How To Organize The Day Ahead – And Get More Done
If you’re like me it can sometimes seem there is never enough hours in the day to get everything you need done.
- Dealing with clients
- Handling leads
- Providing your products or service
- Managing employees
- Staying on to of your business admin
- Creating and implementing marketing campaigns, and
- Spending the important time working on growing your business
Oh, and one more thing, you want to have a life too.
I recently discovered an amazing technique that has help me to organize the day ahead and taken my productivity to new levels, allowing me to get much more done in less time with greater results.
It also makes me excited and ready to tackle each day.
I do have to mention this is not my creation, it is a hybrid of techniques from productivity masters, Dean Jackson and Chris Ballantyne.
Burning The Wick At One End
The problem most people face so that because they have so much to do, plus fires that rage up during any given day like a customer complaint, or an email that just can’t go unanswered, you spend most of the day jumping from one task to the next without getting anything finished through to completion.
Organize Your Work Day The Night Before
- Visualise where you want your business to be in 12 months time
- Write down the next 3 things that must happen to move you closer to that goal
- List the work that you must complete for clients, or the most highest value high priority work you must complete tomorrow
- Now schedule your day into one-hour tasks. You will only spend 50 minutes of each hour working so if you think something will take longer allocate another hour slot.
- Make sure you start with your highest value most mentally focused work, first thing in the morning
- Ensure you allocate at least one hour to work that will move you closer to your 12-month goals (More if possible)
- Allocate time in the afternoon for returning calls dealing with emails and handling day-to-day duties and employees. Things that need to be taken care of on a daily basis but doen’t require high level thinking or focus
- Allocate time for lunch and anything else that will need to be scheduled in. These can be half hour or full hour sessions
Getting Down To Work
Starting ten minutes before the time you have scheduled in you organizer set a timer for 50 minutes and get to work on your most important duties
When your 50 minutes is up, set a timer for 10 minutes and go for a quick break, have a stretch, get some fresh air, have a healthy snack. Anything to let your mind rest and give yourself some gratitude for being so focused.
Continue through the day like this until you have checked of every task on your list.
At first it will be hard to ignore distractions and not answer “emergency phone calls”. But trust me nothing is that urgent it can’t wait until the afternoon when there is time allocated for these things.
If something takes a bit longer move the whole schedule back but do not lose track of time and do not skip important long-term duties to focus on short-term emergencies duties.
After a few weeks you will notice your progress and it will be easy to become disciplined. The day I made a conscious decision to follow this plan my business revenues jumped 500% in two months.
Try it for yourself, you will be amazed at what can be achieved when you work to a daily plan guided by your long-term goals.
To your future prosperity,
James Brine