Are you so busy that you can’t remember the last time you felt you were on top of things, accomplishing your goals and enjoying free time to do the things you really want to do? Or perhaps, you feel your life is a never-ending hamster wheel of meetings, grabbing lunch on the go, getting home late, working weekends and basically just struggling to keep up.
The thing is, sometimes we use the ‘I’m so busy’ theme as an excuse to explain why we haven’t reached a deadline, why we’ve let someone down or why we haven’t gone to the gym. It’s also a reason to justify why you don’t do what you don’t really like doing – for example, making five new sales calls a day that will take your business to the next level, or being ‘busy’ focusing on the 75 non-vital items on your to-do list.
Being busy is often synonymous with ‘accomplishment and success’ and often has the ‘look-how-amazing-I-am’ tagline where someone works 50 hours a week, volunteers at their child’s school, goes to the gym every day, cleans the house and cooks a fresh meal every evening and still finds time to make their children’s costumes for the school play. It’s the ineffective pursuit of trying to have and do it all that ultimately ends in burnout. Find out how to slow down a busy day.
There’s also the hope that if you fill your day with work, it will magically lead to something – that those hours on social media and endless coffee catchup meetings will wondrously lead to sales or whatever it is you really need for your business. But, as you’ve probably realised, there’s a huge difference between being busy and being productive.
Being busy is often the result of not setting priorities, however if you don’t set priorities, others will set them for you. The most productive people ‘own’ their day and maximise their time, whereas busy people tend to be great at appearing busy.
Being productive is about moving towards your goal every single day. Busy people tend to be overthinkers and might spend all their time doing research, understanding the different possibilities, creating long to-do lists, expanding their tasks to fit the amount of time available and trying to make things perfect before they start. A productive person has effective time management skills and will just get on with the task at hand – no wasting time, messing around, etc.
Highly productive people are the achievers of our time. They have learned the difference between being busy
and being proactive with the things that move them towards their goals. They work smarter, are more focused and, rather than being fairly good at everything, are specialists in a few areas. They understand the ‘less-is-more’ approach and that accomplishing the really important things first, is what moves them forward. Find out how to trick your brain into being more productive at work.
Busy people are often reactive and distracted in their day – they frequently check their emails, stop everything when their phone buzzes, and multitask. Productive people, on the other hand, create a system for dealing with mundane tasks. For example, they reserve a time slot for checking emails so the task doesn’t interfere with their day, and they differentiate between urgent and important messages.
Productive people also know when it’s time to take a break from work – they might go for a quick walk, eat a nutritious snack (here are some healthier snack ideas for you) or meditate for 15 minutes.
When you have a truckload of work on your plate, sometimes the most important thing to do is to set aside the busyness and find time to work out where you’re going, what your priorities are and where your revenue actually comes from. It’s about identifying the right thing to focus on, being strategic and deploying the right systems and strategies to get the results you’re after.
Here are four powerful steps to becoming more productive:
1. Focus on one thing at a time. There are always hundreds of things we could be doing but if you identify the one thing that will deliver the best results, focus on that. Do that first.
2. Monitor your time. For a few days, make a note of everything you do, including meetings, bathroom breaks, chatting around the water cooler. Logging your activity for a baseline will give you enormous insight into what you actually do and how much time you spend being productive.
3. Set small goals. Keep the bigger goals in the picture but set some small accomplishable goals. We often overestimate what we can achieve in one day but by setting attainable goals we feel encouraged and more confident. By accomplishing a few smaller goals during the day, we feel better about ourselves.
4. Eliminate distractions. Distractions and interruptions are the enemy of productivity. Rather than multi-tasking, give your full attention to the task at hand. Learn to focus and be more present and in the zone.
So, work on being less busy and more productive and watch those goals being smashed.
