Any busy entrepreneur knows the importance of maximizing your time and being more efficient. There are always plenty of things to do and your time is precious. Without a proper system to follow on a consistent basis your goals and business can suffer.
In this article we take a look at 7 productivity hacks for busy entrepreneurs that will help you stay on track and stay consistent as your career and business takes on growth and new challenges.
Create a Schedule
This one should come as no surprise. As a busy entrepreneur it’s important that you have a schedule of tasks that you need to complete for the working day. A schedule is there to help you stay organized and prepared for important tasks for the week.
Some of the important benefits of creating a schedule include:
- Helps you to manage your time accordingly
- Makes you more proficient and diligent with your time
- Allows you to develop consistency and good habits
- Helps you to create valuable benchmarks
- Minimizes distractions
- Helps you to develop momentum for the working week
- Helps you to stay on track of your goals and tasks
- Holds you accountable
These are just a few of the many benefits that creating a proper working schedule can give you.
The key to creating a schedule is to make sure you carefully account for your time and allocate a set time for each task.
Not only that, you should make use of apps such as Calendly to help you manage your weekly schedule. It’s a cost effective app and it focuses on helping you improve your overall productivity and saving you time.
Prioritize Difficult Tasks First
Prioritizing the most difficult tasks early in the day will set you up for success because your day will only get easier if you manage to take care of the most difficult tasks first. As a busy entrepreneur you should strive to make your days get progressively easier, not the other way around.
It also prevents you from creating harmful procrastination habits that can be detrimental to you as an entrepreneur. Below are some of the important reasons you should prioritize difficult tasks early on in the day.
- Putting off difficult tasks can negatively affect your productivity towards other tasks for the rest of the day or even week
- Your energy levels deplete as the day starts to wind down, so use your energy early in the day to tackle more difficult tasks
- Completing easier tasks first can destroy your productivity
- Getting rid of the most difficult tasks early on in the day can create more positive feedback loops
- If you get started on the most difficult tasks first, your chances of completing are much higher
Although it may not be pleasant to prioritize the most difficult tasks early on in the day, you will get more satisfaction and it will make the rest of your day that much easier.
Set a Time Limit on Each Task
A sure way to stick to your busy and structured schedule is to make sure that you allocate time for each specific task on your schedule and work on it sufficiently. If you happen to be working on a specific project or task for too long, it can start to leak into the rest of your day without your intention.
As a result it’s important to allocate time blocks in your days for specific tasks, calls, operations and so forth.
As a busy entrepreneur you need to be very aware of your time and also very good at managing your time. No one is perfect and there will be situations in which you simply have trouble sticking to the allocated time blocks on your busy schedule.
This is completely normal, but as long as you are aware that you have time blocks in place, they will help serve you as a reminder of where you are at in the day and what you have coming up that you can’t compromise on.
Remove Pointless Distractions (Multi-Tasking)
Humans are much like computers. Give us too many inputs in a short period of time and the outcomes will suffer. Your ability to handle multiple things at once and do a good job is very limited. As much as you think you can multitask successfully, certain components of your work and day will suffer if you fail to focus on important tasks without distractions.
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As an example, if you are on an important call or project you should minimize distractions around you in order to give your full attention to the person or project in front of you.
Giving all your attention helps you to retain important information and remember details that can help you stay consistent and reliable as an entrepreneur. Doing less at once will help you do more in the future.
Use Automation and Software When Possible
As a busy entrepreneur it’s important to slowly evolve your process and workflow to help you become more effective and functional. One way to do this is by using automation software tools that can help you automate cumbersome tasks. A great tool for this is Zapier, which allows you to automate manual processes and connect tools to each other.
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Automation software tools are there to help our lives easier and help us to focus on more relevant and important tasks that can take our business and entrepreneur skills to the next level. As a result, you must be consciously aware of certain tasks and processes that suck up your time that can be automated by certain software.
These can include things such as:
- Specific email follow ups
- Scheduling confirmations
- Call and appointment reminders for clients
- Cancellation reminders
- Invoice reminders
- Bill autopay
These are just a few of the many cumbersome tasks that can eat up minutes and even hours of your time in the course of a week that can be easily automated to help you focus on better use of your time.
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Take Small Frequent Breaks
Burnout is a very common reality for many busy entrepreneurs and many fail to realize when they are heading towards burnout. This is more serious that people realize because it can impact the quality of your work, the relationships with the people around you, your mental and physical being and so much more.
It’s important to take small periodic breaks through your workday and also your workweek to simply hit the reset button and recharge your batteries. If you notice that you have been aggressively working on one specific task for 2-3 hours, chances are you have exerted a good amount of your energy.
At this point, it’s important to step away for a quick walk or coffee and let your mind declutter and simply take a much needed break.
It’s also important that you take vacations when possible and also days off of work so you can allow yourself the necessary time to reflect and gain a fresh perspective on things.
Reflect and Make Notes for Improvements
At the end of a busy work day or even busy work week it’s important to take some time to yourself to reflect and make some notes for yourself. There are some serious personal benefits to sitting down and consistently journaling throughout the week.
It can help you gain a fresh perspective on challenging situations you may have encountered and it also allows you to relax and look at situations from a different point of view that you may have overlooked. This allows you to be honest with yourself and your processes in order for you to make improvements next time similar challenges or situations arise.
Conclusion
These productivity hacks should help serve you as a baseline for your busy lifestyle. Entrepreneurs need to have a proper system in place for managing their time if they want to excel at their skill, profession or business.
All of these productivity hacks can be gradually learned and implemented into your lifestyle and we are confident that they can help you become a more productive and efficient entrepreneur.