It’s Monday and that means it’s a brand new week, I love a new week because there’s so many days ahead of us full of new opportunities, new experiences and new opportunities but it wasn’t always this way.
My week wasn’t always productive, I didn’t always end the week feeling like I’d accomplished anything. I’d be staring at the same to do list I had at the start of the week. I’d spent most of my time procrastinating, making excuses, messing around with things that were just a waste of time and ultimately didn’t really make any progress forward.
I see so many other business owners being in this exact same situation, they start the week with the best of intentions but by the end of it they wonder where the week went!
I thought I’d share with you some steps I took to go from unproductive and procrastinating to actually getting stuff done and ending the week feeling as if I’d been productive.
Short daily tasks
A long to do list doesn’t work, the minute you take a look at your todo list and it’s this massive long huge page of stuff it switches your brain off and immediately you’ll start procrastinating, because you’re going to feel overwhelmed before you even begin. Instead of one todo list for the week I create daily to do lists and there’s no more than 5 things on it.
Use a timer
I’ve talked about this before on a podcast episode (click to listen here) but a timer can totally change how productive you are. Right now I’m writing this blog during a 60 minute timer I set up for myself to get some weekly tasks done, that includes writing a blog. I set a timer for pretty much everything, right now I have 60 minutes to do all of my weekly tasks. I’ll set a timer if I’m engaging on social media, responding to messages, creating content, pretty much everything and once the timer is up that’s it I’m done. I do it for 2 reasons really 1 working with a timer and a set time means I have to get it done and 2 it really enables me to focus and ensures I don’t waste a ton of time on tasks that really could take me less time.
Batch your time
Instead of trying to go from admin, to sales calls, to creation mode, to client calls I always recommend that you batch your time. That way you don’t have such a rollercoaster of energy going on and believe me a rollercoaster of energy can totally sap your mood, it exhausts you and then you’ll get barely anything done. Try and batch your time so you’ve got all your admin in one morning, then an afternoon of sales calls VS 1 hour of this, 20 minute of that and 30 minutes of something else.
Reward yourself
Now this might sound really crazy but it can make a huge difference, rewarding yourself can really change your energy towards doing things. For example let’s say you’ve been putting off writing some content or sending some messages, set yourself a reward that if you clear your to do list that day you’ll reward yourself with xyz, it could be as simple as a long bath, a trip to the beach or even just an hour reading or listening to music, it doesn’t really matter what it is but it has to be something that you want to do, something that you’d feel good about doing after sticking to what you said you’d do.
Call yourself out
Listen when it comes to getting stuff done sometimes it comes down to saying to ourselves…you’re chatting shit GET IT DONE! Because the reality is it’s really easy for us to come up with all sorts of excuses and stories about why we can’t do it right now or why tomorrow is a better day to do it and really it comes down to us having the discipline of saying to ourselves “is that really true?”. Calling yourself out is a discipline that isn’t easy but it does totally change your productivity!
Ultimately you need to find a system that works for you but maybe the above ideas can inspire you in finding a way to get productive.
Before you go, have you downloaded your free copy of The 10k Month Roadmap and checklist yet? You can do so here http://bit.ly/roadmapchecklist
