Improve My Business

We all know that the hours in the day are numbered and that we need to make the most of them. So here are some tips that I have been using to increase my personal productivity.

1. Batch your E-mails. If your like me and most of the people in my office you have an almost constant stream of E-mails coming in. The temptation is to open them all as soon as they arrive. I realized that for me at least this meant stopping what I was doing and shifting my focus on average once every 15-20 minutes throughout the work day. This was very disruptive, particularly when there was something I wanted to read further in the E-mail and it wound up being a long distraction from the task I had been working on. The solution I have found is batching my E-mail reading into groups. Basically I keep my E-mail open, but don’t read any messages unless something urgent comes in that needs immediate attention. Instead I let things build up and then just before lunch and again just before I sign off for the evening I read through everything. I find this gives me longer blocks of un-interrupted time to focus on getting the important things I need to do done, without completely ignoring what is going on in my E-mail.
2. Pick one big thing every day and do it first. For me if I have a lot of things on my to do list I find that I often avoid the big ones and do all the little “quick wins” first. While this does shorten the list, it still leaves those big projects out there looming, and by the time I have done all the little things I often don’t have the mental energy to tackle a big project. To combat this I have started coming into the office each day, having picked out one large item from my to do list to tackle that day. I start my day off by first checking to make sure no urgent messages came in overnight, then getting right to work on my one big thing for the day. I don’t check E-mails, or make phone calls, or do anything else until I have knocked out my one big task. This has two benefits for me. First it gets those big tasks off the to do list in a timely manner, and second, I find myself having more energy throughout the day because I know that I have already accomplished something big and don’t have the stress of trying to find the energy late in the day to do a big project.
3. Have a defined plan. Beyond picking your one thing, I have also found it helpful to have a defined plan for the week. In other words I try to look at what I need to get done and slot it all into my week. This way I am not sitting here on Tuesday afternoon or worse on Thursday staring at my to do list and wondering how I am ever going to get it all done. I know how it is going to get done because I have already budgeted the time in my head. Of course my schedule gets shifted around a little bit as things come up, and it is important to remain flexible, but knowing what is on your list and what kind of time commitment it takes, then figuring out where you can make that time commitment can help overcome the feeling of overwhelm that comes with big to do lists.
4. Attitude is everything. Having a better attitude at work makes you more productive. If you feel like you have been productive you will continue to be more productive. This is what is really behind the other tips I have listed here, they all help me feel productive, which improves my attitude, and makes me more productive. Sometimes you even need to go so far as to force yourself to change your attitude, even if it seems superficial at first. If you tell yourself you have lots of energy and are ready to get something done, before you know it, it will be true. On the other hand if you sit around all day dreaming about a nap, you’re just going to make yourself more tired. So take a minute every now and then to check in on your attitude towards work and adjust it as needed.

Technorati Tags: efficiency, email, goals, improvement, managing your time, Planning, Time Management, working smarter

First off I would like to welcome everyone to the 2010 edition of the Improve My Business Now blog. I hope you all had a restful holidays and are ready to get to work making our businesses better. Now let’s get going on the good stuff.

If your business is like ours you probably spent the last several weeks wrapping things up from 2009, getting caught up on the things that inevitably fall through the cracks, and perhaps most important of all, thinking about what you were going to do in 2010. Well 2010 is here now, are you doing the things you thought about and planned for?

Whether you went through a formal strategic planning session in the latter part of the year or not, the holidays always provide a break from the frenetic pace of business and allow us to slow down and take a critical look at where we are, how we got here, and where we want to go next. Usually this comes in the form of setting goals for the New Year then coming up with plans to help us meet those goals. I am sure you are all already familiar with the importance of setting goals and planning how to meet them, but in case you need a reminder there is a good article about the importance of strategic planning here. If you didn’t get an opportunity to do some strategic planning in 2009 it’s never too late to put a plan in place.

However, this post isn’t about strategic planning, it’s about follow through. For most of us, we probably have our plan for 2010 at least in mind, if not actually written out somewhere, but what are you doing to put it into action? The truth of the matter is that strategic planning is only as good as the follow through. Your goal to grow sales by 40% over the next year is tremendous and your plan to accomplish it through increased marketing efforts, development of your sales funnel, and increasing return business sounds like a surefire way to make your goal a reality, but at the end of 2010, what is really going to matter is not the goal and the plan, but what you actually did.

Take a look at 2009 or any other year that has already come to a close. What were your goals for that year? Did you meet those goals? Why or why not? It is just as critical to review your old strategic plans and compare them to your actual results as it is to make new plans. Even if you don’t have a written plan, think about what you wanted to accomplish last year. Did you get it done? These reviews are a great way to judge follow through and goal setting. You can look at your previous goals and plans and determine whether you were able to effectively set reasonable goals, come up with actionable plans that meet those goals, and follow through on those plans. The point of these reviews is not to point fingers and establish blame if the strategic plan failed, they are about information. If you were able to put your plan into action and meet your goal that is great, if not, that is great too, by reviewing you can discover where the break down occurred and make sure you do better this year.

