When operating any business, increasing your productivity is critical to your success. In this article we'll identify several obstacles that may be standing between you, your productivity, and ultimately your success. We’ll also discuss the impacts of distraction, how your environment influences your productivity, and how to find your ideal environment in order to maximize your results. Lastly, we'll show you a quick formula to accurately determine your hourly worth.
By exploring how to overcome these obstacles, we'll provide solutions you can implement in your business today so that you can improve your productivity and accomplish more than you've ever accomplished before.
Let's start by first breaking the time management myth. We refer to time management as a myth simply because you can't manage time. We all have the same 24 hrs in day and the same 7 days in a week and although you can't manage time, you can manage yourself in time. Let me repeat that, "you can't manage time; but you can manage yourself in time." So, how do you manage yourself in time? The answer actually is quite simple... adopt a proactive not reactive approach. So, how and what can you do to become proactive? Glad you asked. Below are some of the many techniques we've used with much success.
Tackling the issue of being overwhelmed
Regardless if you're a business owner, entrepreneur, or sales professional...in this information age you're going to be overwhelmed. What most of us don't realize is that how we view "overwhelmed" is how we handle "overwhelmed." When faced with being overwhelmed most of us complain about it, get frustrated, and perceive being overwhelmed as a conspiracy against us. There's no conspiracy...it's just the age we live in and in this age were up against massive amounts of information, i.e. multimedia, social media, etc. We need to accept this as the new reality, the new normal if you will. Rather than viewing overwhelmed as a negative and complaining about it...embrace it...as being overwhelmed generally always precedes growth, whether its financial, personal or business growth. Although you can't avoid being overwhelmed you can manage it. Here are a few strategies to help you:
Schedule Time
Schedule a time to manage information. For example: schedule a time for returning calls, a time for training and a time reading...whether it's emails, online or offline newsletters, or training materials. The leading cause of feeling overwhelmed comes from us doing activities on the fly. You know...Monday rolls around and you find a quick 10 minutes before heading off to the office to listen to that training CD, then in the afternoon, during your lunch, you squeeze in a few emails and then finally after dinner you spend 15 minutes catching up on your reading, etc. I think you get the point...there's no pattern, consistency, or schedule. You need to look at the management of information no different than you would an appointment. Schedule it just as you would an appointment with a client.
Batching
Hyper productive, high achieving individuals have learned to devote certain days to certain activities. For example, in our business, we know we don't need to be on the phone every day, but we do need to be on the phone...we know we don't need to return calls every day but we do need to return calls, so we established phone days. For example Mondays and Thursdays are dedicated to retrieving voice mail, returning calls, consultations, training calls etc. Basically any kind of phone work is handled on Mondays and Thursdays and each phone activity has a scheduled time, including a start time and an end time. This in turn also implies that Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are non phone days.
Disconnect
Schedule certain periods of time during the week where you disconnect from all of the activities that are getting in your way such as phones, voice mail, text messages, email, social media, etc. Take an idea day; it doesn't have to be an entire day, but maybe half a day. This is the time you will devote to learning, focusing on the training and development needed to improve your business or skill set.
Start and End times
As with anything that has a schedule you need to establish a start time and an end time. For example, if you schedule a call for 8am, you best set an end time and when that end time arrives your off that call. No excuses. If you don't set an end time, you open the door for activities to just drag on and that's when you become really unproductive.
Journal your activities
Track your revenue producing activities and how much training, studying, and reading you do. Keep a weekly journal and schedule these activities on the front end and then journal them on the back end, for example, on Monday morning you spent two hours learning social media marketing techniques, etc. Once you commit to scheduling activities and then journaling what you did, you can then look back after a few weeks and see your results...what you accomplished and where you fell short.
Recognizing distractions and the impact they have
Distractions are the number one drain of your time. It's not the emails, phones, text messages, social media, etc. It's YOU allowing those things to be a distraction to you in your life. We're generally faced with a barrage of daily distractions and although they usually involve the emails, phones, text messages, and social media referenced above, distractions can also be our friends, family, and/or pets.
Who or what do you allow in to your world to distract you at any time of the day? Once you recognize who or what is the distraction, then you can begin to set up rules and boundaries to control them. Consider scheduling distraction free time. For example, if your an Internet Marketer...recognizing that your mental and physical energy is at its peak in the morning you may want to designate the first two hours of each morning to revenue producing activities. This means phones are turned off and email is inaccessible. Distraction free time should also be created for training, learning new skills, development, etc.
Quick Tip:If you're not sure if something is a distraction, ask yourself this..."Is this aligned with my goals?" "Is this a high yield, high profit use of my time?" If the answer is no, then analyze if the distraction should even have a place in your space or life at all.
The Importance of your environment
Your environment sets the stage for your productivity. For example, you're not going to have a million dollar idea sitting on the couch, with the phone ringing, kids running around, and the dog barking because that environment is not conducive to creativity and focus.
We've found that high achievers have learned to effectively and efficiently use their time differently in different environments. Using us as the example, we can't write copy or build marketing campaigns in our home office as our home office is used for responding to emails, consulting calls, and returning voice mails, etc. We have to do our writing from the living room, where we have a more scenic, peaceful view and increased natural lighting. Whereas when we need to focus on social media, we generally hit the local Starbucks.
Notice that we have three different environments for three different activities. It doesn't matter what the environment is, as long as the environment works for you, so if you ever feel stuck or unmotivated, look around at the environment, are there distractions?
Placing a dollar value on your time
We want to show you how to calculate your worth per hour so that you never look at each hour of your day the same again. This is principal we learned from Dan Kennedy and the formula outlined below will help you accurately determine your hourly worth.
You know what you made in the past calendar year and what you plan to make in the current calendar year, but for the sake of understanding this formula, let's say you wanted to make $200,000.00 in the current calendar year.
There are 365 days in a year, but not all are work days, so let's back out some weekends and some holidays and go with 250 work days per year. Now let's use the average workday of 8 hrs. and multiple that 8 hrs. a day by the 250 workdays. This gives us 2000 hours of work per year.
Now simple math would indicate that $200,000.00 per year divided by 2000 hours would make your hourly worth $100.00 right?...Wrong...studies show that only approximately 1/3 of your time is actual profitable revenue generating time. So 1/3 of 8 hrs. is approximately 3 hrs. per day.
So now let's take that same $200,000.00 per year and the same 250 work days but let's now use the profitable revenue generating time of 3 hrs. per day. Using the same example, take the 250 workdays and multiply it by 3 hrs. a day. Now the real hours worked becomes 750 not 2000. Now take that same $200,000.00 and divide it by the real hours worked of 750...your hourly worth is now around $267 per hour not $100.00 per hour.
That's nearly 3x more than what you thought you were worth. Now knowing that your time is worth 3x more than that what you thought, do you view that hour you wasted or the hours you're wasting differently? What do you think about the distractions you've allowed for?
In closing...by implementing the strategies above and becoming consciously aware of distractions and your environment, then subsequently managing both, you'll quickly be on your way to mastering your productivity and accomplishing much more than ever before. Lastly, wanting to give credit where credit is due, this principal and subsequent formula came from Dan Kennedy's book, "No B.S. Time Management For Entrepreneurs - The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Guide To Productivity And Sanity."
