So you are self-employed or own your own business and want to better control of your productivity. Here are some times that will help you take control of your productivity and your day.
1. Keep track of your day. You can’t improve your productivity if you don’t measure it. How do you know if your are productive or not?
You need to keep score of your productivity as if was a game. Don’t judge yourself on ‘how you feel’ at the end of the day, but actually keep track of your productivity over time.
Better yet, keep track of what you do every hour of the day. That’s what I do. I have a weekly time sheet on a piece of paper, and track what I did every hour of the week.
I give myself points for blocks of time that I did focus work. You need a similar rewards and measurement system too, if you want to increase your productivity.
2. Set goals for yourself. If you are self-employed, or a business owner then there are probably hundreds of things you need to do in a given week or month. Not all of these things are as important as those core things that will take your business to the next level.
Like what Stephen Covey says in his book “7 Habits Of Highly Effective People”, there are urgent things, and important things. A lot of urgent things aren’t important. The things that gets lost are the important things that aren’t urgent.
The people who can do the things that are important but aren’t urgent are usually those who are successful. You have to choose what things are important to your business success, and focus on doing those things.
3. Set up time blocks in which to do your work. You have to be working on a consistent basis. You have to build habits of productivity and getting things done. There is no such thing as a lazy way to wealth.
You should schedule your work, throughout the day at certain blocks. This is called time blocking. Neil Fiore’s book ‘The Now Habit’, has a great time management, time blocking system. He says that you should try to do thirty minutes of work.
If you aim for at least 30 minutes of focused work, and have a lot of these sessions through out your day you will see an increase in your productivity. Make sure you do these ‘blocks of work’ through out the day.
The above article courtesy of Get-Success.Biz