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Are you a busy solopreneur looking for productivity tips? If so, you are in the right place. As a solopreneur, time is often the most precious resource you have. As someone who is looking after all the different aspects of your business, and not to mention the fact you have a life too, it can feel like you have a never-ending to-do list that you never manage to get to the bottom of. With that in mind, I’m sharing 7 productivity tips for solopreneurs.
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1. Work out when you do your best work
To be productive you want to maximise how efficient you are. A key part of this is working out when you do your best work. As human beings, rather than robots, how we work throughout the day will differ. Some people are night owls, whilst others are early birds.
Now it might be that you already know when you do your best work. If so, try as much as possible to schedule your day so that you are doing the work the most important work at that time.
If you don’t currently know when you work best try for a few weeks vary your working pattern and keep a note on when you had moments of feeling super productive and also write down when you felt very unproductive and that working was a core. By making notes on both extremes hopefully overtime you’ll be able to find a pattern and identify when is the best time for you to work.
In addition to working out the best time for you to work, you can also look at other environmental facts that might impact your productivity. Do you prefer working in silence, with white-noise or with music? Does the temperature of the room make a difference to how you feel about working?
This might seem like little things, but successful people will pay attention to those things and know how to create the optimum state for them to work in.
2. Focus on the things that matter
When it comes to productivity most people will firstly focus on getting everything done as quickly as possible. Lots of information on productivity will focus on time-management and whilst time-management is an important aspect of productivity there is something else that also matters – what you are doing. It is possible that you can learn to do everything slightly faster by utilising time-management techniques, but in order to be really productive as a solopreneur you have to look at what you are spending your time working on.
In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes about The Time Management Matrix.
This matrix is meant to help you to plot out your tasks and then identify what you should be focusing on. It is so easy to focus on urgent tasks, but in a world that is moving quicker and quicker, it is easy to never get through the urgent tasks and onto the important but non-urgent ones.
Also, another thing to consider is Pareto’s Principle, which looks at the unequal balance of effects and courses or input and output. As a solopreneur, it is vital that you identify what tasks have an unequal value in your business ie the results drastically outweigh the time and resources you put in. By identifying the tasks you’ll have a clear understanding of what really matters in your business and be able to focus your resources in the right direction.
3. Plan ahead
Many business owners talk about the importance of planning ahead, but it still amazes me how many people don’t do it.
When it comes to planning ahead I would recommend a solopreneur gets into two planning routines as a minimum.
Firstly, you should plan for the week ahead. The best time to do this is at the end of your working week the week before. Set aside a bit of time to sit down and identify what you need to achieve the next week. If you really want to be a planning pro then you could even plot into your diary exactly what you will focus on each day.
Secondly, you should plan the night before. Planning the night before means that when you sit down to start work the next day it is clear what you need to do. By planning the night before you’ll hopefully have been able to identify the tasks that really matter and then you can sit down to work the next day with confidence.
4. Batch as much activity as you can
Part of productivity is about learning to manage your time better as a solopreneur the best productivity hack I’ve picked up is batching. Batching is where you do the same task over and over again. By repeating the same activity you’ll save time for a number of reasons. This can be applied to lots of areas of your business, but it works especially well in relation to content creation. If you are new to the concept of batching I go into more details about how to batch your marketing content here.
5. Set a timer
According to Parkinson’s Law “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. Essentially, this means if you give yourself 1 hour or 3 hours to complete the task it will take you that long to do it. Therefore, as a result in order to maximise your productivity, you should be setting a timer for tasks. Ideally, you’ll know how long the task will take you and be able to set it for that amount of time and be confident you can complete it in that time. However, even if you don’t have an idea just take your best guess and go into the activity with the intention of finishing before the timer goes off. You might not achieve it every time, but you’ll absolutely get it done quicker than if you leave yourself with all day to complete a task.
6. Have a system for clearing your brain
Have you ever been sitting down to write something important and then you remember you need to do something else? That something else could be little or large, but you are disciplined and know you need to keep on track with what you are currently doing so you try and carry on and think to yourself “I’ll do that later”. However, then you worry that you might forget about it later and so every 30 minutes it keeps popping back up.
Did that sound familiar? If so, you need to find a system for clearing your brain. This could be as simple as a little notebook or even a pad of paper that is next to your desk. It means that when something pops into your head you write it down immediately and then go back to the task at hand. Your brain knows it no longer has to remember it and you know when you have time later you can deal with it.
7. Remove Distractions
Last but definitely not least is remove distractions. Now distractions come in many shapes and sizes, but two that many business owners struggle with are emails and social media. Both emails and social media have the potential to be beeping away all day so turn your notifications off. Instead of thinking you need to be responding 24/7, you should set aside specific times to check your emails and social media. Also, if you are doing a specific task turn your mobile off or put it in another room and don’t look at it until your timer has gone off and you have a few minutes break before moving onto your next task.
There you have it – 7 productivity tips for solopreneurs.
Being productive is essential as a solopreneur and is essential for your business growth.
With all of the marketing strategies I create I focus on ensuring you are getting the best return on investment for all of your resources (including your time).
MAXIMISE YOUR PRODUCTIVITY BY HAVING A CLEAR MARKETING STRATEGY
As mentioned in tip 2 it is important to focus on what matters. By having a marketing strategy in place it will make it easy for you to know exactly where you should be focusing your time and energy.
If you don’t have a marketing strategy yet then I’m here to help. In just one day I’ll work with you and devise a strategy for the year ahead and a 90-day action plan.
YOU CAN BOOK AN INTENSIVE STRATEGY DAY HERE
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