Make no mistake about it, we must all become entrepreneur-ish. No matter what your occupation may be, whether you are growing a business, or building a career, it’s crucial that you know how to and find the time to promote, market, and sell your professional brand. All I wanted to do was coach clients for career success. But to get a new business off the ground, I am (slowly) learning to become the Jill-of-all-trades and to wear all the hats as well as tough and durable running shoes as I’m chasing entrepreneurial success. Some days I only get to spend 20% of my time doing what I truly love and am passionate about. But on the positive side, no day is ever boring. Starting a business reminds me of my early days as a new parent – it takes a lot of work and sleepless nights. And you’ve got to learn to get things done among the dirty diapers. And oh, you have to like it for a very l-o-n-g time. Building a successful career is definitely a crazy, busy ride. There’s a big difference between merely helping a baby survive and nurturing a baby to thrive. You have to be willing to put in a lot of love, energy, money, blood, sweat and tears to raise a healthy well-adjusted child. The same is true for building a healthy self-sustaining business, or establishing a successful career. Every endeavor involves daily routines and mundane tasks, which we must be willing to do with good grace as part of the experience. Being a professional means busy days when you are up to your neck in a whirlwind of activities. So what gives? Mark Suster advises we think of activities as a funnel. Ultimately, a business is only measured on the bottom-of-the-funnel, closing the deal:
https://bothsidesofthetable.com/why-great-executives-avoid-shiny-objects-5a070bedb588. And in career success terms, it means being the right kind of busy doing work that directly produces results. But how do we avoid the shiny distractions: email, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Pinterest, blog posts (have I missed anything)? These distractions are actually a knowledge professional’s bread and butter. We are bombarded with information every single minute of every single day. Accessing information is easy; the challenge is tuning in and selecting the right information. In the virtual playing field, our devices are our lifeline; our productivity is found in our distractions. And whether you are an entrepreneur chasing business or a professional building a successful career, productivity is crucial to survival. In a world saturated with distractions, we need to master the skill of structuring these distractions. Start every day spending time creating a task list to plan for what needs to get done that day. Your day will become more manageable when you go into it with an action plan. As little as 30 minutes of planning can yield hours of productivity. It is almost a guarantee that your day will be filled with distractions and interruptions that will take up precious time. Plan for it and try to remain on task as much as possible. You will also find that despite your best efforts, your to-do list will never get any smaller. It’s a good thing! Here’s a look at 3 common distractions that can actually boost your productivity if you choose the right structure: 1. Living in the web Don’t get lost in all the alerts. Use your smartphone smartly for work. There’s an app for just about anything: work management, time management, scheduling, note taking, etc. If you can name it, you can probably download it. Use the technology to get your work done efficiently finding information, getting answers, collaborating with others, and tracking essential sites for what’s trending. Make sure you fully utilize the potential of social media to leverage it and boost your performance and progress. 2. Working the inbox Email is often cited as a major productivity killer. But the real issue is not email but rather how we manage our inbox. You’d be able to increase your productivity by checking your email in batches. Yes, it means overcoming the urge to stop everything you are doing to respond to messages as they come in. Additionally, using filters and automating tasks and processes can free up your time replacing unimportant tasks with value-added activities. And most importantly, the amount of emails you receive correlates to the number of those you send. You can significantly reduce the number of emails you receive by limiting and timing those you send out in the first place. 3. Mastering meetings Were I to hazard a guess, I’d say that on average we spend over a third of our time at work in meetings and that over a third of these meetings are a waste of time. But even if my stats are completely off, I believe we could all agree that there are too many meetings consuming too much of our time yielding little tangible results. Now, for a business owner, any meeting is a good meeting. But in a business world where time is a precious resource, mastering the art of a meeting would give rise to greater workplace enthusiasm, creativity, and productivity. The key is in strategically managing the following five ingredients of an effective meeting: Purpose (clear objectives), Participants (roles & responsibilities), Prep work (resources & data), Process (agenda), and Product (commitments & deliverables.) Enforcing good meeting practices can turn meetings from a total time suck to a time well-spent. Structuring each of the distractions listed above is doable if you break your day into chunks of time and schedule tasks to be completed in those chunks. Apply the 80/20 rule to your to-do list: 20% of your activities will yield 80% of your progress, so be sure to focus on the tasks that will move you closer to achieving your goals. Working hard is important, but knowing where to spend your time will determine the ultimate success of your efforts. As you set yourself up for success, identify the ways you work best and honor the habits that best work for you. Social media, email, and meetings are only problems if they are getting in the way of getting things done instead of enhancing your performance. It is up to you whether to be distracted or re-structured.
