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6 Tips to Boost Your Productivity

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By John Murphy

I don’t think I have ever met anyone who does not want to be more productive each and every day.

The day just never seems enough to get all you want done! Recognize this? Let’s be honest, it is an issue for all of us and is a constant challenge that comes up in all my coaching work.

Books have been written, courses delivered and seminars run on this subject – many wonderful (some not so much!) but the volume of advice can be so overwhelming that it actually inhibits your productivity. Not quite what you were looking for!

So, to assist in the elimination of the overwhelm I have set out my 6 Tips to Boost Productivity, which, if undertaken, will vastly improve your productivity and give you that sense of achievement at the end of the day that you are really seeking.

1. Be Razor Sharp About Priorities.

You can never be effective unless you have clarity about your priorities – otherwise you are just engaged in the next activity that lands on your desk or in your head. Busy? Yes. Efficient? No!

To get really clear about your priorities you need clarity about your goals so that you can decide if the specific activity you are undertaking is moving you towards the achievement of your goal.

Your priorities are those actions that will support the delivery of your goals. So, those things on your to do list today – do they progress your goals or not? If they don’t why are you doing them?

Get your priorities crystal clear!

2. Schedule Your Activities

This is fundamental to any discussion about time management and effectiveness! Schedule your activities as if they are appointments with yourself – and make that time as sacred as a meeting with your most valued client.

If one of your priorities this week is to prepare a performance review of your staff, or draft a proposal to a prospective client, then do not leave that activity on some to do list to do when you find time. Be disciplined about it and schedule to do it at a specific time and then be resolute about adhering to that.

An item on your to do list is an aspiration, a scheduled activity is a commitment! Being productive is all about commitment!

3. Be a Continuous Learner

Never be content about how productive you are – we can all get better! So have an attitude of continuous learning about ways to improve productivity. Now, just to be clear, I am not suggesting you spend your life trying out different systems for productivity. What I am saying is that new technology is being developed all the time that can really help your productivity, and don’t just ignore it. Check it out to see if it will improve your productivity – if it does, then incorporate it. If it doesn’t just dump it!

For example, I have become a recent convert to Evernote – a great tool to capture “stuff” on the go that I can refer to later. It really does help me to be more productive – I can have folders for various pieces of information I want to keep to look at later, and I know it is all in one place.

4. Celebrate Progress.

Every day celebrate your progress! Sound naff? Not at all! There is great value in reviewing your day and celebrating your successes and the progress you made towards your goals.

It is the fuel that boosts your energy for the following day.

5. No Multi-Tasking

I take real exception to those who laud “multi-tasking!” I do not believe it is a male/female thing – I believe it is simply a bad habit we can get into and then justify as a virtue!

Multi-tasking has to be inefficient because we are not giving full attention to any one thing, and consequently the output will reflect the input, which is divided and lacking focus!

Do one task at a time, and do not move to the next one until you have completed it. If you have scheduled the time for that activity, then give it 100%.

6. Restrict Your Time on Email

Email is one of the great tools we posses but it is also one of the greatest time stealers and inhibitors to productivity.

How often do you check your emails every day? Go on, be honest!

Checking your emails that frequently is only ensuring that your agenda is being run by everyone else – you want to know who has sent you what, and then you find that really interesting link.. ! 15 minutes later you realize that you are not doing what you should be.

I heartily advise that you allocate 3 periods in the day to check your email – and that is it! The world will not stop turning because you have not checked your email for 2 or 3 hours! Be in control of your time, not reacting to other people’s priorities.

We all can do something about our own productivity – and it is our responsibility to do so. So, now that you have read this – what are you going to do? And when are you going to do it?

Author’s Bio: John Murphy a business coach who writes about what makes executives and business owners more productive at www.johnmurphyinternational.com. You can find him on Twitter as @jmicoaching.

Positive Attitude Tips for Business

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By Sarah Gotheridge

Starting a business requires a number of things, including the initial capital, a business plan, and a location. An equally important factor is the right attitude.

A negative attitude is always bad for business. It is bad for you, bad for your colleagues and employees, and bad for the work environment in general. Potential customers and clientele are equally put off by a difficult or negative attitude. They will quickly take their business elsewhere.

