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productivity

How Urgency At TJ Maxx Increased My Productivity

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It was getting obvious that my wardrobe needed to be revamped. I was wearing two of the same shirts every week, and I was getting tired of it. The solution was to buy clothing at TJ Maxx because of the low prices and good quality. The only problem is that we arrived at TJ Maxx at 8:30 pm, and the store closes at 9:30 pm.

It took me 30 minutes to find everything I wanted which means I had 30 minutes to try on 24 articles of clothing. I was going at a relatively slow pace until I heard that there were only 15 minutes left until closing time. That was when I kicked it in. I went through three articles of clothing a minute, and it was a close one. In the end, I was able to go on line with five minutes to spare.

The urgency of thinking I would leave with no clothing after spending an hour of the store resulted in me speeding up. Because of this urgency and increased speed, I know have a giant wardrobe and definitely won’t be wearing the same shirt every week.

When we get pushed, we become more productive. Getting pushed forces us out of the shell of stagnancy.

 

How We All Need To Think Of Excuses

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You could have come up with the best excuse for why your book did not get published when you said it would. The best excuse does not change the result–the book was still not published at the time you said it would be published.

“I didn’t study for the test because I had a project that week.” Although this excuse was well done, it does not change the fact that the person scored a low grade on the test.

“I don’t use Instagram because I don’t want to start from scratch when I have 500,000 followers on Twitter.” This is not an excuse. This is a logical reason. Focusing on the 500,000 followers on Twitter is more important than creating the Instagram account.

There is a difference between a reason and an excuse. An excuse is a cover up for a flaw on your part that could have been addressed better. It is better to admit mistakes than to cover them up so everyone can learn from those mistakes, not just you. A reason is something that makes sense but is not trying to cover up a flaw. Not having an Instagram account is not a flaw when you have a strong presence on Twitter. Likewise, not having a Twitter account is not a flaw when you have a strong presence on Instagram.

Excuses should not be tolerated. Mistakes should be admitted. Excuses are just the long route that ends up going exactly where the short route goes–the realization that there is a flaw. Reasons are good especially when they can be supported. Reasons are logical, and reasons don’t hide flaws because there is nothing to hide.

 

8 Ways To Increase The Amount Of Time You Have In Your Day

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If there was one thing we could all wish for, we would all wish that there were 10 extra hours in the day to get everything done. It seems as if our days are getting increasing busy, and there is less time to complete the tasks at hand. With a big pile of work, many people fear adding on to that workload, even if adding on to the workload means getting more opportunities. However, there are simple ways to hack the workload. In this blog post, I am going to reveal 8 of those methods.

  1. Identify any patterns that take up time. If you are scheduling tweets of your blog posts, chances are you search for the blog post on your blog, paste the link into Bitly, write the tweet on HootSuite, paste the link to your blog post in the tweet, and schedule the tweet. I have all of my tweets in a document on my computer which saves me from the first three steps. Joining HootSuite Pro allowed me to save even more time. It is easy to imagine that I save 4 hours every week.
  2. Choose wisely. Not all work is productive. Walking around your neighborhood with a flyer with a link to your blog is not as effective as becoming a guest blogger for a popular blog. Some opportunities are better than others, and it is important to pounce on the good ones when they come.
  3. Wake up earlier. This is an obvious, but easy way to get some extra time in your day. We are at our peak of productivity in the morning. By waking up at 7 am every day instead of 9 am, you will be able to be productive for an extra 60 hours every month. Imagine the things you will be able to do with 60 extra hours every month.
  4. Upgrade to save time. That’s exactly why I upgraded to HootSuite Pro for $9.99 every month. HootSuite Pro allows me to save a lot of time, and it allows me to organize my tweets and lists very effectively. What can you upgrade to save extra time. If you save an hour a day by spending $30 every month, you would have spent $360 for the year on those services, but you would have gained 365 extra hours. That’s enough hours to write a book, run it through an editor, get it copyrighted, and market it to the masses.
  5. Focus on what you are good at instead of trying to be something else. I decided to give coding a try, but it ended up becoming a very bumpy road. After spending a few weeks trying to learn code, I gave up. Now, I focus on what I am good at: my writing and expertise in social media, business, and blogging. I saved a lot of time by giving up on the coding early on so it would not swallow up any more of my time.
  6. Create rubrics. Imagine writing the same email, word for word, over 100 times, and the only thing different was the person’s name. I encountered this problem immediately when I submitted a query on HARO. Instead of creating custom messages, I created a rubric message for the people whose pitches I liked. Creating the rubric message allowed me to email hundreds of people within a week instead of sending out personalized messages which could take months.
  7. Do something incredibly time-consuming for a week while doing everything else at the same time. I will never forget the working curve it took me to send out replies to the people who sent in pitches to my HARO queries in 1 week. It was a time-consuming process. However, when I was done responding to people’s pitches, I had a big slice of time left. While I was responding to pitches, it would take me entire days to do all of my work. When I responded to everyone’s pitch, I was able to get my work done twice as fast and even able to extend my break by another hour. The reason summer is my most productive season is because I gain 8 extra hours since there isn’t any school.
  8. Hire assistants. Once you start to make it big time, have other people send out the HARO queries, respond to the pitches, and answer emails for you. Hiring assistants will be able to give you more time to produce quality products.

