Productivity requires a combination of great planning and effort, maintaining productivity can be a real challenge for the self employed and small business owner. Our efforts are constantly needed. Fortunately, productivity can be improved and be maintained by following some basic steps.
If you run a business and want to improve your productivity, here are a few simple tips that you can follow:
- Find help. Completing a big task alone is nearly always impossible, you will need some help from others. In order to get big tasks done, you have to trust your subordinates to help you out. If cash flow is not good you can invite some friends or family; tell them the exact deadline so you can see get the task done on time. Outsource anything that is not your area of speciality, if your a plumber (for example) get someone to help with your accounts and local marketing.
- Don’t have unnecessary meetings, time management is an important thing if you want to get maximum results from your work. Try not to waste your time on unnecessary things, meetings and tasks. You need to know your priorities so you can reduce unnecessary meetings or conversations and carry on with your work.
- To do lists. Like we said above, time management is the biggest factor. Having a list of the work to be done is extremely important. To do lists help you plan your work accordingly and force you to do your best within a limited time frame.
- Take a break, working a lot is very exhausting and it affects your energy. So, it is very important to take breaks for a day or even a few months. Spending 8-10 hours sitting on a chair working for too long may cause many illnesses heart related disease and no exercise may make you become fat.
- Stay away from distractions, there could be many distractions around when you are trying to work. Many people become distracted and end up surfing social media sites, I have often found myself unnecessarily checking for updates on Facebook or reading articles on Reddit when I should be working. Social media is distracting and destructive for your productivity. Keep your phone in your pocket and resist the temptation of opening unnecessary websites on your office computer.
- Have proper interactions with your clients, also crucial to maintain your business. If you want to have potential clients and make money you must build good customer engagement strategies, be friendly but professional. Replying to clients politely and as quickly as you can will help you maintain your relationship with them. You also need to pay attention to the feedback; it will help you improve the quality of your business.
- Create newsletters constantly. You need to give useful information on topics related to your business, you might want to tell your subscribers how to save money or current market analysis, etc. via the newsletter. Newsletters are a way to build up good relationships with clients.
- Stop wasting your time. The second biggest type of distraction, sitting on the couch doing nothing while eating and watch TV will affect your performance significantly. It is good to limit your time watching TV and do more important things instead, try exercise or reading books.
- Set ambitious, but realistic goals. Setting goals is useful; they make you focus more on your business but you need to keep your goals realistic and achievable.
- Make time to manage e-mails, you must stay alert and actively respond to every mail you receive. Be sure you are not missing any important messages and develop a habit of replying to important e-mails right away. You also need to block and ignore spam mail because spam wastes your time.
Once you are following the above steps, you will experience the difference, your productivity will increase and your business will start to grow.
Featured images:
- Photo provided by: smartphotostock.com
This post was supplied by Mark Stubbles, a small business owner, freelance SEO and guest blogger. Mark’s website address is, https://pandaseo.co.uk/.
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