8 Steps To Boost Your Productivity

This week I’m going to offer some tips to boost your productivity. These tips are all things that I do and have done in order to be more productive and use my time more efficiently. I don’t believe in a cookie cutter approach when it comes to strategies like these and so am simply inviting you to try them on and see what fits. By all means use what does and discard what doesn’t, and I am certainly open to hearing about some of the things that work for you if not mentioned here. So do leave a comment!

So we all know what it’s like to have lots to do and only 24 hours in the day. By the time you minus an average of eight hours sleep, you’re left 16 hours to get things done. When your ‘to do’ list reaches the floor, how do you manage to fit everything in?

Before I had anyone on my team, I did everything on my own and boy was that a ride. The benefits were that I learned about making and editing videos, basic design skills, website development and pretty much every aspect my business needs to thrive. However, it meant I was busy doing everything and those sixteen hours got swallowed up in no time, not to mention being busy mum of three! So, I know first-hand that getting things done had to be about working smarter not harder, and so I had to learn to simplify things to be more productive.

As Tim Ferris says - ‘Focus on being productive instead of busy.’ 

Here are steps 1-3 to boost productivity:

1 – PLAN YOUR DAY. It is important to know what you want to achieve by the end of your day. Create mini goals/tasks that are aligned with your bigger goals (weekly, monthly) and take action on them. I have played around with planning my day at the end of a workday for the following day and also the morning of the current workday. Both work, but I find that having it done the day before allows me to hit the ground running the next day so that’s what I tend to do.

2 – PRIORITISE. 

Even with clear and detailed goals in place, you need to know where to start. Take actions according to what’s most important to complete first. Ask yourself, “If I could only complete 3 things today, what would they be?”  and start there. 

Generally what starts to happen with practice is that you get a sense of what is realistically achievable in a day for you – this is an individual . and so the size of those three things will change according to your level of execution.

3 – DELEGATE. Part of being productive is to know when to ask for help, knowing what you can get help with and equally important, who to get help from. Knowing these three key aspects will save you time so that later you don’t end up micro-managing, redoing things not done well or wishing you had just done it yourself. Delegating allows you to free up some of your time so you can focus on what’s most important. Be sure of what you want to pass on and let it go.

4 – FOCUS ON ONE THING AT A TIME. While multi-tasking is a great skill to have, to increase your productivity you must focus on one thing at a time as this improves your focus and your ability to make deadlines. It might mean that you decide to focus on one thing for just 30 minutes and move on to another, or that you spend much longer on some tasks than others.

Here’s a summary of all 8 steps:                                                                   

1. Plan your day
2. Prioritise
3. Delegate
4. Focus on one thing at a time
5. Reduce distractions
6. Be organised
7. Make your environment work for you
8. Take a break

Make sure to listen to entire episode to get the full scoop!