10 Tips on Being Productive  Time Effective in Your Business Life

The moment we step into the business, entrepreneurship world – we begin to take a couple of things more seriously than we did before we began our ventures, not because we have to, but because we want to achieve a pre-determined certain level of success. The whole term “time consumption” becomes obsolete once we get the proper hang of things.

We cannot manage time that we dot not own. This means that we have to start right from the very beginning, to look back on our current business and life situation – to find out which parts of our lives are we using to work and receive equal return of our time investment.

Besides the business that you own, do you work elsewhere? Maybe part-time at a cafeteria to help meet the ends? Every single detail comes into play when we want to create a strategy that we can depend on, a strategy that will help us save our time and make it worthwhile for everyone who is involved.

You have to know what you really want and how much time are you able to put towards that very goal. (and all the sub-goals that come with it)

Once that has been resolved and dealt with, we can move on to finding out how exactly can we be more productive and time efficient in our business lives, and even normal lives – if we are willing to adjust.

Write a Diary, Journal, Planner

Write a Diary Journal PlannerWhichever you find works the best for you. I find that writing a diary and having a planner of sorts is really helping me to manage my time, convert time into productive actions and pleasing results. After a couple of weeks you will be able to look back at one of your methods of recording your life and see what exactly is missing and which parts should need fixing.

It could be that you are spending too much time worrying and studying about the same subject, which in reality isn’t even 1/3 of what your business is all about. I’ve done this myself, multiple times, trying to study something that I already know so well. I stopped doing it and instead put my time elsewhere. Worked wonders, and still does.

High Priority Tasks

This tip is literally where the money is, there is no other way about it. Your high priority tasks that you schedule for yourself and your business every day are the ones that are (or will end up) making the big dollars for you. You should treat this way of doing things very gently, and while skipping a day or two is fine (considering you depend on a strategy), try not to avoid it for too long.

Having a policy with yourself that everyone you set out to do, you will do it in timely manner and won’t try to avoid doing it, or worse – overdo it.

The One That Stands Out

The one task that I do every day, and that stands out for me is writing. For that very reason I move all of my writing tasks to the beginning of the day. That is when I’m most fresh and aware of what is going on, granted I’ve done some exercise and walking in the morning.

Related: Wealthiest People in The World and Their Habits [Infographic]

Find the one thing that you absolutely excel at and find the right time to utilize it. Try to spend at least half of your time practicing this very tasks in order to grow stronger and learn more about it.

Allocate Time for Doing Nothing

Allocate Time for Doing NothingThis most likely is going to be the lunch time. There is a difference between doing nothing and doing something while thinking about work. You can use your lunch time to move away from work completely and disconnect yourself from any tasks associated with work. This way you’re telling and teaching yourself that it is good to take breaks in order to rejuvenate.

Find the right time to take a break and do it. You will thank yourself (and me) later.

Plan as Much as You Can

It’s a good practice. It will help you move forward twice the speed you are now, if you don’t plan your businesses future ahead. You cannot predict the future, but you can plan for it and prepare for any possible changes. I prefer doing planing at the end of my working day. I know that some people will prefer doing it in the morning.

I’d say anything from 15 to 30 minutes spend on thinking and planning about the current day and its events is pretty good and should quickly teach you a thing or two about time management. You will have to experience it for yourself, rather than having me to try and explain it for you.

Observe What You’re Doing

I hope I am not confusing you with all the heading titles I am using for each of the points.

Before you do something, spend a couple of moments thinking about what you’re going to do and what you hope to achieve doing it. This same strategy applies to creating blog posts. Creating a post and trying to think about the content AS you go is pretty much suicidal and painful.

The same goes for when you finish doing something, did you achieve what you set out to achieve? Make the necessary changes if not.

Distractions Are Enemies (Keep ’em close!)

Distractions Are Enemies (Keep ‘em close!)I deal with distractions all the time, especially when I am writing longer pieces of content. It just so happens that when you get in the zone, your brain starts to explode and there is information flowing in from all over the place. This leads to the need of putting your attention to something else. That’s the way it is for myself, anyway.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. – Sun-Tzu

Acknowledge that you’ve just been distracted, but don’t feel about it – rather improve upon it by returning back to work and doing what you have to do. This will eventually become a great habit to have.

Mindless browsing of Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networking websites also count as distraction, unless you’re using them for business purposes.

There is Always Tomorrow

This analogy will really help you to avoid stressing over deadlines and goals that you are unable to keep up with, identify first – if the reason for not keeping up with the deadlines isn’t already mentioned in one of the tips above.

Having a I can finish it up tomorrow. policy with yourself is great, you are not giving up – you are just going to finish the thing tomorrow as today has already been hard enough. All you want to do is get back home to your wife and kids, this thing can wait!

Just don’t cheat, and actually do return to the desk tomorrow and get that thing done.

Allocate Time for Fun

Whatever the word “fun” means in your vocabulary, try to allocate some time for it. Constantly working hard can produce great results as far as making yourself more known around the industry, but it can also make a real workaholic out of you.

Those of us, who really like to work and dedicate their lives to their passion – we sometimes get carried away by the whole process and don’t give ourselves the time we need to have some fun. Just understand what the word means to you and try to spend time doing those activities. It will greatly help you be more productive and time efficient with your business life.

Tired of Reading Working? Go To Sleep!

The last tip I want to share is that getting enough sleep can possible outweigh all of the above tips. When you don’t get enough sleep you feel tired all day, and when you get too much sleep – you feel sleep all day.

It’s not hard to find the perfect time for waking up. I’ve been experimenting with going to bed at 11PM and getting up at 6:30AM – though it looks like I need to get back to 11:30PM -> 6:00AM. The few minutes of more or less sleep can really make a difference in how we operate through our day.

When you go to sleep today, think about your sleeping pattern and see where you could improve it. It will take you a maximum of three to four days to find the best time to go to sleep and wake up.

Supposedly adults need nearly 8 hours of sleep per day, which I really think is a bit of bull and is perhaps meant for people who don’t want to work hard! ;)