Improving and Maintaining Your Business Productivity
For small business owners and entrepreneurs, productivity is paramount to building and sustaining their businesses. Small businesses are often “lean,” meaning fewer employees and little room for waste, both time and other resources. Larger business can absorb a little employee “laziness” or material waste and not be as impacted.
We’ve mentioned this before and it’s worth saying again. Not only is it more productive to start your day early, but it allows you to get more done because your energy level is at its highest point in the morning. By the time the day is half done, you will be fatigued and unable to accomplish the same level of work that you did earlier on.
Don’t assume you are the “only one who knows how to do X” — hand off some tasks to others. While they may not complete them the same way you do, as long as the tasks are being completed reasonably well and on time, it frees up your time to tackle the things that you truly do best. And they might surprise you by coming up with more efficient ways to complete the tasks!
Obviously, there are meetings that you will either benefit from attending or you have no choice but to attend. But if you find yourself in meetings where your input isn’t really needed, talk to the meeting organizer privately. Explain that you’re happy to provide input when needed, but you don’t feel you need to be in every meeting. You can ask that he or she sends you the meeting agenda ahead of time and you can offer your input via email. Or ask that your input agenda items are scheduled first, and then you can leave the meeting once your part is over.
While it may be a skill to multitask, it can also cause you grief because you could find yourself with multiple unfinished products at the end of the week. Recent research has shown that multitasking can impair productivity. Productivity is improved when you focus on a single project at a time and when you complete each project in a certain time block.
It is best to complete the important tasks before you challenge any other tasks. Once you get the essentials out of the way, it gives you more impetus to get other things done. So do the hard work initially and then tackle the easier ones after.
It helps tremendously to plan ahead and be organized. Create realistic milestones for yourself and stick to the deadlines. Make sure to organize your workload, which includes various tasks and even your notes. At the end of the day, spare an extra half an hour to go over what has been done for the day and to prepare for the next day, listing the most essential tasks that have to be completed.
Each day, business owners and entrepreneurs may find that time is an essential commodity. It is important then to make plans on how to spend your day to improve and maintain your productivity. Improved productivity may be the difference between being a dominant player in your market and essentially only getting by.
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