5 Shocking Mistakes Killing Your Productivity

In our distraction filled world it can be difficult to have a productive day. Have you ever reached the end of the day and thought, “What the heck did I do today”? You know you were busy, but did you accomplish anything.

While technology has theoretically made our lives more productive, if our use of it is not controlled, we can become less and less productive. How many times have you started your day by checking email and looked up 2 hours later? Or you are going to take a quick break and check Facebook and look up 30 minutes later?

If you don’t control your time it will gladly control you. What is the solution to making yourself productive again?

1. WORK SESSIONS

One of the biggest changes that I made in the last 2 years was the addition of Work Sessions to my schedule. These are typically 50 minute blocks of time 4 times per day that focus me on completing projects.

The idea for these time blocked sessions came from the Mastery Journal created by John Lee Dumas of the Entrepreneur On Fire. The Mastery Journal is a 100 day journal that helps you to become more productive and disciplined each day.

Implementing this into my life and then adding the Work Sessions to my calendar (see above), I am ensured that complete 4 projects per day. With 261 work days per year that is 1044 projects completed!

2. GIVE ME A BREAK

Have you ever focused on a project for hours and then looked up and found that you really had not accomplished as much as you thought. Often in these marathon sessions, I find my mind wandering or I look something up on the internet and go down a rabbit hole.

What is the cure to this problem? Schedule regular breaks for yourself. Set a timer on your phone and when it goes off, get up immediately whether you have finished your project or not. You will find your mind clearer and you will be more productive.

3. DITCH THE HIP HOP

This pains me, but I love to listen to music while I work on projects. One of my favorites is 90s Hip Hop. One of the things that I learned over the last year was that this habit was actually affecting my work. Music with lyrics can be highly distracting.

My friend Omari Broussard of 10X Strategies Consulting turned me on to a new trend in mental focus with custom designed instrumental music. I am currently testing a site called Brain.FM.

For about $7 a month you can login, tell it how long you want it to run for and select music for either Focus, Relaxation or Sleep.

4. “CHUNK” YOUR APPOINTMENTS

One of the biggest killers of your productivity is meetings. Spending an hour on the road to get to an appointment is a waste of time in most cases.

People are often amazed at how many appointments that I will have in a week. Running three businesses keeps me extremely busy and quite often I will have between 6-8 meetings per day. How do I do it?

I refer to the process of meetings as “Chunking”. If I am scheduling meetings, they are typically in one place. Now I own two Coworking Spaces, so this makes it easy for me to do this, but the same process can be done at a coffee shop or restaurant. Schedule multiple back to back appointments and you will be amazed at how much you can accomplish.

Better still, see if you can book half hour phone appointments like my friend Matthew Pollard. Matthew is a master of keeping his meetings on point and limited to 30 minutes. When he sets a day aside for phone appointments he can work up to 20 in a day!

5. UNCLUTTER THE EMAIL BOX

One of the big killers for me is managing email. I have 3 businesses and over 9 email accounts that receive on average of 300-400 emails daily. Something that I implemented recently is a program called Unroll.me.

One of the greatest parts of this program is that it identifies all the things you are subscribed to and gives you the option to Unsubscribe or “Roll Up” these emails. This has allowed me to finally unsubscribe from things that I had been deleting when I would go through email. It is easy and quick.

The rollup portion of the program takes the subscribed emails that you get and puts them into categories so that you can check them all at one time instead of having to go through your inbox.

CONCLUSION

These are just a few ways that you can gain your productivity back. Gaining back that time that is wasted every day can mean the difference between a successful business and one that is struggling.

Give these a try and then hit me up on social media or comment on this blog to let me know how they worked for you.