Game-Changing Productivity Hacks for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs - and humans in general - are not taught how to be productive.

The problem is, this is a skill that's critical to your success.

Don't seek to be busy, seek to work toward your goals in a meaningful way.

There are many misconceptions about productivity, like believing rest isn’t productive.

This is so false - and so damaging to our health on every level.

We’re just very unfair to ourselves when it comes to this skillset. It’s easy to look at other people’s perfectly presented lives online and feel like we’re lacking. Or to judge others for wasting time and not reflect on our own use of time more closely.

Why do we stay stuck?

Because we see what we’re missing or lacking, not what we have or can do.

Have you ever watched the? video where the person said imagine everyday you're given $86,400 and you have to spend it by the end of the day.

How would you spend it?

This is the equivalent of how many seconds there are in a day, and for some reason we value money so much more than we value time. You’ll squander seconds left and right, but if you’re given that $86,400 in cold hard cash, you bet you’re going to spend every cent of it so it doesn’t go to waste -? and the more you're used to having it, the smarter you get about how you invest it and the more diligent you are about creating a plan to invest it wisely.

Yet here you are at whatever age and however many seconds have passed, and you’re still not investing your time productively each day.

Your excuses are exactly why you aren’t where you want to be.

I recently interviewed an expert on productivity and procrastination and she said a lot of people compare themselves to others in unfair ways.

When you hear someone say “we all have the same 24 hours in a day” and think, “That's unfair! Beyonce has a team of people helping her extend that time. I have to work 2 jobs, pick up my kids from school and sports, cook all the meals for my household, care for myself, my dogs, and my home, and the list goes on…”

This is a statement made from lack.

If you were focused on what you do have,? you would figure out who you can ask for help, who you could afford to hire, how you could build skills to get a better job so that you could release your second job, and the list goes on.

I get it.? Life is not always easy and our circumstances can sometimes remain unchanged even when we pour everything we have into becoming better, more abundant versions of us. But,? what you're doing today never impacts today. What you're doing for today is designed to impact 3 months from now. It's your consistency and commitment that matters more than the circumstances changing in the moment.

So let's talk about the first hack, which is really an exercise for you to do after you spend a little bit of time - say, the rest of this week - tracking your time and all the things you do day to day. This is something my coach had me do recently, and it’s a GAME CHANGER.

It’s called do, delegate, delete.

You're going to look at your to-do list and all of the things that you do week-to-week and you're going to create 3 columns. The first one is all the things on that list that you're excited and energized by doing - most of which are likely in your zone of genius.

The second column is all the things that are in your zone of competence or excellence that you can either delegate to another person or automate so you’re not doing them.

The third column is all the things you don’t need to do right now and can delete. They don't have to be gone forever, they just can't be done by you or delegated to someone else right now so they have got to go. These are the things that have no real impact on your goals or revenue, and I want you to challenge yourself to find things to go in this column.

The second hack is repurposing time.

So let's say you have a friend who lives in the city. It only takes them 5 minutes to get anywhere they want to go. Meanwhile, you live in a super remote area and it’s going to be an hour before you reach any worthwhile destination.

If you were to put your problem solver hat on for a minute and focus on creating more productivity, you might see an opportunity to voice record some social media posts or videos for social media while you're in the car. Take public or shared transportation so you can work on important tasks instead of focusing on your driving.

You might take calls with clients in the car. You might hire a driver to host meetings from the back of a car. You might get an assistant to run your errands for you so you can work straight through the day.

I, for instance, listen to podcasts and books in the shower. I don’t have time to do it otherwise. I call loved ones on my morning walks so I can spend my evenings relaxing.

I shortened my call times by 15 minutes, so I can stretch my legs and refill my water without feeling rushed. I also made myself more focused on creating double the value I would have in that 15 minutes to be an even better coach to my clients.

Solution-oriented repurposed time is not just a hack but a skill - and a good one to master.

The third hack is to write down your schedule.

Don't just have a to-do list or an idea of how you want to spend your time - write it down.

Sometimes, you have to overly plan your days until you have a better handle on time.

It sounds ridiculous to write down everything, down to 10 minutes of planned rest time or 5 minutes of journaling. I know. This can also help you learn to build better habits.

Isn't that worth the work?

What gets measured gets improved, and if you’re not seeing how close or far off you are from your goals with time actually on paper, you’ll probably miss a dozen opportunities a day to create small wins with big rewards.

Another hack is to set better goals!

No one sets the goals or deadlines in your life but you, so why are you putting yourself in unreasonable circumstances and then beating yourself up for it? Just set more realistic expectations.

Sometimes, we fear what will happen when we fail, and other times we fear what will happen when we succeed. Like, what if this all goes right and I have to do it more? Well, that’s the beauty of your freedom of choice!

You get to choose if you ever do it again, or at all, even if it’s the most seemingly no-brainer decision to continue.

Stop fearing and start seeing more of what’s in your control because a lot of things are.

The last hack kind of relates to this concept of lowering expectations, which is to do less at a time.

Stop trying to do it all right now.

If you had 100 pounds to lose, you’d never try to lose it all in one day. So why would you expect to go from $0 to $10k in a day? Or even a week or a month? Take it one step at a time, one action at a time.

Better yet - do the math!

Figure out what it realistically will take you to hit your goals, and map the plan to get there by the time, effort, actions, and other important factors you’ve chosen to make it happen.

Seriously, $10k months is $2,500/week.

• How many sales do you need to hit that goal?
• How many offers do you need to make to create that many sales?
• How many people do you need to reach to make that amount of offers?
• How many times do you need to show up to reach that number of people?

Is it even possible to do based on how much time, skill, and money you have access to now?

This sounds simple, but I guarantee most of you haven’t run these numbers in awhile. You probably even have great metrics you track and don’t look at in your business that will tell you exactly what goals you need to hit to create the results you want.

Start doing this - and using what you have, however incomplete it is - to get even just a little closer to where you want to be. It makes a huge difference.

The bottom line is that when it comes to procrastination and productivity, if you just decide that procrastination is not an option and productivity is inevitable, you’ll find solutions all over the place to be your most productive self. If you convince yourself that procrastination is part of your personality and productivity is difficult to create, you're running an uphill race you’ll never win.

Again, you get to choose which story to believe.

You get to decide how you’re going to show up.

You get to control the results you create.

This is your time. Today is your day. Make it happen!