How I went from working long hours to working shorter hours and accomplishing more!
I use to feel completely overwhelmed by my business! I had big aspirations and dreams but felt like I was working long hours with little to no wins!
Until I started to view my time as money and implementing some major game changing priority hacks into my schedule… is when I started to see a huge difference in both profits and my free time.
This article is for you if you are feeling:
Feel Overwhelmed Everyday.
Exhausted At The End Of The Day.
Looking Back At Your Day Or Weeks & Don’t Feel Like You Get A Lot Accomplished.
You Rarely Hit Your Goals.
Needs More Time For Family, Netflix (no judgement,) Hobbies, Traveling, Etc.
This isn't for you if:
You Love 12 Hour Days
You Got This…
You Don’t Care To Expand & Grow Your Business…
You Are Too Busy Working…
Ok, so that last one was slightly passive aggressive!
I am sharing with you 4 productivity hacks that will impact your time, profits, sanity and quality of life.
Taking Chaos Out Of Your Life With Productivity Hack Number 1- Goal Setting
If you know me, know me at all, I talk about setting goals like it is a second religion. It was the biggest lesson I learned as an entrepreneur that has had the highest returns. So I am a little obsessive about it.
As a seasoned business professional, new business owner or a grand thinker of launching your brand… you need defined goals and direction. Otherwise you will be floundering like a fish out of water.
So what goes into a goal?
- A Goal That Aligns With Your Brand Strategy and Direction
- Writing Out Every Task To Complete The Goal With Completion Date.
- The Dollar Amount That Goal Will Bring Into Your Business
- How Is This Goal Going To Positively Impact Your Life/Business?
Now that we have laid out your Goals and have a clear roadmap of accomplishing them… let’s get into my the other life changing productivity hacks. I have this awesome worksheet that will help you lay out all those goals- access it above!
I’m Coming For You Netflix Productivity Hack Number 2- Time Management
Have you ever gotten up in the morning and checked Facebook? Jumped onto Pinterest to grab a quick recipe for dinner?
You then realized that 20-30 minute have passed?!?! 20-30 minutes your NOT getting back in your day??
Don’t worry… we have all been there!
These are what I call Time Wasters. They literally waste your day away. These time wasters are where I am going to show you how to get hours of your week back! Hello there half day Friday!
What are the major time wasters?
– Notifications That Come Through On Your Phone
– Email Notifications On Your Desktop
– Social Media
– Text Messages
– Phone Calls
– Answering The Same Questions Over & Over
Let’s talk about great time management to help you boost productivity!
- Close out your email when you are working on your computer. Only check your email at specific times. If you are thinking, “there is no way.” Yes… Yes there is… trust me. Let your customers, friends, loved ones know when you will be checking your email. Add the times into your signature of your emails. “I promise I’ll get back to you… I check emails at 8am, 12pm and 4pm”
- Create “canned” messages for frequently asked questions. This way you can copy, paste and send it out. Instead of taking 10-15 minutes to write out a response. Creating a page of “Frequently Asked Questions” is useful. You can immediately direct people to that with an auto response.
- Create large blocks of time to solely work on specific projects.
- Plan your day the night before, to ensure that you are able to get right to work. Sitting around trying to “figure your day out” is a lot of wasted time.
- Prioritize your day with urgent, high producing tasks first. Work other projects into your day.
- Actionable Task- Writing down your tasks for the day with actionable items. Don’t block two hours of your day labeled “taxes.” What the heck does that really mean anyway? Instead block out 2 hours with action verbs. “Prepare Monthly Expenditures & Profit Revenue For Accountant.” You can sit down and start to quickly work on the task and get it done! This is a small task to the ultimate goal of “getting your taxes in on time.”
Life Changing Productivity Hack No. 3- Outsourcing
This is my favorite and wow this my friend, made a huge difference in the quality of my life.
Let me divulge something to you… I literally hate going to the grocery store. It is right up there with accounting for me! I don’t enjoy it… I don’t mind cooking but going to the grocery store. No thank you!
This is one thing that I outsource. I use Instacart (I’m in Atlanta) and schedule out when my groceries will arrive at my house. This not only saves me time but it improves the quality of my life. I would rather have 45 minutes to be outside walking my dog or working on a project than grocery shopping.
I outsource several things in my personal life and here are a few examples:
– landscaping/lawn maintenance
– Amazon.com groceries
– House Cleaning
– Landry
– Ironing
If you bill out at $80 an hour and your house cleaner is $40 an hour, you are profiting $40 an hour and coming home to a clean home!
Looking at your business, what can you outsource that are low dollar revenue items that can free up time? Or it would be better off with a professional?
What could you outsource?
– Social Media Management
– Graphic Design
– Backend website changes
– Creating fillable PDF’s/Worksheets
– Editing Videos
– Bookkeeping/Accountant
Looking at your business and documenting how much time a task takes you to complete. Analyzing which ones to outsourcing that are weighing your schedule down. Will be key to expanding and growing your business.
Profitable & Time Saving Productivity Hack No 4- Grouping
Let’s talk about grouping and how this is going to shed hours off your workweek. Hello Happy Hour.
Grouping is pairing like tasks together.
Let me give you some examples of task that I group together.
– Social Media (for the week/month)
– Preparing Scripts For Video’s
– Pulling Graphics for Slideshows/Putting slideshows together
– Editing videos
– Marketing
– Blogging
I block two hours out of my day on Tuesday mornings. I sit down and pull together all the graphics I need for my video slides. I then use my outline for the video from a previous 2 hour block and I put together the slides. In 2 hours I can get 2 slide shows completed, sometimes 3. Depending on how much coffee I had that morning!
I have weekly themes for social media. On Mondays, I pull the graphics for Social Media (15 minutes.) Put together all my post for the week in Canva (45 minutes.) Schedule my post for the entire week (45 minutes.)
If I had to get up every morning and create a new graphic, write the content and post for Social Media. I would fail. I know because I have been there, done that, failed. This would take me 30-45 minutes every single morning to do… I now have 2 hours back in my week just by grouping my Social Media into one morning!
