Today to be productive is a real challenge for anyone, not only for entrepreneurs especially having in mind totally unproductive environment around us.
You want to do more work today. You do not want to reschedule tasks for tomorrow. Simply, you want to be more productive.
But the question is how you can become a more productive entrepreneur when you already have too many tasks, too many unpredictable calls, emails, social media messages, meetings, casual meetings, and so on.
Too many distractions around you, too many technologies that make available to anyone, too many things that you want to do for today… All these things will create bigger and bigger pressure on your entrepreneurial life.
Simply, we are living life in a totally unproductive environment.
If you want to protect yourself, these eight pieces of advice will help you.
1. Plan your workday ahead.
When you plan your workday ahead you will simply escape all possible unplanned and uncertain distractions from your unproductive environment. With the right plan on your hands, you are on the right path to not allowing the external environment to affect your workday. So, spend at the end of each day several minutes to plan the next day, and yes, stick to your plan, don’t let it become only a piece of paper.
2. Follow the 80/20 rule when you decide what you will work on tomorrow.
This means that 80% of the achievement that you will have will come from only 20% of the work that you have done. Do you really need the rest of 80% of the work that you are doing currently? So, check what brings you a large step closer to your goals, and reject doing everything that has a really small effect on your achievements.
3. Your priorities first, then other people’s priorities if you have time.
Don’t let your workday become full of reactive work for other people’s needs or demands. Set your own priorities and manage your workday according to them. There will always be many people around you who will don’t matter about your own priorities and productivity. They are selfish and only think about their own priorities and productivity asking you for something that can probably wait several hours or several days. In such a way, with your own priorities, you will create a strong wall between you and totally unproductive environment which wants to take your attention and lead your workday.
4. Take breaks every 60-90 minutes of your work.
The fact is that today our work demand exceeds our capacity to do the work. You can’t simply do the work continuously for a long period of time with high possible speed or effort. So, take a short break every 60-90 minutes of effective work. Start doing something completely different as walking outside, talking with friends, reading, or anything else that will help you to recharge yourself for the continuation of your work.
5. Divide your day into creative and reactive work.
All the important things you will need to do on a specific day will be part of the creative part of the workday. Another part of your work you can use reactive work such as answering phone calls, emails, unimportant but unavoidable meetings, and so on. Remember that when you are in the creative part of your workday, you will need to block everything that is not part of your creative work.
6. Use technology to automate many tasks that you are currently doing manually.
Even technology can be one of the biggest distractors for you and part of your unproductive environment. Still, it has a large power to make you a more productive entrepreneur if you use it the right way. If you see technology as a means to speed up your work and, at the same time, something that will protect you from an unproductive environment, you will succeed in your efforts to increase your productivity.
So, start using technology in two main forms. First, to automate as many tasks as possible that can be automated to bring you more time. The second form is finding a way how technology can protect you from distractions, like blocking distracting websites in a specific period of time, like your creative part of the workday.
7. Build habits and daily routines that will help you to block the effects of your unproductive environment.
You will need strong habits if you want to protect yourself as much as possible from your unproductive environment. Doing some of the things I have mentioned here through the power of frequency will bring you to the top of your productivity curve. Doing a little bit each day, some of the pieces of advice here to protect yourself from an unproductive environment will enable you to do much more over the months and years.
8. Create systems that will help you do important things without distraction.
Building the right systems, clear enough that you will use them in everyday work, will enable you to bring stability to your work even if the environment is highly unproductive and distracting environment. In order to succeed in creating the right habits and daily routines, the right automation, delegation, and distraction elimination, you will need clear workflows and processes in which working procedures will eliminate any possible uncertainty when it comes to doing important entrepreneurial work.
You are the only person in charge of your own productivity. You can’t fault other people because they are simply doing their own job. You can’t fault websites with titles that attract your attention because they are also doing their job to attract your attention. You can’t fault social media sites. They are doing their job to attract your attention and ensure you will spend as much time as possible on their platforms.
You can always click the off button and shut down your unproductive environment in order to protect yourself and become a more productive entrepreneur.
Implement the Following Steps to Become a Highly Productive Entrepreneur
There are many things that need to be done in an entrepreneurial life.
As an entrepreneur, you work with your customers, with your employees, with your partners…
You want to satisfy your customer, but you also want to find another need that you can satisfy them.
You want to innovate, to find different ways of doing things, and simply you want to change the world. That’s your entrepreneurial job.
To achieve all of that, you will need to be more productive. Here are the 12 steps that can make you more productive.
