Are You Using Your Time Wisely? Boost Your Personal Productivity with These Five Simple Steps

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You’ve just arrived home from the office. You got there early, ate lunch at your desk, worked late, and are now utterly drained after a hectic and busy day. Still, there’s no sense of satisfaction from a job well done; instead, you feel as if you’re running on a treadmill. You’re tackling the daily challenges – endless emails, fire-drills, and new issues – but can’t seem to find the time you need to move your business forward.

If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone! The entrepreneurial treadmill is a common situation for business owners. Faced with the daily onslaught of tasks and issues that demand attention, it’s hard to stay focused on what truly matters to the business. So, how can you stop running in place and regain your forward momentum?

It all boils down to improving your personal productivity, which can help you...

• Strike a better work-life balance
• Spend more time working on new ideas and innovations
• Focus on your company’s most important issues
• Lower your stress levels and regain your sanity

With that in mind, here are five steps you can take – right now – to jump off the treadmill and manage your time more effectively.

1. Stop doing the wrong things.

We’ll start by literally taking a page from The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker’s timeless book on entrepreneurial time management. (The book is available here).

Drucker’s notion of time management was simple: business leaders are constantly pressured to spend time on activities, such as attending every staff meeting, that don’t produce real results. By identifying and eliminating those tasks, you’ll have more time to focus on running your business. Ask yourself…

• What activities waste my time without getting results?
• What would happen if I stopped doing those things altogether?
• What could be better done by someone else?

The goal here is to cast off the dead weight. Although it might require some deep thought initially, you’ll soon find yourself with more time to focus on what you should be doing.

2. Don’t be a slave to your inbox.

Nothing symbolizes our hectic digital lives like the full inbox. Sure, there are probably some important messages in that overflowing folder of unread email, but it’s time-consuming to separate the wheat from the chaff. And to make matters worse, checking your email can turn into a stubborn habit that distracts you from more important activities.

How much of a time-hog are these electronic messages? Well, consider the productivity survey found within this article, which found that office workers spend an average of 7.3 hours a week handling email. That’s almost a full day of work! To tilt the playing field back in your favor, consider these steps:

• Check your email just a few times a day. In our always-connected, instant-response world, this might seem like heresy. But think about it: how often do your incoming emails demand an instant response? Consider changing your email settings so new messages aren’t downloaded automatically – instead, only when you click the send / receive button, or set it to refresh every few hours.
• Don’t bother filing your emails into different folders. Deciding where to file messages can eat away at your valuable time, and the best category for an email might not be obvious at first glance. Instead, simply use your email client’s search function.
• Create templates for responding to common questions and requests. If you find yourself saying the same things over and over again, why not create a few emails that you can simply copy and paste – perhaps with a few customized tweaks?

If you’d like to know more about optimizing your inbox, this blog has elevated email management to an art form.

3. Focus on staying focused.

Multitasking is also taken for granted in this digital age. It’s all too easy to do many things at once. But this is a double-edged sword; multitasking can create a big distraction, especially for important issues that require your full attention and brainpower.

One way to create focus is to use the Pomodoro Technique, a method that can help you work more productively on a single task. The premise is simple: do one thing for 25 minutes, then take a five-minute break. You’d be surprised at how much you can get done when you work through your to-do list in these 30-minute chunks. Of course, your own attention span might vary. Maybe you’re better working in hour-long or 90-minute chunks. Use the same principle, customized for whatever timeframe suits you best.

4. Use technology to your advantage.

New technologies such as smartphones, tablets, and apps can be a double-edged sword. They hold the promise of making your life more convenient – but if you don’t understand them, the resulting confusion can actually cost you valuable time. For example, the new features in an operating system update might get in the way of your daily workflow. Take some time to learn these additions and use them to your advantage.

On the mobile app front, there’s no shortage of programs designed to improve your productivity. Here are three task management apps that you might find useful. On the same token, consider eliminating the time-wasters and distractions – we’re looking at you, Angry Birds – from your smartphone or tablet.

5. Create a culture of productivity.

The above steps can also help your people improve their own productivity. Imagine, for example, an office where everyone checked their email only four times a day – once every two hours. And when it came to internal communication, face-to-face interaction and direct communication would replace frequent emails.

A more productive workforce is naturally better for your organization – but it’s also good for your own life; if your people are getting more done, they’ll be better equipped to handle tasks you delegate to them.

• How should you prioritize your tasks? One approach is to split your to-do list into four categories: urgent and important, not urgent but important, urgent but not important (this category would include interruptions and other distractions), and not urgent and not important. The goal is to carve out enough time to focus on the second category, so you can minimize the time spent on the others. Additional prioritization tools are covered here.