It is easy to become jaded in the world of business if you don’t have strong emotional resources to draw from. Having the right attitude in business requires a positive attitude towards life in general. A negative attitude in business is like a runaway train that increasingly picks up speed. It will be a constant drain on the energy, creative drive, and ambition necessary for keeping a business viable and profitable.

In other words, if you approach life with a gloomy or negative outlook, you are doomed before you start

Business Tips

Business Relationships

Establish cordial relationships with similar business operators and owners. This will provide a broader perspective by which to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of your own business. Establishing a good working relationship with your competitors will also provide ideas and insights for improving your business.

Know When to Take a Break

It is difficult to maintain a positive viewpoint if everything remains dull and boring. Knowing how and when to take a break is an important skill to hone and savor. Many new business owners feel guilty if they take time away from the business. This means late hours, missed lunches, and taking work home. Now and then it may be necessary to work excessive hours to cover all the bases, but knowing how to take a break will pay off in the long run.

Avoid Unrealistic Goals

While it is important to be goal-oriented, unrealistic expectations will disappoint rather than fulfill your business aspirations. It is sometimes difficult to discern the balancing line between whimsy and inspiration. Inspiration can lead to creative innovations and solutions. Whimsical ideas, on the other hand, can be a useless expenditure of money and time. This can easily lead to a negative attitude, self-doubt, and the inability to make the important decisions. It helps to have a way of critically and objectively evaluating business practices and decisions. Strategy meetings and/or bringing in an outside consulting firm are two such options.

Networking

Once the business is up and running it is important to continue networking and developing contacts. Connections and contacts will continue to be a good resource for ideas and insights. A good contact base will also help you to stay up-to-date and more objective about how well your business is functioning.

Life Tips

Self Reflection

Our personalities are not set in stone. It takes courage to confront oneself and deal with our insecurities and perceived flaws. The Greek philosopher, Socrates, said the beginning of wisdom is to “know thyself.” One of the insights of psychoanalysis is that many people choose to keep many aspects of their personality in the dark. Taking the time to be reflective helps keep things in perspective. You will have a much better appreciation and attitude towards yourself and life in general.

Enjoy Life

Nourish other interests and desires besides the passion for work. This could be any number of things such as playing your guitar in a band on the weekend, going white water rafting and hiking, visiting museums, or reading some of your favorite authors. It may simply involve spending more time with family and friends. A person that doesn’t find time to enjoy things will have a difficult time keeping a positive attitude about life.

Author’s Bio: Sarah Gotheridge represents a site called Monetise.co.uk. She enjoys writing about business online and giving advice to new businesses.

Learning By Doing

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By Jeannie Walters

It’s sad to me how many people think they can’t do it. Whatever it is, they truly believe they cannot do it because they don’t have a rule book.

I remember interviewing a young woman who told me, in a job interview, that she could do whatever I outlined for her on a list and trained her carefully to do. “What if it’s not on the list?” I asked. Her answer was if it wasn’t on the list, she didn’t see it as one of her duties.

“It must be on the list.”

She didn’t get the job. Not because she wasn’t capable, because I believe she probably was, but because she was scared of the unknown. She was scared of trying new things. She felt she had to be taught every little thing before she would attempt it.

Baptism by fire is not a bad way to learn. It’s uncomfortable and scary, sure, but if you can survive, you can really make things happen.

There is no degree for customer experience. And yet that’s the focus of my career. Every day I’m doing something that scares me a little bit. And why not? Humans are awesomely unpredictable. What worked last time will not necessarily work this time.

How do you learn by doing?

Jump in, the water’s fine.

Next time you find yourself saying, “But I’ve never done that before” as an excuse to NOT do it – stop yourself. Rephrasing helps me. “I get to do this for the first time!”

Learn from the masters.

Since the dawn of time, humans have been learning from one another. If you’ve never hosted a webinar before, be sure to attend a few to see what works and what doesn’t. If you’re scared to start that kickboxing class, go to the gym the day before and scope it out a little. It’s ok to do research and recon.

Ask for help.

While this seems to be an issue for many of us, it’s a critical part of learning. Ask for support and help, even if it’s just having a few friends there to cheer you on.

Keep up.

The best people I know are perpetual students. With so much information so readily available out there, it’s easy to keep learning. If you are in a role that is about marketing, make sure you read and follow and watch what’s out there about that role. Do your homework, but don’t let that be a crutch, either. Sometimes you have to stop the surfing and get stuff done.

Forgive your missteps.

