5 Things to Stop Doing to Be More Productive
Everyone’s looking for ways to be more productive. Whether you’re wanting to find more time for a side project or have your business take off a little quicker, there are a few things that you can STOP doing to help you get there.
1. Stop checking your email first.
When it comes to productivity as an entrepreneur, YOU GET TO CHOOSE. You get to choose where you focus your time and energy.
By starting the day with your email, you are doing two things:
Giving your most-productive, high-concentration time away to a low-concentration task.
Allowing your day’s focus and priorities to be decided for you.
As I talk about in the blog post Three Steps to Make the Most of Your Time, your daily tasks can be categorized into two types: high-level and low-level concentration activities. Your high-level concentration (HLC) tasks require your focus and undivided attention to complete. These might include client sessions, creating content, or leading a meeting. Low-level concentration (LLC) tasks can be done almost any time. They don’t require a lot of brain power to perform and can be done with interruptions. LLCs might include checking email, answering text messages, updating your calendar, engaging on social media, or listening to a recorded training/audiobook.
For most people, we start the day with higher energy levels, which means better focus and the ability to be creative and think through complicated ideas. As with any other muscle, our brains tire with use. While focus can be maintained longer with adequate sleep, food, and frequent breaks, there will be a point in your day when you no longer have the brain power to keep up that same high level of concentration.
Instead of starting your day with a low-level concentration task that can be done--from a brain energy standpoint--at any point in your day, try devoting your first block of time in your day to your most important, HLC task.
When you open up your email first thing, what happens? From my experience and those of my clients, you get sucked in. Maybe the first one or two emails were useful, but then you saw the sale going on at your favorite shoe store. Thirty minutes later, you’re searching for your perfect summer sandal. You get an email from a work partner with a question, and your entire morning gets diverted from your original goals.
I’m not saying that sometimes important things pop up, and you have to shift your priorities around. Life happens. But, if you find yourself constantly diverted to other people’s requests, it may be time to look at what is truly urgent and what can wait...like 99% of all emails.
Allow the first block of time in your day to be dictated by you. You’ll more than likely find that you can accomplish a lot more with ease.
2. Stop putting in more hours.
I spent most of my life with the view that more = better. It seemed to work for a while until I crashed and burned feeling like a failure at both work and life. At that time, I was working 70+ hours a week on 4-5 hours of sleep a night. I could no longer function at my highest level. Everything that I tried to do seemed to go wrong.
As I talked about earlier, we only have so many hours (typically about 4 hours a day) that we are truly operating at our best. Our brains tire. Our bodies tire. We need sleep, breaks, exercise, and fun interests to be our best selves. That’s why I’m not a fan of phrases like “push through” or “hustle.” You can have a side business or a side interest, but please, don’t call it a side hustle.
There’s a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology that looks at long work hours and cognitive function. Their findings showed that those who worked 55+ hours a week scored lower on both vocabulary and reasoning tests than those who worked 40 hours or less.
All those extra hours spent working are not necessarily equating to accomplishing more. Instead of spending more time at work, what if you focused on doing the most important and effective things at the best times for you?
3. Stop doing everything yourself.
As a new entrepreneur, you wear a lot of hats: CEO, Promoter, Service Provider, Administrator. Some of those hats fit well while others--some of which you may not have even known you needed when you got started--are a bit of a struggle to wear. As a health coach, you can deliver some amazing coaching sessions and meal plans, but keeping up with the bookkeeping or marketing on social media isn’t really your forte.
The trick is to stop doing everything yourself. As I talk about in Your To-Do List: Remember the 4 Ds, focus on what you do best, and see how you can delegate what doesn’t need to be done by you. You can hire someone to help with almost anything these days: copywriting, social media posts, website setup and maintenance, video editing, logo design, bookkeeping, meal planning, grocery shopping, childcare.
Look at ways you can automate as a way to delegate. You can schedule email sequences and social media posts. You can automate your scheduling and payment processes. Have your bank pay your bills automatically. There are subscription boxes that can deliver your food and anything else you need each month with just a click of a button.
Not everything requires money. Beyond hiring and automating, you can delegate household chores to other members of your family to help balance the workload. You can trade carpool and playdate duties with a friend or two. Ask a neighbor, family member or friend for help when you need it.
If it doesn’t have to be done by you, see if you can delegate it.
4. Stop saying “yes.”
I’m talking to you, people pleaser! As much as you want to help everyone and make everyone happy, you will more than likely end up devoting most of your energy to projects and goals that aren’t even yours. The key is to know your own core values and business mission so that you can create some boundaries for yourself. Say “yes” to only those things that light you up and align with the direction you want to go. It’s okay to say “no” or “not right now.” Those “nos” give you the space to focus on the needle movers in your own business.
As I talk about in Getting The Right Things Done With the Pareto Principle, 20% of what you do accounts for 80% of your success. So, there’s a good chance that most of what you do in your business doesn’t really do much for you. Take a look at a few successes you’ve had in your business. What one or two things contributed the most to that success? Chances are that same handful of things made a big difference in more than one success. Those are your needle movers, your 20%.
From there, you can take a good, hard look at that remaining 80%. What can you start saying no to?
5. Stop multitasking.
As much as we like to believe we are multitasking geniuses who can cook dinner, answer emails, and hold a full conversation at the same time, we’re not. It turns out our brains like to focus on one thing at a time. When we try to do two things at once, we end up wasting time as our brains try to adjust to the new activity...and then back to the first activity. We do twice the things half as well as we would if we just gave one task our focus.
Instead, choose one task to focus all of your attention. Remove anything from your environment that could be a distraction: phones, email notifications, the TV, that pile of dirty laundry. Allow your brain to do one thing.
I’m a big believer in the Pomodoro Technique for focused work time. With this method, you set a timer and work for 25 minutes. Then, you take a five minute break and begin another 25-minute work session. The time constraint gives you a sense or urgency so you can more easily focus and reach that point of flow. If you want to experience the Pomodoro Technique for yourself in a group setting, click here to learn about and join a co-working session.
