6 Ways to Increase Productivity in your Workspace
Are you an expert at accounting?
If that’s your skill it may well be that you are not also a social media marketer extraordinaire, supply chain master, product photography guru, or expert in all number of the many skills it takes to run a small business.
As a business owner, you need to cover a lot of areas of expertise. You have your main skillset, you’re learning as you go; you are passionate about your products, which is why you started your entrepreneur journey! There are so many pulls away from what you love to do, this comes with growth, sales and success; while you may be in a position to outsource some tasks or hire help you generally will always find your time filling with the need to do all-the-things. It’s exhausting and, at times, bewildering.
I’ve been there, working a full time job, travelling between my stores on Oxford Street and throughout 3 different counties – plus my own side hustle – I had me working 5am-9pm, I totally had working nine-to-five backwards! Do you know what happened? I became exhausted, burnt out, and worse left my family feeling neglected. It’s only when that realization hit I knew I had to change. I don’t want anyone else to get to the point I did.
Effective time management strategies are crucial for us busy business owners and CEOs – because your most valuable of all resources is time.
Improving your productivity will free you up to focus on growing your sales, give you more time to do what you love as you work, and no more feeling like you live in your workspace – you can be free to be with family and friends, no longer missing out on those precious memory making moments under a pile of to-do’s.
“Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions” – John Randolph
1 > Batch Work to Efficiency and Beyond!
Bouncing back and forth between tasks can be a time consuming way of managing the day-to-day to-do’s in a business. Consider how you are currently operating, and be open to the potential of changing the way you work by batching your day into productive chunks.
Our ability to focus on one task at a time and keep a consistent rhythm makes it easier to finish that task in less time. This is why you want to batch the tasks you do as much as possible.
As an independent retail store owner, you have to respond to emails from customers, ordering stock, choosing, designing or handmaking products, processing orders, packing and posting, on top of social media, marketing, keeping sales platforms updated… the list can go on and on. It can feel like you’re spinning in a circle from one task to another, your workspace overflows as you box up an order to post, grab your phone to respond to a tweet, head over to the laptop (clearing off a stack of address labels) to list a new line on your site. You know what I’m talking about 😉
So here’s how time batching works:
– Check and respond to emails at 3 points in your day; near the beginning, middle, and end of the day.
– Check social media notifications and post what cannot be scheduled on your social media networks ONLY twice a day. Seriously.
– Set aside an hour or two before you need to finish for the day to drop off parcels, or before your carrier comes to pick them up, to do your dispatch preparation.
If you follow this, you’ll find a rhythm flows through your tasks instead of having to start/stop distraction working throughout the day. You’ll find clear spaces for the other work needed in your business. So much more productive than shifting gears from one task to another!
2 > Eliminate physical distractions…
Distractions — whether they are noisy coworkers, demanding family members, or a TV in the background — damage your efficiency and productivity through attention switching. Remember: brains can’t multitask. Every distraction makes you quickly switch the focus of your attention, tires you out more quickly, and takes you time to regain the focus you had before an interruption. Ok so you can’t eliminate a noisy coworker, but creating a quieter space by investing in some noise canceling headphones can go a long way toward keeping your focus. Recognize which tasks you need more focus to complete effectively, writing for your blog for example, and plan those tasks in your schedule for when the kids nap or have a play date.
3 > Start Your Day with the Difficult
How do you eat an elephant? Well, you start with one big bite.
You are fresh for the day, ready for work (whether enthused or not, let’s be real here!), you have a to-do list full of tasks; some of those easy, some fun, and some you just wish you could squash into the kitchen junk drawer.
It’s tempting and common to lull yourself into productivity mode for the day by ticking off the easy and the fun tasks. Who wants to do the difficult things? However, as entrepreneur and author Ben Horowitz says in The Hard Thing About Hard Things; “Sometimes hard things are what it takes to build a business.”
To get through the more difficult tasks necessary to your business, tackle them first, while you’re fresh. Instead of starting your with a to-do that’s easy, or one you go to start on auto-pilot such as seeing what has arrived in your inbox, be proactive and kick the tough thing off your to-do list.
The most powerful productivity tips may not sound fun. It’s not a shiny new app to learn, in fact this may make you roll your eyes as you read, but the difficult tasks are much easier to do (insert coffee here) first thing in your working day than later when you’re likely lagging.
4 > Reduce Mental Distractions
Often controversial; when I tell people they need to avoid multitasking the response is usually ‘but that’s how I get ANYTHING done!’ Well I never told you it’d be easy but it darn well works. Change how you think of it; replace the word multitasking with ‘half-a-job’. Do you only want to put 50% into all you do? No!
When your work is constantly interrupted, or you flick between working and checking Instagram, the intensity of work goes down and so does your overall productivity performance.
When you are able to consistently work at 100 percent of your capabilities, you can get an astonishing amount done very quickly.
5 > Create Automations
This seems straight forward, however it’s the most commonly overlooked way of freeing up time when I speak to my clients! Retailers end up being a bit of a Jack of all trades, because we’re learning a lot of things around how our independent stores and product based businesses need to run, often during day to day trade while your mind is on sales too. So there may be effective processes you can put in place for tasks you’re not yet aware of, or even realise you can!
Which repetitive tasks do you find you spend an overly large amount of time on?
Look for ways to automate these tasks and make the most of your time; it will take a little bit of time to set up, but once it’s done once, it’s done, and you’ll see how worth this upfront work automations are!
Scheduling meetings, marketing email sequences, updating your CRM, and management of your social media are often really good possibilities for automating.
6 > Take Care of Yourself
Forgetting to take care of yourself is a common issue for entrepreneurs.
– Stay active with a stretch, a quick walk around the room, monitor your sleep to know when NOT to tackle those difficult tasks first thing after a bad night, you do need to give yourself a break if your brain won’t be up to it!
– Choose your snacks and drinks with forethought, I mean I live for coffee and could guzzle it all day but I’m no use to anyone if I’m strung out, dehydrated. You get my point.
– Keep track of what you’re spending; there are not many stresses bigger than the burden of debt or running to the end of your purse strings month on month.
– Use a planner or diary to record achievements regularly, while also helping you stay on top of your schedule.
– Sign up to an e-boost like Blurt Foundation‘s email. It’s full of ways to take care of your mind and makes me smile every time I receive it.
Speaking of which, if you found these productivity tips useful, you’ll find more in our e-boost The Inbox R&R
