Any successful entrepreneur knows that the most valuable asset you have is your time.
There can be a thin line between using your time wisely and wasting it away, and only one road will lead you to success, with the other leading you towards failure.
Make sure you are on the right road with these useful tips on boosting your productivity:
Time yourself – If you have a huge pile of work to get through, thinking about what you need to do can be daunting. If you are worrying about other work or dealing with emails and phone calls, you will become distracted from the task in hand.
If you time yourself to do a task and then challenge yourself to do it quicker the next time, you will soon start to see you can get things done in a much quicker fashion. By focusing solely on getting that one task done within a time period, you will get it out of the way in no time.
You can keep a track of the work that you are doing and how much time each task takes and then evaluate whether you are spending too much time on a particular task.
It will help you to identify any time wastage or make you think about ways that you could improve on the way you do things. There are a lot of technology options that now help businesspeople to improve their processes, from automated emails to virtual assistants.
Do your research and find out if there are online tools that could take some of your administrative tasks away.
Have a clear office free of distractions – Having a clear desk and environment will allow you to focus better. If you are surrounded in clutter, your mind is probably over-cluttered, too.
Even having too many windows open in your PC/laptop screen will be a distraction, so if you only need to use one application, make sure to close everything else.
Turn off your email notifications unless you have something you urgently need to respond to.
Use finance apps – Using finance apps like Wave or Mint will help you to keep your finances in order without the need to access multiple different websites and apps.
Whether you want to check your SBA loans from LendGenius or you want to check which invoices have been paid, getting these sort of apps will help you to save lots of time. You can get your invoices sent or create receipts with just a few clicks.
The time you save can be huge if you are still working with traditional methods of invoicing.
Take breaks – It can be tempting to work through your lunch break but this can be counter-productive. Your productivity levels drop significantly if you don’t take a break, so make sure to take at least 20 minutes, even if it is a quick walk that will clear your head.
Time is your key to business success, so use it as well as you possibly can and keep these tips in mind.