3 Productivity Hacks That Any Entrepreneur Should Use

This is a sponsored post to help you to save time and focus on your productivity as an entrepreneur, or small business owner, from our friends at Sale Source. Enjoy!

One of the things that you’re naturally going to  experience as an entrepreneur is abs and flows of energy and usually they’re pretty far apart. If you look at the symptoms related to bipolar disorder in the DSM manual that psychologists use, they’re very similar to the descriptions you might use to describe an entrepreneur, and I don’t mean that to downplay that at all, it’s a very real thing that entrepreneurs struggle with – we get very high amounts of energy about the things that we’re really excited about and then these extreme lows in many important times, and you have to be able to roll with those punches.

The best thing that you can do, which is sort of a combination tactic is to avoid decisions as much as possible (especially when it comes to shopify dropshipping), so you literally should make a  list of things that you can do when you are not functioning at your best. And I have this, I have a list that I keep in one of my online apps, so that when I’m feeling low energy, I can go to that list and there are certain things that I can still get done. It might be reading something that actually was not that interesting that I didn’t want to spend the time to do a different time, I can probably deal with email when I’m not in the highest energy place. 

You can learn things that you might not have been in the headspace to learn another time, because there were too many other exciting things keeping your attention,  so you can make a list of things so that when you are in that state you can go to it – you don’t have to make any decisions, it’s there and you just follow your own advice. 

One of the absolute gurus of productivity – David Allen, the creator of  “Lee getting things done system” actually refers to this as his “brain-dead list”. He has a whole list of things that he can do when he’s totally brain-dead, because either he’s jet-lagged from traveling or he’s exhausted from not sleeping well, and you can still be productive and even use that to pull yourself out of that slump. 

The last tip is to own your calendar. I’m not a big believer in to-do list for a number of different reasons, but at the end of the day I focus on what is in my calendar if it’s not in the calendar it’s not happening, if there’s something that I need to read I will make time for it in my calendar, if there’s something that I need to write I will make a slot in my calendar and then of course all the meetings and calls and things that I might have are going to be in there.

What that does is it gives you a really good visual reminder of how much you’re scattering yourself throughout the day,  because I would challenge any one of you watching this that is even reasonably busy that if you get to 6 o’clock at night and you have to answer the question what did I get done today?  Most of you probably have to look at your calendar just to remember what you  got done over the last 12 hours. So, how could we possibly think that we could read the label from inside the jar?  You’ve got to give yourself the opportunity to batch what you do and do things at their pace and one at a time, not only that, but focusing on it when you are best at it. I for one am terrible on the phone before noon, I don’t know why, but I am. So, I do my best to schedule calls in the afternoon (except when it comes to dropship spy selection).

I can’t write a single word that’s of any quality before 8 o’clock at night, that’s probably because in my case my kids have gone to sleep and we tend to be a little bit more creative when we’re tired. 8 o’clock at night is my time to write so I’m not even in an attempt to write something at 10  in the morning and that is extremely freeing, so knowing when you can do things and where is extremely powerful and ultimately you have to own your calendar.  

 

So, just to recap: Here are some ways that you can be more productive today:

  • set artificially restrictive limits on yourself  
  • use and know the Zeigarnik effect 
  • the Pomodoro Technique the 
  • asynchronous communication the 
  • avoid making decisions as much as possible  number 
  • six is to have a brain-dead list  
  • own your calendar now 

 

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