Make increasing your business productivity a center point of your New Year’s resolutions. Entrepreneur recently rounded up some of its best tips from those in business on how to ramp up your productivity, including:
Stop procrastinating.
Sounds simple enough, but its time to tackle the mound of emails and mail in your office. “You will always be busy, and taking 10 minutes now to address the task will keep it from hanging over your head and using up time and space that could be better used for more important things,” Entrepreneur notes.
Plan ahead.
Mornings can be a great time to check off a bunch of boxes on your to-do list. But the mornings can quickly slip away from you after just a seemingly quick round of checking your email or going through your calendar. The night before: Write down a defined, actionable goal. Get right to it first thing, without distraction.
Seriously, stop multitasking.
Multitasking is not working smarter.
It’s actually making you stupid. Research shows it can lower IQs when multitasking with electronic media. Your attention pulled in various directions makes the quality of your work suffer. Instead of taking on everything all at once, step back and prioritize. Check through your to-do list one thing at a time.
Write down motivators.
If you’re starting to feel overwhelmed, take a minute. Write down what you’re working toward and why it’s important to you. Give yourself a concrete example of what you’re hoping to achieve and have it in front of you as extra motivation.
Just say “no,” sometimes.
Your time is valuable. When a task or day-to-day activity is distracting you from your main mission, free yourself to say “no” to it. You can’t possibly do everything. “It will make the things you do say ‘yes’ to mean more,” the article at Entrepreneur notes.
Source: “Entrepreneur’s Best Advice for Super Productivity,” Entrepreneur (Dec. 28, 2016)
