Successful business development is all about achieving measurable progress in reasonable time.
Here are 7 productivity tips, to help you get the very most from your working day:
Break your yearly business goals down into monthly and weekly goals. This makes it easier to ensure you are on track. When you have months and months to achieve something, without measurement points along the way, it’s too easy to drift off course.- Plan your day and then work to that plan. The plan needs to incorporate the goals in the previous point. Set out what you need to achieve and make that your priority for the day.
- Take intelligent action. One reason people make less progress than they should, is that they put off the really challenging stuff.
- Look for the things that suck the time out of your day, unnecessarily. Then, replace them with productive alternatives. Common culprits include; over-long phone calls, attending unnecessary meetings, poor advance planning and engaging people in conversation who have nothing better to do than talk all day.
- Run your email, don’t let it run you. Check for email when you have time to deal with it. Respond to email when it works for you, not the second it arrives. Use as many words as needed, but no more.
- There’s a lot of very toxic business advice out there. Think hard before you accept something you read and apply it to your business. Otherwise, you could be working hard and getting nowhere. Even worse, you could be going backwards. Don’t confuse things like Twitter follower counts, with competence. Anyone can get 100,000 followers, using autofollow software.
- Use social media during your down time. I do a lot of my Google+ and Twitter updates and replies, when I am waiting in line, waiting for lunch at the local coffee shop and when I arrive early for an appointment etc. It allows me to keep connected with my networks throughout the day, without eating into time allocated to other work. It also means I need to block off less social media time, when planning my day.
What would you add to that list?
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Really solid information you shared here Jim. I really like what you say with emails and not letting them run you but you run the emails. I know that is one area I try to improve upon and really wait until I have time to respond.
Hi Justice. In my experience, a lot of people forget that their email account is supposed to help them work more effectively.
In many cases, they have it set to automatically alert them of every email, with email interfering in their meetings, phone calls, creativity time and even family time.
Unless you work in an emergency service and your clients don’t know your phone number, you should be fine allowing them to call you when it’s urgent – And email you when it’s important, but not needing immediate response.
Great tips Jim. I would add never schedule a meeting without an agenda. It’s amazing how easy it is to fill an hour with nothing when you have an hour.
That’s a very useful tip, Troy. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Jim,
I have been reading your blog for over 6 months now and can’t tell you how helpful your insights have been. Many times they come at a time when I am questioning how to continue my forward motion in a new business. I have been working for someone else all my life, and it has been time to change that.
This post was just one of those timely ones. I have content schedules and plans, but they just don’t seem organized even though they give the appearance of being so. I believe they are a good start, but adding the daily planning I believe would be a great asset.
Thanks for what you do. Also I am so excited about your creative thinking hub. I have read the posts and signed up for the emails. Thanks for helping us all find our inner creative.
Good ones!
I like how you stress that we can’t let ourselves spend valuable work hours with people and actions that don’t support our goals.
It helps me to spend a chunk of time on a project, then stop, take a break, stretch, get some distance from it before diving in again.
I teach that to a lot of my clients who just stare on the screen for 5 hours without even getting out of the chair.
My motivation is to get them out of chronic pain, but they tell me they get better ideas and learn to see the bigger picture when stepping away once per hour (or 90min). Some have to set a timer.
Not answering emails immediately can’t be stressed enough, I’m glad you brought it up.
Reacting doesn’t lead to intelligent actions.
One of the time wasting stuff is engaging in non-productive conversations. They are not supporting in moving our dreams forward but they are highly addictive. We didn’t know we are in it until the conversation is over and we wasted 2 hours, realizing we haven’t accomplished anything.
I fell for this last week Joe, when I lost a huge chunk of time speaking with someone who was happy to waste both our time.
We never stop learning and the occasional incident like that, helps me ensure it happens as infrequently as possible.