productivity

One what, you ask? Well, one change to habit! You’d be surprised how one small or large tweak to your daily business activities can make a huge different in your results, your sense of accomplishment, and control of your business.

Successful entrepreneurs often follow similar work practices and develop common habits that help lead them to success. No matter what type of business you’re in, you have business operations to manage, people to deal with, a brand to build, and a reputation to maintain. The habits and practices you bring to your business can either help you achieve success or cause you to needlessly struggle.

Today, I’m challenging you to pick one new habit you’d like to establish.

To get your ‘gears turning’, below are 7 suggestions that can make a huge difference in your business.

1. 1. Turn off the alerts! – You do not need to be checking Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, emails, text messages, and whatever else that seemingly interrupts you every second of day. Turn the alerts off and check them no more than once an hour. If you feel you need an urgent means of being contacted, then use only one media source but turn off all other alert. For me it’s my business phone, I leave it on so that anyone can contact me in case of an urgent matter. The rest is off when I’m trying to focus.
   2. Book an hour a day to work on your business! – Already, I can hear “I can’t because…” going through some peoples’ head.  I’d like to suggest that you are your business’s most important client. If you can focus on working on your business for an hour a day just image where it can go. This needs to be sacred time; would you cancel or reschedule time for your most important client? Personally, I find this to be one of the most important habits/strategies I’ve formed, which has made an improvement in the development of my business.
   3. Book social media time! – Even better, delegate social media to someone else. We all know we need a presence on social media, but if you’re not careful it can eat up a huge amount of your time. Imagine the increase in your productivity and business growth if all the time you put into social media is redirected towards working on your business undisturbed. So allocate a maximum of 30 minutes a day to social media, perhaps 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes at the end of the day. Schedule “social media” time and stay away from it for the rest of your day.
   4. Take lunch! – Take a break from your day to recharge your batteries. Take 30 to 60 minutes to shut out distractions, get out of the office if you can, go for a walk, go to your favorite café and relax. You’ll be surprised what comes to your mind when you give it a moment of rest and distraction. Kind of like in the shower, some of your most brilliant ideas and solutions come from taking a break and letting your brain rest. I’m not endorsing that anyone should take up smoking, but a great example was a former colleague who was a smoker and had his best ideas on his smoke breaks. This was so successful for him; he often used the expression “let’s work that out on the back of the (cigarette) pack”.
   5. Set small goals that lead to big wins! – It’s important to have long-term goals to work towards, but your short-term goals will help build the foundation and momentum that supports business growth. Do not set goals that are so big you can’t see any progress. I suggest setting weekly or even daily goals that are measurable, so you can see your progress and quickly readjust to reach your long-term goals.
   6. Limit your networking time! – I know so many entrepreneurs, particular ones that are starting out who are out at networking events 3 or more times a week and volunteer for one or two organizations as well. I strongly believe that networking is important to your business, but it needs to be focused, planned, and limited so that you have the time to work on your business. You need to be strategic about when, how, and where you network. Just like social media, if not carefully structured, it can take a huge chunk of time out of your week and reap limited results.
   7. Plan the small stuff! – No matter what type of business you’re in, there are small and critically important things that often aren’t done because we don’t plan them into our week. Eventually, these things can become an unnecessary stressful, time consuming, and urgent situation. I know so many business owners who rush at the end of the year to do their accounting/bookkeeping, creating a crisis moment that was completely avoidable. To avoid the ‘pile of paper in a box situation’ plan once a week to do accounting. If you can outsource, great! However, I suggest you plan a day each month to meet with your bookkeeper/accountant to review the information, so that you are on top of your numbers. Accounting is just one example of many other activities that just sit on the back burner and are always nagging at the back of our mind, that if we just planned them into our month we’d be on top of them and would avoid them turning into a crisis.

These are just 7 small habits that you can incorporate into your day that can make a huge difference in your mindset and your accomplishments. You may have another habit that you’d like to create. My challenge to you is to pick just one habit (whether it’s one you create or one of the 7 small habits from above) to form over the next 21 days.

Which one habit do you commit to working on over the next 21 days? Please post below and let us know.