Are You Making These Mistakes & Sabotaging Your Productivity?

Here Are The Top 5 Productivity Mistakes Solopreneurs Make – And How To Avoid Them

I ruined my productivity and got almost nothing done for 21 days.

Have you ever been in a situation like that?

Things just come up, and you get overloaded.

Maybe you’ve been putting taxes off and you’re coming up on a deadline…

Or you made some crazy commitments a long time ago and it’s time to live up to them…

Or your family planned for you to help them with a big project because you work from home – so it’s kinda like you have unlimited free time – and you don’t want to tell them no?

I fell into that last one recently and it kicked my butt.

Let me explain… 

I spent over 80 hours in these last two weeks remodeling my apartment.

Now, the apartment didn’t need to be remodeled. I was happy with it the way it was. I had walls, a roof, and running water. What more could I need?

My landlord (I call him Granddad) had different plans. In his mind, when the last tenants moved out and I moved in, we would finally have the chance to renovate. Like, tear down the walls and redo the wiring levels of renovation. And because I’m a good grandson, I did as I was told. That meant getting up at 6 AM, working until sundown, and cleaning up to make the apartment livable again for the night.

And after 14 days of an abnormal sleep schedule, crazy work hours where I get almost nothing done (idk about you but I’m not creative at all after 6 PM), and an entire week of slacking and failing to readjust, I realized that I needed a plan to get myself back into my zone of genius.

So I sat back, took inventory of what I was doing wrong, and came to the conclusion that there were 5 huge productivity mistakes that I was making.

These 5 mistakes were killing my willpower, my creativity, and my motivation to work. And unfortunately, you’re probably making 2 or 3 of them right now without even realizing it. Let me show you what they are, how to avoid them, and what you should be doing instead…

Mistake #1 – Meals After 8 PM

Nearly everyone I know who works for themselves has awful dietary habits.

I won’t get into a preachy argument about monitoring your caloric intake, making all of your food from scratch, or eating more veggies…

(even though you should be doing every one of those things)

… but I will say that you need to be consistent and thoughtful about your eating schedule.

See, the most important thing that you have to do when attempting to become a more productive entrepreneur is to fix your health – most importantly, your sleep schedule. That means getting at least 7.5 hours of continuous sleep at night and having a regular waking time and bedtime. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

Eating before you go to bed will negatively impact the quality of your sleep. Basically, when your body’s digesting a heavy meal, it can cause tiny levels of heartburn or indigestion that you won’t even notice, but that are just strong enough to disrupt your deep sleep. And the less deep sleep you get, the more tired you’ll be the next day.

That cascades into lower willpower, less creativity, and the burning desire to take a nap in the 15 minutes you have left before you need to call a client.

Additionally, another seemingly innocent mistake that’s killing your sleep is… 

Mistake #2 – Watching TV Before Bed

With low willpower comes a great need for responsibility.

And I fall into this trap every single time I mess up my sleep schedule…

Watching tv or using your phone before bed will drastically reduce your ability to fall asleep and your capacity to get into deep sleep, so here’s what you have to do instead:

Make a commitment to turn your television, computer, and phone off (or at least put it away) two hours before your scheduled bedtime. That way your brain can start producing melatonin at a normal rate and you can be ready to fall asleep when you hit your mattress.

Use this newfound time in your schedule to journal, read a book, or go out for a really long walk.

Speaking of phones and computers, another huge mistake you’re probably making is… 

Mistake #3 – Using Your Phone In The Morning

Have you ever found yourself pulling out your phone when you sit on the toilet and spending the next half-hour answering messages, reading articles, and scrolling mindlessly through social media?

Yeah, me neither…

But if ever I did realize that this was happening, I’d probably notice that I was starting my day off poorly and wasting tons of time that I could use to read, write, and exercise.

You know – actually start my day off right?

So instead of grabbing your phone and tuning into things that have literally no benefit to your life, wait until after breakfast to use your phone.

And maybe even follow this next tip to stop yourself from procrastinating altogether… 

Mistake #4 – Turn Off Notifications

If you’ve ever had a hard time getting yourself to work, I’ve got a secret I want to share with you…

It’s because work is a lot less fun than playing around on your phone.

Like, honestly. It’s that simple.

Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and all that other stuff is designed to stimulate you and to get you addicted to the dopamine boosts you get when using them.

For that reason, when you get in front of your computer and open up a doc, you feel no inspiration to get things done. All you can think of is how boring this is, how much fun the other thing was, and you keep playing that song, video, or comment over in your head on repeat.

Naturally, then, you’ll jump at the opportunity to answer a text, a dm, or email as soon as they come through.

If you can identify with this at all, here’s what you need to do:

Turn the notifications for all of your apps off.

This will give you a chance to focus on your work without being distracted by the neurochemical release of online relationships – and you’ll get a heck of a lot more stuff done.

And no, you won’t miss out on an emergency just because you turned your notifications off.

I’m sure that if anything important happens, you’ll get a phone call.

Mistake #5 – Losing Track Of Your Projects

I’ve saved the most important solopreneur productivity tip for last – that’s because it won’t really make a difference unless if you get everything else lined up first.

However, you can virtually guarantee a high work output by following this next tip.

Every night, create a to-do list for the next day.

Simple, right?

Around the time when you turn all of your devices off, take a look at everything you have left to do. Write it all down in order of priority. When you start working the next day, just work your way down the list.

When something new comes up, add it to the list. When you finish a task, cross it off the list.

And most importantly, when you feel like bumming around and wasting time, look at the list to remind yourself how much work there still is to get done.

And there you have it.

After reviewing my last month of low-productivity, those are the biggest mistakes I’ve found myself making. Hopefully, you can find some golden nuggets in there and implement the fixes I described. If you do, you’ll get tons more work done every day, and when that compounds over the course of a year, you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of what you thought was possible.

Take this newfound knowledge, implement it, and watch yourself rise to success.

And as always, if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to reach out.