Hi everybody. Welcome back!
I sent out a survey to my email list recently and i asked
what was the one thing that you're struggling with the most in your business or your creative practice?
And one of the top answers I got back was time management.
How to manage your time in the most productive way.
So what I want to talk about in this video today are ten ways that you can rescue an unproductive day.
Number one: Schedule everything!
If it's not on your calendar don't do it.
So that means time blocking.
Put everything on your calendar.
Put everything from waking up and drinking coffee and taking a shower and walking your dog
to client calls to design time to marketing time to business development.
Block out every moment of your day and treat
every time block as a deadline that you have to meet.
Number two: Kill the squirrels.
Turn off desktop notifications.
Turn off twitter notifications on your phone, news notifications.
I for one am an incredibly distractible
and so it keeps me ping-ponging from one thing to another
and I may be deep in thought and deep in a process of doing one particular thing
and a desktop notification pops up and it attracts my attention.
I think, "oh I got to answer that email or I just got to read that article.
And before you know it i am completely distracted.
So, kill the squirrels!
Number three: Do that one thing.
Do that thing that if you made just a little bit of progress on it and did nothing else during the day
that you would feel like you made some progress that day.
I suffer from productivity paralysis.
I have a tendency to do low priority things first
because they're small and I think I can get a bunch of them out of the way.
But what ends up happening is that I de-prioritize that most important thing
and it ends up happening at the end of the day when i'm really tired or not at all.
So, prioritize that one thing and it's generally the thing that you don't want to do the most,
you mostly want to procrastinate about,
and I do that thing first—before I look at email, before I do anything else.
Do that one thing.
Number four is set up reward.
Set up a reward for getting something done or a series of things done.
It could be as little as a cookie or a walk around the block
or listening some music or
it could be as big as a, you, know dinner out or a trip to Vegas.
Give yourself a reward and set up on a reward, something to look forward to for staying focused.
Number 5 is an easy one. Make plans.
Make plans at the end of the day to go do something.
Because then you have to make sure that you're going to be ready
and you're going to be done with what you're doing
so you can go do that thing that you planned.
It sounds really simple and it is.
Just make a plan to do something and it forces you to stay more focused.
Number 6 is take breaks.
And you have to schedule those breaks on your calendar.
It's proven that the top 10% of performers
take 15-minute breaks after every hour.
Just taking a break clears your mind and when you come back to the work,
it makes you more focused.
It seems counter-intuitive but it actually works.
And it's better for your body because you get up from your desk and you get some circulation going.
Number 7 is do something unrelated to your to-do list.
If you're doing a lot of designing
you may want to do a crossword puzzle or do some reading.
If you're working with a lot of numbers or words
you may want to do some image research or look at a photography book.
By giving your brain a break and working on something unrelated to your to-do list
and unrelated to what it is that you have been working on,
it refreshes your brain for when you get back to it.
Number 8 is no delete key; plow right through.
If you're writing, don't edit while you're writing that first draft.
If you're designing, don't get all noodley and perfectionistic on that first design that you're doing.
Go for volume. Kick a bunch of things out.
it's incredibly helpful and can make you more productive
than getting perfectionistic about things too early on.
Number 9 is no multi-tasking.
People think that they're great multi-taskers
but it's been scientifically proven that we're really not built for that mentally.
So trying to focus on one thing is going to make you much more productive
and you have to get rid of distractions.
So if you're writing turn off your phone.
Iif you're on a Skype call, close that browser window.
If you're designing, go full screen
so you don't have a bunch of windows distracting you.
You want to make sure that you're focusing on the task at hand
and time blocking with your calendar.
If you're focused on that deadline for that time block you have to do that thing
that's going to be helpful.
Finally, Number 10 is document your processes.
Now, this is a bit of an investment and it's a little bit of slowing down before you speed up.
But it's a really valuable one.
You want to write down the steps and processes
in every major thing that you do.
For instance, I have a checklist of about 15 things
that I go through when I create a YouTube video,
from recording to editing to thumbnail art, etc.
And by documenting your processes,
one of the added benefits of this is if you have people on your staff,
or you eventually get a virtual assistant or something like that,
you can use this documentation to train them to do what it is that you do,
to be able to delegate more easily what it is that you do.
And by, you know, having those steps codified,
it makes it easier for you to be efficient with your time
and to get things done very systematically.
So we want to write down and codify the steps for things like, you know,
project development or designing or
content development or publishing or new business outreach or marketing activity.
You want to write down specific steps for everything that you do
and then follow those steps.
It will make you more efficient.
So that's it! I hope you enjoyed this video and 10 productivity tips that can help you with your time management.
If you did please hit Subscribe below so you can see my videos when they come out,
and from Verhaal Brand Design, my strategic branding and design agency,
thank you so much for watching.
And if i can help you with your brand strategy or brand design in your career,
please reach out to me at PhilipVanDusen.com
and let's talk about what I can do to help you reach your business goals or your professional goals.
And with that, thanks again for watching! Bye for now.