Transcripts
1. Introduction: Are you a solopreneur or small business owner trying
to get a grip and not lose your mind with all
the day-to-day things you have to get done well
in stick around because I'm gonna give you some of
my favorite tips for how to stay productive
and get **** done, alright, so if you are a solopreneur or
small business owner, even if you have a few people maybe on your team
helping you with things, staying productive
and focusing on your to-do list can
become very challenging. I've had an assistant at
times that helped me with administrative work and I have a few other contractors who
helped me with some things. But for the majority
of my businesses life, it's pretty much all been on me. So there are few things that I like to do to help
me stay focused, helped me stay on task
and be productive, especially when I'm
feeling overwhelmed. Now, a few of the things
I'm not going to mention, things like getting
rid of distractions, making making time for me, time taking breaks, go
outside, take a walk. All of that stuff's great. I'm sure it helps with being
productive, but like okay, if I take some me time
and go get a massage, I'm still not getting
anything done. So I'm not going to bore
you guys too much with that fluffy productivity stuff.
2. Tips for small business owners: My first tip for
staying productive as a small business owner or solopreneur is to set a routine. Now, this one I think is okay. I have a hard time
with this myself. That's why I'm saying it first. I'm gonna kinda blow past it. Routines are great. If you can set yourself up to start work at this
time, every day. Maybe you have a
set certain things that you do first
thing in the morning. We close up shop by
this time of the day. Great. A routine certainly can help
with staying productive, but things come up. Sometimes we can't always stick to the exact same routine. Sometimes we were
up late last night and we want to sleep
in a little bit more. And frankly, one of
the reasons I own a business for myself is
because I don't like routine. If I want to make an appointment for something in the
middle of the day, I want to be able to do that. So if you're a routine person, set yourself a routine. Alright, my next one, which I actually do is
set aside work days, whatever this means to you. So what I do, I block
off certain days on my calendar when I don't make any appointments
with clients, I focus solely on
getting work done or doing administrative tasks
or working on my business. That way I know I won't
have distractions with calls coming in
or other meetings. I can focus on the things
that I have to get done. So this can be a day or a
couple of days each week, or maybe a day or
two each month, depending on how much time
you need to set aside dedicating a few days here and there to just getting
the things done, taking care of the things
that you need to take care of is going to
help stay productive. Next, figure out when
you are most productive, get as much work done at that time for me and
a lot of other folks, I'm most productive in the morning before
e-mails start coming in, before call start coming
in when my head is at its clearest and when I most focus is pretty much first
thing in the morning. So if I have big
things to work on or important tasks to do, I tried to get them done
first thing in the morning. Not everybody is a
morning person though. Maybe you work better, your mind is clearer in
the evening or at night. If that's true for you, then it's okay to not be super
productive in the morning. Do some easier stuff, gets some other stuff down
in the morning and save that stuff for when
you do your best work. Next, of course, I don t
think that's the big secret, but delegate as
much as possible. And administrative tasks, maybe social media, marketing tasks, anything that you can hand
off to somebody else or anything that's not your area of expertise or your strength, delegate it as much as possible. I'm terrible with social media. I hate planning and developing my own
social media content. So I gave that to
somebody else to do because why would I
waste my time doing something that I don't like doing and I'm not good at doing when I can hand that
off to somebody else and focus
what I am good at.
3. Plan your schedule: Next, tried to plan your
schedule in advance, maybe on Sunday or Friday afternoon or
even Monday morning. Think of everything
that you have to get done or would like
to get done the next step following week,
write down everything, do a brain dump of everything that you'd
like to get done, and then try to prioritize
what needs to get done, what would be great to get
done and what can wait. And this is where sun Sama
really comes in handy. Samsara allows you to plan
tasks on a day-by-day basis. You can actually block out
time for specific tasks. You can say how long this
task is going to take you. So you can see, visualize
on your calendar. Here's when I'm gonna be
working on this thing. Here's what I'm
gonna be working on this thing here is when
I have this meeting, oh, I'm going to get to
this thing that day. You can see exactly how your productivity is going to play out all within son soma. And it integrates with all your other App and
project management tools, which is great if
you're still feeling overwhelmed or if you feel
like you've got so much to do, I'll tell you guys when
I feel overwhelmed, that's what I'm my
least productive. If I've got so much going on, I just kinda shut down and I
don't want to do any of it. And so in those instances
when I'm super overwhelmed, I tried to think
of one big thing that I can get done each day instead of trying to
cram it all in on one day and knowing that
I'll get overwhelmed, I'll say, okay, as long as
I get this one thing done, I can say it was a
good, productive day. And again, that's
where it's done. Sama comes in super
handy scheduling out. What one big thing am I
going to get done today? Tomorrow's big thing
is gonna be this, the next day is big
thing and so on. Or maybe even that might
be too overwhelming. So if doing one big thing a day is still going to