Have you ever noticed we are often kinder and more forgiving to others than we are to ourselves? Doing things we haven’t necessarily been taught how to do means we will learn from our inevitable mistakes. If something doesn’t work, examine what didn’t work about it so you can improve the next time. Cut yourself some slack. Forgive and move on.

Give it your all.

Creating something from nothing requires brain power, stamina and determination. There will be times you want to give up, mostly because it’s outside your comfort zone. Don’t do it. Set a small goal and accomplish it. Then set a loftier one and accomplish that. You can do this.

The world is such a cool place these days. We can connect with like-minded people all over the world and create our very own dream jobs. Don’t let a lack of “a list” prevent you from accomplishing great things. Do it. The learning will happen.

Author’s Bio: Jeannie Walters is the Chief Customer Experience Investigator™ and founder of 360Connext, a customer experience consulting firm. Walters has been focused on customer experience issues for more than 15 years and works with organizations all over the world.

Walters now speaks, writes, consults and generally thinks about how the small experiences we have each day – going to the bank, ordering online, tweeting – create the greater experience of our lives. Walters lives outside of Chicago with her husband Mike and their two young sons. As such, her current hobbies include cheering on distracted t-ball players and building impressive Lego villages.

How to Live with Intensity

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By Robert D. Smith

Behind the scenes, most people who are truly successful live lives that can only be described with one word—intense.

They are intense about their work, their time, their money, and life itself. They use a different thought process than most people.

On the outside looking in, you may not always be able to notice. After all, we usually imagine successful people as these incredible individuals who just seem to have everything together and nothing at all to worry about.

Really, it’s the opposite. Successful people only appear to have it all together because of the intensity it takes to create that appearance in the minds of others.

But what exactly is that intensity, and how can we activate it in our own lives?

Intensity is:

  • Living with an extreme sense and awareness of your purpose. Successful people have a vision of which they remain intensely aware.
  • Acknowledging that you have a limited amount of time to accomplish your vision. Nobody lives forever.
  • Possessing extreme focus on two things: what’s important now and what’s next.

What most people miss, however, is that intensity is not a state of mind…it is a state of emotion.

Pursuing anything with intensity requires that you be emotionally connected to it. You must possess a fanatical commitment to follow through.

Here are a few easy things you can do on a regular basis to keep the intensity trending UP in your life:

  1. Count your days. This is something I started doing a few years ago. I remind myself of this daily, and I can’t recommend it enough. You will gain a new appreciation of what can be accomplished in a single 24-hour period. If you’re interested in figuring out your number, there’s a simple calculator on my website that will tell you.
  2. Ask yourself two questions that will keep you in constant motion: What’s important now? What’s next? If you focus on these two questions, it will be almost impossible for your intensity level to drop. They will get you up early and keep you up well into the night.
  3. Honor your family members and close friends. When you keep the people who matter most as top priorities in your life, you will constantly be reminded of a major reason to strive to do better. Seek to honor them in all that you do.

Keeping your intensity level up will not only make you more productive, it will make you more aware. Time will no longer just slip away and get wasted on the things you know are not important, in both your professional and personal life. When you’re able to focus in on only the things that truly matter, amazing things will happen.

What do you do to keep your intensity level up?

Robert was gracious enough to share a copy of his new book, “20,000 Days and Counting,” for our community! Comment below if you’d like to have the free copy; best comment as judged by me wins the book. –Rosemary

Author’s Bio: Robert D. Smith is the author of 20,000 Days and Counting and a consultant to numerous best-selling authors, speakers, and entertainers. You can find out more at TheRobertD.com.

Getting out of Bed on a Dark Day

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By Chris Brogan

I got diagnosed with severe clinical depression over a year ago, and for a while, I really hung to that diagnosis. It helped me frame a lot of what had been going wrong in my life. But then, I realized that I was really clinging to it. A lot too much. And so I decided that I’d try a new tack.

“YES AND” THINKING

Improv actors have a rule: you must never say no in a performance with another improv actor. If they start with, “You seem tired today,” you may not say, “No, I’m not.” You must say, “Yes, and…” and say what will keep the performance moving. I decided that with my depression, I’d adopt some “Yes, And” thinking to the process.

