No matter what your profession, you want to accomplish more goals. And you want to accomplish your goals twice as fast. If you are still working for an employer, you want to get twice as much done for your startup so you can achieve better results.
Everyone wants to be more productive . But the problem is that most people aren’t very productive. We often find ourselves busy with all of the tasks we must complete in a given day, but being busy doesn’t mean being productive.
What we get done in relation to our ambitions actually determines how productive we truly are. Some days I may work for only an hour and feel very productive. Yet on other days I may work for six hours and feel like I accomplished nothing.
Getting more stuff done requires shifting your mindset and examining all of the work that you do in a given day. These five power tips will guide you.
#1: Focus On A Few Big Tasks
Most of my weekly scorecards are filled up with goals from the top to bottom. On some weeks, I’ll give myself 15 big goals to complete. I keep all of these scorecards in a single folder. This allows me to take a walk down memory lane to see what I was working on that is now complete.
Those memory lane walks are sweet, but they also reveal a lot.
I didn’t know it when I started, but keeping all of these scorecards allowed me to have a file containing the secrets to my productivity. I have scorecards in which I accomplished every goal (very rare) and scorecards in which I accomplished very few.
It turns out I have a higher chance of getting all of my goals accomplished if I give myself fewer things to do! Even when the fewer goals are more challenging than all 15 combined.
It’s actually easier, and more productive, to focus on accomplishing fewer, challenging goals than it is to accomplish numerous, simpler goals.
Numerous goals requires that you to spread your energy across a larger playing field. But the more you spread your energy, the less focus you have to concentrate on each individual goal.
Productivity is not measured by how many checkmarks end up on your scorecard. Rather, it’s measured by the impact on the work you are trying to accomplish.
#2: Outsource The Smaller Tasks
With that said, we must complete numerous tasks for the survival of our businesses. If we focus on fewer things, the rest of the business will fall apart.
For a long time, my focus was on completing the numerous tasks that called for my attention. I was always busy, but I wasn’t always productive.
For example, one task was growing my Twitter audience and providing them with content. But the tasks associated with my Twitter account eventually became busy work and detracted me from accomplishing other, equally important goals
At the same time, my income wasn’t increasing and my blog subscribers weren’t growing. While that , I simply didn’t have any time to address those issues.
Then I learned of the magical “O” word: outsourcing.
Outsourcing is the act of paying money to buy back some of your time. I no longer schedule my tweets myself or try to grow my Twitter audience. My freelancers do that for me. And they help me with my podcast, Pinterest account, picture creation, and spreading the word about what I do.
If I have to devote a lot of my time to accomplish these smaller, yet important, tasks, I can’t imagine my business moving forward. Outsourcing saves me a lot of time by taking tasks off my hands. But it also saves me time in other ways.
For instance, if you want to create an app but don’t know how to code, hire a developer and have that person create the app for you. Not only will you save time on creating the app, but you will also save time on learning to code.
#3: Give Yourself A Deadline
Deadlines create a sense of urgency. Urgency leads to action. Without specific deadlines to meet, procrastination will dominate your life. The problem with a “soon and later” mentality is that neither soon nor later ever happen.
That’s why I create a weekly scorecard filled with deadline specific goals. The scorecard creates that sense of urgency I need to get my work done. The goals are challenging, but not impossible. And each is marked according to priority.
The deadlines boost my focus because of the time constraints. I force myself to focus on higher priority goals and get those done before starting on the less important tasks.
Each deadline should be accompanied by a plan. What must you do each day in order to achieve a specific goal? Is it possible for you to take time off in the middle of working, or is this an all-in type of goal?
The more detailed your plan is, the easier it will be for you to implement it and accomplish your goal.
#4: Add A Deadline Motivator Into The Mix
Deadlines are as potent as you make them. Some deadlines will carry no weight whatsoever, while others will loom over your shoulders. The potency of a deadline motivator determines the potency of the deadline itself.
For most people, the biggest deadline motivator is accountability. Share your objective with a few people whom you can rely on to help you reach it. Now you’re accountable. Don’t tell people who will try to discourage you. Why even talk to them in the first place?
Accountability is a strong and easily accessible deadline motivator.
I am in the midst of working with a big deadline motivator. Towards the end of August, my first season of NCAA cross-country begins. Practices begin at 7:30 a.m., so I want to schedule as much content in advance as possible.
That is why I set these three goals for myself to complete before the end of August:
- Write 30 blog posts.
- Create 30 YouTube videos.
- Interview 50 people for my podcast.
These tasks are in line with my overall content plan and will get me through 2016. Chances are I can run and grow my business as easily as I did in high school, but I want to be prepared. Thus, my view of the deadline motivator has made the deadline very potent.
I’m still doing a lot of exploration in my niche to discover new opportunities and stay up to date. Nothing will change but I want to have my content finished and ready to go.
What potent deadline motivator can you think of so that your desire to meet the deadline is just as strong? Make it as potent as you can.
#5: Less Talking, More Doing
Most thoughts pertaining to my business rattle through my head. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about them.
I spend most of my business hours putting in the work. The only business activity I engage in when I am not actually carrying out the work is formulating a plan to carry it out more effectively.
The more time you spend working on your business with the right plan in place, the more you will get accomplished. Productivity involves working efficiently, but no matter how efficient you become, you always have to put in the work.
In Conclusion
Goals pile up. And multiple goals require spreading your time and energy across multiple tasks. That’s the story of most entrepreneurs.
The most successful entrepreneurs are experts at prioritizing and knowing when to say no. Not all objectives are created equal, and certain tasks are simply not worth the time.
Outsourcing eliminates unworthy tasks. Saying no to certain tasks allows a stronger concentration of focus on the opportunities that will yield the strongest results.
What are your tips for accomplishing more goals? Did any one of these tips resonate with you the most? What goals do you want to accomplish this year? Sound off in the comments section below.
Success! You will receive your free eBook shortly.