feel like too much, then maybe just
do little bits or the easiest parts of
each project in one day. The idea here, the goal is
to not get freaked out, knock it's so stressed out and overwhelmed that your
productivity tank, whether it's completing
one big project today or checking off a
few of the smaller, easier portions of
each project in a day, whatever works best for you if you're still
super overwhelmed. I mean, it happens you guys, sometimes we can get productive and still just feel
like we're drowning. And for me on those days, I don't wanna do anything. And then at the end of the day I feel like crap because I haven't gotten anything done and
I wasted an entire day. If you're just
completely underwater and feeling like you're
not getting anything done. Fine. One small thing,
it doesn't matter how important or
minute it might be. Get one thing done, find one little
thing that you can get done for the
day just to have the satisfaction of
checking off that box or clicking that button that
you completed that one. Tiny little tasks. My next
tip, keep notepads everywhere. I have notepads
all over my house. I have one next to my desk. I have one on my coffee
table by my couch. I have one next to my bed. I carry a notepad in my purse. You can use notepads
on your phone. Or if you have an
app on your phone that lets you jot down
notes, keep it everywhere. So anytime you think about Oh, I have to get that
done tomorrow, write it down and that
way you don't have to worry about am I forgetting
to do something? Because at least, you know, it's written down somewhere. Of course, with
distractions, like I said, they'll fewer distractions
you can have the more focused and productive
you're going to be. What I like to do. Of course, I keep my phone next to me because I always want to
have my phone nearby, but I turn it face down
so I can't see alerts, so that thing
doesn't light up and distract me from
whatever else I'm doing. I keep it nearby, just face down while I'm working on
something important. I also like to close out my
e-mail on my web browser and any other distracting pages or programs that might tear me away from what I'm
trying to focus on.
4. Final tips: My next tip, stop
saying yes to things. If you really don't
mean in a lot of us, we have a lot of
things coming at us. Invitations to
networking events, or are people who want
to grab coffee with us, or maybe we're being invited
to speak at a presentation. All of these things are great, great ways to grow your
business network, meet people. But if you don't
really want to do it, if you're not excited about doing whatever the
thing is that you're being asked to do politely
decline because in the end, maybe you missed out
on that opportunity, but at least you're
not going to have that angst or that stress over, Oh, now I have to do this thing that I really
didn't want to do. So as much as you
can just learn to say no unless it's
a definite yes, keep track of your time
when you're working on common or repetitive
tasks or projects. If there's something
that you do on a regular basis or some type of service that you provide
or something you commonly do in your business. Keep track of how long that
takes you that way you know, how much time to dedicate to that project in the future
when it comes up again. Because if it's something
repetitive in common, then gonna come up again. And if we know this for me, certain kinds of contracts are certain when I'm
setting up an LLC, I know for the most part
exactly how long that takes me. So when I have one to do, I know I need to set aside at least this much time to
get that thing done. Of course, use technology and automate things as much
as possible any way that we can leverage all of this wealth of technology
that we have to automate things and have
things done without us having to do them ourselves is of course
going to save time. It's going to make our
businesses more efficient. And it's going to let us focus on the more important things. I did a video while
ago about some of my favorite tools in managing my business and
automating my business. So you check the
link below for that. I think it's called
the essential tools for running your business. But check that out if you
want to know more of some of my favorite tools for automating and simplifying your business. And lastly, I think one of my favorite ways of
staying productive, one of the most important
things that I do to stay focused and productive is think about the things
that drain my energy the most and do those
things last in the day. For me, I'm I'm a pretty
introverted person. A lot of human contact,
face-to-face interaction. It really just drains my energy. And so as much as possible, I try to schedule
client meetings, phone calls, anything where
I have to talk to a person. I tried to set those for later
in the day because I know afterwards I'm
gonna be spent I'm not going to have any more
energy for getting things, all the other things
down that I have to do. I also know that
wherever that's not possible if I have to have
a meeting in the morning, I know that I'm gonna be pretty
tired after that meeting. So that tells me don't plan
all of these important, difficult to do's after all those meetings because I'm going to need to take a nap. I'm going to need to
sit on the couch, take rocky out for a
walk or do something to just kinda chill out and get back that energy
that was spent in those human to
human interactions. But that might not be, you may be working on
some specific aspect of your business or maybe social media planning if you're
doing that yourself. If you know that that
really Tucker Xiu out that drains your energy. Plan that for last thing in the day or last
thing in the week, or a time when you
know, after that, you can just chill and not
worry about anything else. That's all for this episode. Folks drop a comment below. Let me know what you think. And again, don't forget to
check the description for links to additional
information and resources, including a link to get your free 14 day
trial with sun sama. Thank you all so
much for watching.
Aldz Kocharyan, Business Coach