What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any other suggestions? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

How To Schedule Tweets Five Times Faster

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When I decided to tweet every 30 minutes, that meant more engagement for my tweets. However, tweeting every 30 minutes also meant putting in twice as much time to schedule tweets. On some days, I would spend hours scheduling tweets, and scheduling tweets for hours had an impact on my writing. I was still able to write quality content, but I was not able to write as much as I had in the past.

When I was tweeting every hour, writing 20 blog posts every week did not seem like a challenge. However, when I started to tweet every 30 minutes, writing 20 blog posts every week got progressively harder. To top it all off, I do other things such as videos, homework, and reading. I knew this was going to drive me crazy so I decided to search for a solution.

The funny thing is that the solution was in front of me the entire time. I use HootSuite to schedule my tweets. I had been using the free version of HootSuite for years, but ever since I started tweeting every 30 minutes, I noticed more of my time was getting gobbled up from scheduling tweets. The solution was HootSuite Pro.

HootSuite Pro has many features, but the only one I cared about at the time was the bulk scheduler. HootSuite gives you a file where you can write in all of the tweet you want to send out with the times and dates for those tweets (maximum of 350 tweets per file). Using the bulk scheduler is much faster than using the free version where you manually schedule one tweet at a time, change the dates, change the time, and change the AM and PM.

Now that I am able to schedule tweets 5 times faster, I am also able to write more blog posts. I now have enough time to write 20 blog posts every week and have time left over to write a book. If you are panicking and stressing about the workload of scheduling a lot of tweets and having it take up a lot of your time, I highly recommend paying $9.99 a month for HootSuite Pro. It is worth every penny and saves me at least 10 hours a week.

 

How To Keep The Momentum Going On Your Social Networks

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The growth of a social network is a slow process. However, when a social network starts to see a big pick-up in growth, you want that growth to either last as long as possible or for that growth to not stop at all. I remember when I went from gaining 50 followers every day to gaining 300 followers every day, I wanted that growth to last.

I ended up implementing the same tactics that resulted in me gaining 300 followers on a consistent basis. As a result, I was consistently gaining 300 followers every day. My following count rose dramatically.

After you get a momentum, you want to keep that momentum going. In fact, you want to get better results as well. Ever since I decided to tweet every 30 minutes, I have been getting more engagement for my tweets. My retweets, favorites, and Klout score have all gone up ever since I decided to tweet every 30 minutes.

In order to get better results after you master keeping the momentum, you need to dig deep into the facts, statistics, and articles on the web. The method I used to get 300 followers every day was following a highly regarded person’s followers in my niche. This person was also gaining 300 followers a day. However, my results became dependent on that person. When this person gained 150 followers for the day, I usually gained something close to that (this does not apply for famous people who gain thousands of followers every day). This 300 followers a day increase suddenly went down to a 150-200 follower increase every day.

I did some research and found the #1 most influential social media expert. This person gains over 500 followers every day. I decided to follow this person’s followers instead. Now, I am gaining over 500 followers every day as well. Now I have a stronger momentum which will most likely catapult me onto Forbes’ next Top 50 Social Media Power Users List.

How could I keep the momentum going? I could tweet every 15 minutes. Although that would require a colossal amount of time, I am considering pursuing the task. In addition, I am deeply considering buying access to HootSuite Pro to make scheduling tweets much faster. I could send out more tweets at the moment with pictures to get more retweets and favorites. Building strong presences on Vine and Pinterest will allow me to get even more followers on Twitter.

In order to keep the momentum going, you need to have a big goal in mind. For me, that goal is to be gaining 1,000 followers on Twitter every day before 2014 comes to a close.

 

How To Make Better Use Of The Time You Have

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Time management is something that we all seek. We understand that time is our most valuable resource, but allocating that time properly has become more of a challenge. When it comes to utilizing time, it is important to identify how we are already utilizing the time that we have. You may be spending 30 minutes on Twitter every day. How you spend those 30 minutes depends on how productive you are. Spending 30 minutes on Twitter looking at the trending topics is not as productive as 30 minutes on Twitter connecting with your followers and following targeted users.

Some people are spending the same amount of time you are, but by making some small changes, these people are able to get more done. For a blogger, writing 5 blog posts in 30 minutes is more productive than doing typing speed tests for 30 minutes. There are too many people who complain about all of the goals that are not getting done. The simple fix may be to utilize the time you have dedicated to your goals differently.

There are many solutions to getting better time management such as using score cards and following these tips. However, getting better time management all comes down to how you are utilizing the time you already have. 30 minutes of watching is not as productive as 30 minutes of doing. Making better time with what you have starts by focusing on the time you are already using.