If it’s a dark day, and if I feel down, I don’t want to get out of bed. Bed makes for a great sanctuary when you’re depressed. But here’s what I’d tell myself: “I want to stay in bed. I’m depressed. I have severe clinical depression.” Pause. “Yes, and though I want to stay in bed, I’ve got work to do, and I really like to eat, so I’d best do some of that work. Let’s start by just getting out of the bed for a minute and see if you can walk around.”

SHAKE THE LABEL

I found something else out: once you earn a label, you really hold onto it, good or bad. If you’re labeled as the show-off, you start thinking about ways to do so. If you’re labeled the rebel, you ask, “What would a rebel do about this?” If you’re labeled as severely clinically depressed, it’s easy to say, “Well what do you expect? I’m depressed.”

But my girlfriend, Jacq, got me thinking about ways to shake the label. She said, “You’re down. You’re not feeling well for a moment. That’s okay. But let’s not let it shake the rest of the day.”

Now, realize that when you’re suffering from depression, the last thing you want is for someone to cheer you up. That’s not okay. But what I did take from her perspective was that I didn’t have to stay depressed. And just that one thought got me to really shake off the label. Now, even if I’m really feeling bad, I don’t immediately label it as “depression.” Instead, I look at what’s hurting, acknowledge it, and then try to let that hurting continue while I go about my day. I don’t tamp it down. I try to feel it.

THIS IS JUST MY RECIPE

Everyone is different with how they face their day. But in figuring out these few little details, I’ve been able to get more done. As someone working on being the SOB that Liz wants me to be, that’s how I accomplish as much as I can. I’d love to hear your own recipes for getting out of bed on a dark day.

Author’s Bio: Chris Brogan is CEO & President of Human Business Works. We help you learn to do work the way you want to do it. He’s the author of a new book, It’s Not About the Tights: An Owners Manual for Bravery. See him at SOBCon!

Motivation on a Moment’s Notice

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By Elaine Love

How do you keep yourself motivated when inspiration seems to be hiding under the Oriental rug in your office?

A few weeks ago, Tiffany Matthews detailed suggestions to “Beat Writer’s Block with These Simple Tips.” Absolutely trips and exercise change the perspective and refresh the spirit. What if you have a pressing deadline and you need an immediate energy infusion?

Perhaps these suggestions will release your frozen fingers from the keyboard and allow the words to flow again.

Pictures of Loved Ones

When I am in word deficit and needing a quick burst of inspiration, all it takes is one glance up at the top of my roll top desk and smile at the pictures of my blond curly headed grandsons. One peek at their innocent impish grins and it is easier remember the purpose of writing is to inspire, empower and improve the lives of the readers.

Think about the fun moments with them and the lessons you both learned from your shared adventures. There is always a glimmer of inspiration in memories. It may be the brain boost you need to refresh your spirit and thus your keystrokes.

Music

Darren LaCroix, 2001 World Champion of Public Speaking, listens to Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” and the epitome of testosterone, “The Theme from Rocky” before he delivers a major keynote speech. Music gives him energy to give his very best to the audience. Isn’t that what we do as writers, give our very best to our audiences? Many network marketers put on rousing tunes to accelerate their adrenaline before picking up the phone for morning calls.

What music frees your mind, engages your energy, and opens the door to creativity? For me it is Josh Groban or Andrea Bocelli; there is something magical about a romantic Italian with a beautiful voice.

Success CD

When my eyes open of a morning it is time to pull on the exercise tights and a sweatshirt, grab a quart of Smart water and head for the treadmill. The exercise invigorates my body. The CD player on the stand by the treadmill contains the latest CD from Success magazine or the newest Success book summary CD. There is always a wealth of inspiration packed in those audio discs.

Keep a notepad handy. Hit pause on the treadmill and jot a fast note to yourself. You may be coordinated enough to write while walking or running on the treadmill. Either my handwriting would not be legible or I would fall off the machine; jumping off to write seems to work better.

Step outside

One deep breath of fresh Colorado mountain air clears the mental cobwebs and relaxes the mind. Watching a doe with a tiny spotted fawn having lunch on my neighbor’s perfectly trimmed shrubbery can cause a smile to cross my face.

Sometimes all it takes is a tiny mental break to refresh the spirit and free the mind.

Author’s Bio: At home in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, Elaine Love writes about small business and the mindset for success so essential for an entrepreneur. She is the author of Emotional Ice Water. Find her on Twitter: @elainelove44 or Elaine4Success.com.