What I find most often when I look back at old strategic plans is that as soon as the pace of business and life picks back up in the beginning of the new year we make a couple attempts to start the ball rolling on our plan, then the plan gets forgotten in a cloud of dust and finds its way into a filing cabinet somewhere never to be touched again. Part of my plan in 2010 is to make sure that I stick to the plan, follow through on what I have said I am going to do, and make sure that, when I review my strategic plan at the end of this year, if I haven’t met my goals, it isn’t because of a lack of follow through. Until you have adequate follow through on your plan, you will never be able to tell if your goals are reasonable and if you plans are adequate to meet them. When looking forward, the plan is the key, but in review, it’s your follow through that really counts. If you didn’t follow through, nothing else matters.

Technorati Tags: Business, Follow Through, goals, Planning, Plans, Strategic Planning

Last time I shared an article about being efficient versus being effective by Robert Rolih. Now here are the rules on goal setting from http://www.time-management-toolbox.com/articles.html:

1st rule: Your goals should be specific. The clearer the goal, the clearer the outcome. So, always set specific goals that can be measured. Let me give you an example. If I say, “Next year we will increase our market share,” is this specific? Well, not really! But if I add “by four percentage points,” it makes this goal specific and measurable. There’s an old saying that goes, What gets measured, gets done, so always be specific when you set your goals.

2nd rule: Every goal must have a deadline. Human beings operate best when they have clear deadlines. Deadlines get us moving. So every goal you set should have a deadline – the date by which you will accomplish it.

3rd rule: Your goals should be challenging. Aim high: Set goals that will provide you with a challenge; but be careful – they must be realistic! You must believe you can achieve them.

4th rule: Write your goals down. Gene Donohue once said, The difference between a goal and a dream is the written word. So, write your goals down. This will make them concrete.

Ok, those were the four goal-setting rules.

But what if your goals depend on a boss, and you don’t know what they are? Then go to your boss and ask him! Always be clear what your boss expects from you. Otherwise, you will be doing the wrong things most of the time. So, the real secret of effective time management is choosing the right things to do. That means choosing the things that help you achieve your goals. And those things that help achieve your goals are the tasks that will bring you to your goals faster.

Best-selling author Timothy Ferriss once said: Doing the right things is infinitely more important than doing things right. Efficiency is still very important, but only when you do the right things – the things that will bring you closer to your goals.

Technorati Tags: effective, efficient, goal setting, goals, Time Management

What exactly is the difference between being efficient and effective? We hear those words all the time, but do we really know how to be efficient versus being effective, or vice versa? Take a look at one man’s perspective on the two and share your own thoughts on efficiency and effectiveness! Here is the article from http://www.time-management-toolbox.com/articles.html:

Key to good time management.

By Robert Rolih

Imagine the following situation: You want to buy a new, big screen, high definition TV. You want a really good one and are prepared to pay a high price for it. You also have a very good friend who is a tech geek – he knows all about new technologies and owns three big screen TV sets himself.

What would you do?

Would you go on the Net, spend five hours comparing different TVs, read a ton of information about each one of them, and then go through a thousand customer reviews?

Or would you simply call your friend, ask him what he recommends, and only after that go on the Net and check his choices?

Well, with the first option you could be very efficient if you are good at searching the Net. As a matter of fact, you could be extremely efficient for the whole five or six hours you are doing the research.

You could select great search terms, read the content really fast, and so on. But it’s still the totally wrong thing to do if you have a friend who can help you achieve your goal in a few minutes.

So, calling your friend is effective. It’s the right thing to do because it will bring you closer to your goal fast.

Doing research on your own is not effective; it’s not the right thing to do in this situation, but it can be efficient and you can be very good at it. So, let me recap: effectiveness is doing things that bring you closer to your goals.

Efficiency is performing a task in the most economical manner possible. Now think about your work. Ask yourself, “Am I being productive or just active? Am I making up activities just to fill my time? Or am I doing things that will bring me closer to reaching my goals? And then ask a crucial question: “What are my most important goals right now?”

I see a lot of very busy people in companies all the time. They are constantly under pressure, they work all the time, and they are stressed. But when you take a closer look at what they are doing you will often find they are doing just a lot of stuff that has little value.

They shuffle papers, get interrupted all the time, surf the Net searching for god knows what, check every e-mail when it arrives, and so on. They spend the whole day doing activities that don’t help them achieve their goals. They are just doing stuff. The first thing you have to be clear about if you want to be good at time management is your goals.

What do you want to accomplish? Are you clear about that? If you own a business or manage a department, you probably have very clear financial and development goals. Like “open three new locations by the end of the year,” “launch a new product by the end of May,” or “increase our sales by 30% in the next year.”

Clear goals are crucial for success. If you don’t have them, set them now! When you set your goals, it is critical that you follow some rules about goal setting.

Check back soon for the rules on goal setting!

Technorati Tags: effective, effectiveness, efficiency, efficient, goals, Time Management