5 Killer Tips To Improve Your Productivity

It would be fair to say that discipline has never been my strong suit. I often end up getting sidetracked and starting on one thing before I’ve finished something else, simply because my attention threshold is so low.

Yet one of the biggest challenges for anyone seeking business success online is being disciplined enough to complete tasks inspite of all the other distractions competing for your attention.

It’s an ongoing battle and particularly so if, like me, you are trying to build an online business whilst also holding down a full time job. I also have a lovely young son (Louis, almost 8 months now!) to help look after. With such limited time it’s vitally important to remain focussed to have any chance of achieving success.

I’ve known for a long time that I do too much of the work by myself. I create the websites and landing pages, write the copy, install wordpress blogs and plugins, set up testing and tracking, market research, traffic generation, in fact pretty much everything.

I’ve persisted with this way of working far longer than I should have. Partly for financial reasons, but also because I’ve often felt it easier to complete a task myself than explain how to do it to a freelancer. And there is also the feeling of losing control when you hand the reins over to someone else.

So lately I’ve been examining how I run my business and what I can do to boost my productivity, and I’ve identified a number of areas where I waste time and work inefficiently.

I also made a forum post over at Starting Start Profits asking members for their suggestions. I got some incredibly useful feedback, some of which I’ve included below in my list of Top 5 Tips For Improving Productivity…

Tip 1 - Focus On Tasks That Have Leverage

Do something once and benefit from it indefinitely. My free rebrandable ebooks are a good example. Because these ebooks spread virally, each one brings in a consistent stream of visitors to my sites every single day. All from creating simple interview ebooks.

Tip 2 - Write Down Your Goals

This is vital. You should set daily, weekly, monthly and yearly goals. By writing your goals down, you give yourself both a focus and a plan of action.

Here’s one suggestion I received from Lee McIntyre on his SSP Mentoring Forum.

For your short term tasks try making a list of everything you want to acheive during the following week. Do that last thing on Friday, then allocate tasks to each day. Then when you wake on a Monday, you’ll know exactly what needs to be done.

Then at the end of each day, just spend 5 minutes updating your plan for the next day. It’s also helpful to prioritise tasks. So if you don’t complete your top priority A task on Monday, you can carry that over to the Tuesday ahead of any medium priority B tasks you may have.

Tip 3 - Set Aside Specific Times Of The Day For Checking And Answering Email

Another huge time waster is constantly checking the inbox for incoming email. I no longer check my email in the morning as soon as I switch my PC on. I try to get something done instead, like writing a report, making a blog post or outsourcing a project (more on that in a moment).

Try just checking your email only twice a day instead, say at midday and again late afternoon just before you finish your day’s work.

Tip 4 - Stop Checking Stats So Often

I’m a sucker for this one myself and it wastes so much time. I can easily end up checking my link tracking stats or aweber account 3 or 4 times a day. Once a day at most is all that’s needed.

Tip 5 - Create Systems and Outsource

Probably the single most important tip for growing and leveraging your business. You must outsource as much as you can. Easy and relatively inexpensive tasks to outsource include graphics creation, blog commenting, article writing and keyword research.

Think about how you can systemize tasks that you’ve previously done yourself so you can outsource them to someone else. Perhaps through creating screencapture video tutorials. Whenever you have a new task to perform, constantly ask yourself if your time would be better spent on another part of your business such as market research or coming up with new product ideas. If it would, then you have a prime candidate for outsourcing.

Tagged as: productivity, time management