Fixed routines make you efficient!

Monday again! Fortunately. That's when the week starts and many new and exciting things are about to happen. And you'll get tasks done quickly – as long as you have a plan!

A good plan includes having solid routines and scheduled tasks that you repeat repeatedly. I learned “scheduled” while working as a Time Manager International sales manager. These fixed and routine tasks form the foundation of all work.

I personally have a few such routine tasks that form the basis for everything else I do. And I do them every day - methodically and with allocated time in the calendar.

As you can imagine, I'm out of bed before the rooster crows – not that we have any chicken coops in the neighborhood, but the rooster that crows is in my head. It’s my biological alarm clock that wakes me up.

Then, it’s a brisk walk with Charlie and Lotte, my two four-legged friends, where they do their business while I get my blood circulating. After that, I use my home workout equipment, shower, and sit behind my Mac with a large jug of coffee for the day’s most important task – finding new potential customers.

That’s when I dive into LinkedIn to check which potential clients my system has automatically checked out overnight while I slept. The night before, I set up a search based on criteria from the target group I was focusing on. My system then goes through all the contacts in the search, visits their profiles, and collects the necessary information stored in a CSV file to generate lists for my CRM and telemarketing solutions.

I’ve been doing this for years with great success. But the secret is to do it every single workday.

Once this is done, I will move on to my call list and start calling new potential customers based on my digital contact work via LinkedIn and the email campaigns I sent out earlier.

In addition, I have a fixed, scheduled task every Friday at 9:00 AM. It’s to summarize the past week, plan the upcoming week, update all addresses, send invoices and reminders, record receipts, and other tedious tasks.

In my free time (outside scheduled tasks), I work on projects, clients, meetings (primarily digital), and other revenue-generating activities.

Do you think it's a good idea to me? Maybe, but it works. The hour I spend prospecting every morning is what lays the foundation for my business. It’s the groundbreaking work that everything else depends on. There’s a limit to how much you can get from a client over time. Sooner or later, a customer will reach the point where they no longer need your services and products. If you haven’t done prospecting alongside other work, your market will dry up, and you’ll have to start from scratch.

For those who don’t work in sales

You’re not in sales, you say? No, but still, it would be smart for you to schedule your routine tasks at fixed times – every day. It’ll be much easier for you, and you’ll free up larger chunks of your workday for the exciting stuff.

Here’s a suggestion:

• Write down all the routine tasks you have.
• Prioritize them in order of how value-creating they are.
• Group similar tasks into time blocks of one hour.
• Allocate time for these task blocks in your calendar every day for the next two weeks (I’ve scheduled mine for the next six months).
• It’s important to put it in your calendar so that colleagues can see that you’re busy and don’t book meetings when you should be doing your routines.
• Other tasks and meetings can be scheduled into the new free time blocks.

Follow this plan without deviation for two weeks. Be strict about sticking to it - endure even if other, more exciting tasks tempt you.

After a week or so, you’ll see that your workday improves. Suddenly, you’re on top of all your routine tasks. You’ll be ahead of events and won’t have long lists of undone tasks. Wow! That means less stress, more energy, and higher job satisfaction!

Have you already made the list and the plan? Congratulations!