10 Tips - Productivity by Nathalina Harrison of Ayama Coaching

Running a small business often means juggling a never-ending mix of emails, clients, accounts, socials and admin. It’s no wonder so many of us feel stretched thin.

These productivity tips are simple ways to bring more focus and structure into your day, so you can use your time and energy where it matters most.

1. Plan to do 2 or 3 main tasks to focus on, each day (not 10) - your to do list should be 2^ndry to this.

2.      Devote your time to the task in hand, get rid of distractions, switch of phone alerts or ideally put your phone in another room.

3.      Turn daily tasks into Habits and do them at the same time each day – you will be quicker to start them and use less brain power in task switching.

4.      Only check emails/ texts/ WhatsApp a couple of times a day.

5.      If you find you procrastinate, commit to do the thing for 10 minutes and then allow yourself to stop (use a timer).

6.      Listen to Binaural Beats at frequency 8-14 Hz using headphones to change your state to focused and relaxed.

7.      Put all activities in your calendar (lunch, exercising, invoicing, accounts, website update, marketing, business development time) and repeat them for the whole year. Set these up to repeat.

8.      Build in time for thinking, be creative, complete research and don’t feel guilty about this – the 80/20 rule applies here.

9.      Take 5 mins before each call or meeting to decide what you want to achieve and 5 mins after to note down what you achieved/need to action. Keeping meetings to 20 or 50 minutes to allow you do this.

10.  Learn to say No. You don’t have to accept every piece of work that comes your way and you don’t need to accept every invitation. Weed out any time wasters.