Productivity is key to success, and it’s often the difference between a successful entrepreneur and one that never gets their ideas or businesses off of the ground. Entrepreneurs can start their day with a productivity mindset in a few ways:
1. Signage, Quotes or Vision Boards
Sometimes, all it takes is the right quote, signage or other trigger to start the day off productively. We’re seeing a lot of companies incorporate this idea with custom signage.
According to the Californian leading commercial sign company, the right signage can help entrepreneurs start their day off with the right mindset.
Signage may be a company’s name, but entrepreneurs often take it a step further with quotes, single words of encouragement or phrases, such as:
- Innovate
- Inspire
- Create
If an entrepreneur doesn’t have their own office space and are working out of their home, quotes and vision boards can help. Productivity quotes can inspire a person to remain focused throughout the day. One quote that resonates with a lot of entrepreneurs is from Theodore Roosevelt.
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is a chance to work hard at work worth doing,” – Theodore Roosevelt.
But there are other productivity tasks that can help a person push through their day with the productivity mindset needed to get results.
2. Routine Works
Ask anyone that has been successful and they’ll tell you that routine helped them stay on track to reach their goals. But everyone’s routine is different, so you’ll have to find a routine that works best for you.
A lot of business success stories revolve around a routine where the founder wakes up at 4am every day.
Richard Branson, Virgin Group CEO, claims that he goes to bed by 11pm every night and needs just five to six hours of sleep most days.
Barack Obama, former United States President, claims that he spends four to five hours alone every night in his office. It’s not that the former president is impersonal. He’s often the center of attention, but he uses his nights and alone time to get things done.
You may find that early morning hours or late nights work best.
Why?
These are the hours when people are asleep, in their beds or reading a book. Text messages stop coming in, the kids are asleep and the world around you seems to quiet down.
A lot of people will make a routine of what time they wake up each day, but others will also follow a strict routine that includes everything in their day:
- Wake up time
- Washing their face
- Exercise
- Breakfast
- Brushing their teeth
- Checking email
- Showering, etc.
Find a routine that works best for you, and stick to it. The routine will often be out of the norm, but if it works for you, that’s all that matters.
3. Focus on the Hardest Tasks First
Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time is a book that focuses on the “frog” of the day. Tracy’s book has had a profound impact on a lot of readers’ success, and the key has been rather simple.
Tackle the hardest tasks of the day first.
Every day, there are tasks that we would rather not do. Subconsciously, we will drag the day on so that we don’t have to do these tasks. For example, a call with a potential investor may be a top priority, but a lot of entrepreneurs worry themselves sick about the call.
There’s a chance that the lender may say no.
So, the person worries the entire day, pushing the call off until the last minute, and it impacts the entire day’s productivity. Tasks such as these are time sinks, and they’re going to be harder than all of the other tasks of the day.
For a writer, this task may be writing for a client in the oil industry. For a landscaper, it may be a very detailed job with a picky customer who always seems to complain. Completing these hard tasks first thing in the morning does a lot of great things for the rest of the day, such as:
- Making the rest of the day’s tasks seem easy
- Preventing procrastination of other important tasks
- Providing a rush of accomplishment to push through the rest of the day faster
The hard tasks are often the ones that will cause an entrepreneur’s day to drag, so start the day off with a checklist of the hardest to easiest tasks and work your way through them in order of difficulty.
4. Take Today to Plan for Tomorrow
If you sit down at your desk and then figure out all of the tasks you have to do today, it’s going to be a major time-waster. You should be ready to start your day once you’ve sat down and went through all of your emails.
The goal is to plan tomorrow, today.
When you’re all done with work, set aside 20 minutes at the end of the day to plan out tomorrow. You’ll be more awake and ready to start the day off on the right foot. If you start planning the day tomorrow morning, you’ll be groggy, unprepared and waste more time on the task than needed.
Sit down tonight and plan out your entire work schedule tomorrow.
5. Build Momentum if There Are No Frogs
If you don’t have any frogs in your day, you may want to choose to build up your momentum gently. What does this mean? You’ll start your day with the tasks that you want to do the most. These are tasks that will invigorate you and set your day up for a snowball effect.
You may start the day by marketing your product, which you love to do. Perhaps you’ve landed a dozen leads, and this has boosted your energy and spirits for the day. You can use this momentum to move on to your next task while you’re filled with energy and excitement.
Mark Forster has a system which is meant to maximize productivity and works in a similar fashion.
The idea is rather simple.
Look at the first task on your list. Do you need to complete the task immediately? If not, which item on your list would you rather do first? And which item would you rather do before that task?
You will continue down your list to order your day for all of the items that you want to accomplish first. These are often fun tasks that will help you get into the work groove and really set your day up for success.
But it’s important to have a checklist that will allow you to still complete all of your necessary tasks first. If you do not have a checklist of the tasks you have to do each day, you’ll find that you end up ignoring many of the scary, intimidating tasks that could really help you become a success.
Getting started is the hardest part of being an entrepreneur. You may be stuck in the information overload trap where you’re trying to find that perfect moment to begin, but there’s no better day to start than today. The five methods outlined above can help you transition from procrastination to productivity.
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