17 Insanely Actionable Business Productivity Tips to Get More done in Less Time
Being a small business owner is hard as you have a lot of tasks to complete but little time to execute effectively.Below are 17 Insanely Actionable Business Productivity Tips that you can take action on, today!Some of it may take a few minutes of your time, and the rest could take a chunk of your time.We have listed out 17 of them. You can do at least one of them, if not all. Just do it! 1. Beat Procrastination by Prioritizing your Tasks Procrastination kills business productivity. We all know it way too well. While reading this article, you could be thinking about a task that you had to do yesterday or about something in your personal life. When you switch from the present task to do the one which you remembered, you tend to forget about the task at hand which results in mediocre business productivity. Prioritizing your tasks helps get over this productivity killer. However, we know its hard to figure out how to prioritize when you get overwhelmed with work. Here’s how you can prioritize your tasks. Take deep breaths and stretch yourself or get some fresh air to relax. Get back to your desk and cut out all distractions like Social Media, email, your phone etc. Get a pen and paper or a small notebook Jot down each and every task that you have at hand. Just write down everything without any categorization or set priority. Choose which of these tasks are more important based on a promise date or a deadline associated to the task. Roll up your sleeves and get to work. (Coffee helps for an added boost to being more productive) 2. Save time by outsourcing / automating tasks Learning is a never-ending process in life, but it comes at a cost of time which is money. If you have a task at hand that requires are a huge learning curve, then it would make sense to outsource it. For technology service or solution providers like us, periodical backups are crucial and a necessity for the safety of the business. If your backup taking process is time-consuming, it would make sense to automate the process with the ideal solution for your business. Automating and outsourcing your tasks leaves you more room for doing things that you do best and for innovating in your industry for overall business growth. How do you automate or outsource your tasks? 3. Eat that frog: Start your day with something hard It was Mark Twain who said, “Eat a live frog every morning and the rest of the day would be much easier.”. Obviously, he wasn’t talking about eating a “frog”. According to Quote Investigator, Your “frog” is your biggest, most important task, the one you are most likely to procrastinate on if you don’t do something about it. It is also the one task that can have the greatest positive impact on your life and results at the moment. Doing your most difficult task and completing it motivates you to efficiently handle the next challenge. Before you know it, you’ll be having a snowball effect on getting your tasks done and your motivation to strike off each task. 4. Avoid “half-work” and “pseudo-work” at all costs Both of these terms refer to the situation where you think you are doing something and making a difference but instead you aren’t. You aren’t 100% invested in the task. We all know what “working” means. It means when you are actually doing something productive by putting in your efforts, time and most importantly dedication. However, when you check your phone for Facebook updates and Tweets every 2 minutes while making a presentation or report, it’s not “working”; it is “pseudo-work” or at most “half work”. Avoid half and pseudo work by being more dedicated to the task at hand; it’s just a mind game 5. Commit to 10 minutes of important, non-urgent work each day In every small or large business, every task falls in two of these four categories; important, not important, urgent, not urgent. Of course, you would prioritize the tasks which are both important and urgent. And it is self-explanatory discarding tasks which are neither important nor urgent. However, what about important but not urgent tasks? You have put them in “important” category because they are important. Commit to 10 minutes of important, non-urgent work each day to get rid of those important tasks. It would boost your business productivity significantly. 6. Improve Your Focus by Reducing Task Switching Most people would have you believe that switching from task to task rapidly to complete multiple tasks can help you be more productive, as it gives you the illusion of acting on multiple things. The fact of the matter is that task switching reduces your thinking capacity as your brain has switched from one thinking process to the next. Each task requires you to think about “what was done before”, “what needs to be done” and “How to get it done efficiently”. Due to the multiple thinking processes, you can’t truly give your 100% dedication to the said task as your mind needs to recover from the previous task(s) which you were walking on. How to reduce task switching for improved business productivity? Gather all the small tasks you have like updating social media, replying to emails, support inquiries etc. Batch tasks of similar nature together. Action on each of the batches one by one. Bonus tip: If possible take a 5-min break between each batch of tasks to rewire your focus. 7. 10x Your Focus by Sleeping Better We all know many midnight owls amongst who are so passionate about working on their ideas and their business to get more tasks done. Its even more present amongst the young entrepreneurs who sleep less and work more. Some even quote Curtis Jackson who said “Sleep? Sleep is for those people who are broke. I don’t sleep because I have an opportunity to make my dream become a reality” … Continue reading 17 Insanely Actionable Business Productivity Tips to Get More done in Less Time





