Every so often as I’m growing my business and income streams I get to a point where I become overwhelmed by an accumulation of tasks and adhoc ‘stuff’, some important some less so.
When I get to this point I know it’s time to go back to some basic principles, one of which is the 80/20 rule (also known as the pareto principle). The principle is that 80% of your time should be spent on the 20% of tasks that create most value. This principle is not a difficult one to grasp, however implementing it can be confusing and in the beginning I know that I didn’t really know where to start.
Over the years I’ve learned what activities create the most value and which tasks can become time sucks if you let them.
I’m writing this post about what I’m doing to realign my 80/20 and increase my productivity in the hope that some of the things I’m doing will jump out at you as ones that you can improve on.
1. Have shorter business calls more frequently
For me business calls are high value tasks but what worked last year doesn’t necessarily work now when the business landscape has changed. One way I identified with Antonia as a way to increase our productivity was to go from having one hour long call in the middle of the week to having two 30 min calls. These calls will take place at the beginning of the week and then another in the middle of the week. Implementing this change will allow us to discuss and set a plan on a monday and then have a progress call on the wednesday. This will cut out some emails and shorter calls should ensure that we’re more focussed as we have to fit it all into 30 minutes.
2. Unsubscribe from email lists that are irrelevant
We all end up joining various email lists over time and while there are quite a few I thoroughly benefit from being a member of I’ve grown out of others and there comes a time when I need to go on a bit of a cull. This is a good thing as I can give more focus to the ones that I find interesting and valuable 80% of the time.
3. Outsource the logistics of blogging, social media and email marketing
Once your business reaches a certain point it makes sense to outsource some admin tasks. Just to be clear Antonia and I still create all the content on our blogs and email newsletters however we do have help in maintaining these things. Repurposing articles for various blogs and newsletters is one such task that is now entirely handled by the lovely Carol.
4. Know which tasks make the money and focus on them
We keep a very close eye on which of our products generates the most income and every so often it’s important to ensure that we’re spending our time on these high value tasks. It’s equally important to cull the products and services that don’t create much income and take up more of their fair share of time.
5. Have a finish point
As business women and entrepreneurs it’s easy to get sucked into a cycle of constantly working, especially if you really enjoy your work as I do. Now that we’re out of launch phase it’s important to realign the life/work balance. I’m doing this by setting boundaries on what times I work and having a finish point. A finish point is really important, at what point in the day are you actually done?
When you run your own business there’s always more that can be done so these boundaries and finish points need to be lines in the sand you draw for yourself for your own sanity.
I have created a list of projects and once I’ve done something towards each project I consider my working day over. At the moment I’m heavily into personal development and training in niche areas and I usually start on this once ‘work’ is done but this is very much a choice thing at the moment.
6. Stop answering every PR request
Over the past year the amount of PR requests I get have gone through the roof and I know I’m not the only one. I used to answer each of these requests individually but I’m afraid I’ve had to take the approach that if I’m not interested I don’t respond. Occasionally I’m contacted a second time and if a PR takes the time to do a follow up then I will respond with a short email saying I’m not interested.
I’d like to be in a position to answer every email I receive but I can’t and so I figure I’m better off responding to clients and people that will benefit from an email response.
7. Trim the blogs I read in google reader
Some blogs interest me less because of my focus, others have dropped in quality. Every so often I’ll have a clear out to make space for fresh new content that will keep me progressing towards my own goals by giving me interesting and motivating material to read.
8. Focus on quality not quantity across all projects
My focus over the next business year is to take on less projects but make the ones I do amazing. I really want to focus on creating amazing new products that provide excellent value over the next year. This is what inspires and motivates me. If you have a product that you’d like to see us create let us know.
What still needs to be done;
9. Finding more efficient ways to liase with colleagues
I still don’t think we’ve refined the process of communication to a point where we can say that we’re always productive. Communicating via email can be clunky and phone calls can end up being time consuming. Working remotely from colleagues poses the challenge of how you keep each other in the loop whilst remaining productive. We’re improving but I don’t think we’ve found the perfect combination yet.
10. Find better, more efficient ways to deal with email
Email is an ever present and ongoing task. If you let it, it can be a real time suck. We’ve handed much of email over to our community manager but I still find I can be overwhelmed on my personal accounts. Unsubscribing from updates to this and that helps but I expect to come up with some new productive ways of dealing with email in the near future.
11. Learn to close email and social media during creative times
I’m bad for multi-tasking online and I know this slows me down and hinders my creativity so I’m going to make a concerted effort to close all applications including email and especially twitter when I’m in the flow.
So that’s what I’m doing. I’d love to know what you are you doing to improve your productivity?
Once you have decided to start a business, you need to assess which type of business will work best for you. A business idea that seems great on paper is fine … but you can’t tell if you have a really strong proposition until you have done some research. Make sure you run through this quick checklist and then explore any issues it raises in more depth:
