities that you should prioritize. On the other hand, the cost review can be done in the same way. It is likely that 80% of your business costs come from 20% of your beneficiaries.
- Prioritize the most important activities – By now, you must have been already aware of your most productive activities. Now, it’s time to define which ones fall within your expertise, which may not be, but which you enjoy doing, and which you could outsource or delegate to an expert.
For this, think a lot about the activities that have a shorter execution time or a very big impact on your results. These are the actions that must be completed before the others.
Just be careful not to postpone less urgent tasks indefinitely. If you do, you run the risk of accumulating work and exceeding deadlines. Establish a schedule, with a start and end date for all activities. Thus, it will be able to be more productive in 2020.
- Schedule tasks to minimize multitasking – With the routine increasingly busy and full of obligations, it is very tempting to be more efficient and do a thousand and one things at the same time. It is called multitasking.
This idea has everything to succeed. After all, if a computer or smartphone can run more than one program at the same time, we are also able to perform more than one task simultaneously, right? Although these characteristics are highly valued and even encouraged by some people and companies, it is actually quite harmful. The truth is that when you try to do everything at once, it is very likely that you will end up not finishing anything you started. That is, it is a habit that you should avoid if you want to be more productive in 2020. This is because the human brain was not developed to focus on more than one activity simultaneously. Trying to do this can cause a number of problems, such as loss of focus, which decreases productivity, more anxiety, and decreased self-esteem.
Imagine this: you are talking to a client on the phone, while writing an email, replying to an SMS and eating your lunch to save time. Then you realize that you have completely missed out on what the client just said. Seems familiar?? Well, time planning for each individual task allows you to focus on each one. For some people, it could be in pieces of an hour. So, no writing an email while answering a customer’s call and chatting with suppliers. Do one thing at a time to get everything done right.
- Create a routine – One of the most immediate consequences of listing your daily activities and organizing them according to urgency is to create a work routine appropriate to your pace. Human beings are animals of habit and when we create a routine, we find it easier to carry out our activities.
To help you better manage your time and organize your routine, anything goes, until you turn to technology. There are several online platforms that allow you to optimize your daily life and increase productivity. Of course, we know that unforeseen events can arise at any time. But having a more organized one; it becomes easier to fit an unexpected task on the agenda.
Concluding Remarks
So, are you prepared to be more productive in 2020? Certainly, the tips we present in this text will help you to leave laziness aside and stop procrastinating. Always remember to list your tasks, organize them according to urgency, focus on just one activity at a time and create a work routine. And above all, have clear goals and focus on them. Share Share
