4 Ways to Increase Your Productivity

Email. Phone. Meeting. Phone. Email. Phone… and the cycle continues.

Some days my mind seems to be on carousel that never stops and becomes more discombobulated as the day goes on. I find myself wasting away my life on Instagram and then becoming distracted by endless ads. 

I will never forget the first day I grudgingly downloaded TikTok and wasted 4 hours of my life I will never get back. I was in a wormhole of pure confusion, laughter, and revelation of how much time we waste learning NOTHING.

Now, being an owner of my own small business, productivity and the use of my time is EVERYTHING. I do not believe in the 5 days a week, 8 to 5 arbitrary system that we live by. I believe that productivity can be so much greater when not confined to a box, or what some call a cubicle, where showing dedication seems to be the groundwork of the hierarchy instead of true productivity.

So the past few months I have been learning about what productivity truly entails. Some days I get a big fat F! How is it that I was so busy and never took a “break”, but yet have not produced anything meaningful. As Tim Ferriss states in The 4-Hour Workweek, “Focus on being productive instead of being busy.” Busyness and productivity are NOT the same thing. Here are 4 things I am practicing to become more productive with my business and life in general.

I started by writing down everything I typically need to complete in a week. The list looked like this:

• Pack Orders
• Update Inventory on Shopify
• Take Images of product
• New Arrivals
• Instagram Outreach
• Write Blogs
• Trend Research
• Marketing- email, posts, etc

The list goes on. After writing all of my tasks I then separate my tasks into days. For example, instead of spending 30 minutes each date updating Shopify, I allot 1.5 hours on Monday morning. So my next list looks like this:

• EVERY DAY TASKS
  • Pack orders 8-9:30AM
  • DMs & Emails 9:30AM-10AM
  • IG BLACKOUT (no phone allowed)- 10AM-12PM, 2PM-4PM, After 7PM
• MONDAY:
  • Update Shopify
  • Take Studio images
  • Outline all Instagram Posts
• TUESDAY
  • New Arrival Videos
  • Instagram stories
  • Instagram Outreach

ETC… Notice I put times each day I should not be looking at social media- still a work in progress on that one!

Start each day getting your mind right. Do not instantly check Facebook or emails. Make sure the first information you put in your mind is something purposeful. Personally, I like to spend the first hour of my day reading, journaling, and praying. I cannot tell people enough how life-changing this has been for me. The time in solitude and in praise of something bigger than me puts life in perspective. There is a reason so many successful people have pragmatic morning routines! I know you hear it all the time but if there is one step you can take to get your mind in a place to be productive and focused-a morning routine is IT!

Now THIS is a struggle for me. I feel like my mind is pulled in a million directions nearly every minute. Have you ever drank a Red Bull and then felt like you immediately needed to clean out your car, but then in the middle of doing that you feel the need to go clean out your email inbox, then while doing that you decide it is better to start planning your cousin’s bridal shower. THIS is my mind. Like a pinball bouncing from one idea to another. Hence why Yoga is such a hard workout for me.

I have realized in order to be a successful entrepreneur it is VITAL for me to get this little problem of mine under control. I am in control of my mind, so I must set boundaries. (In the middle of typing that last sentence I got up and fed my dogs…see what I mean?)

So the boundaries I have put in place for myself consist of placing my phone in another room, writing down my schedule in such detail that I do not have leniency to let myself get distracted and to complete X before I start Y.

It is not enough to say I want to grow my business by 50% this year. Well great, but what are the strategies behind that growth? I find writing down small goals keeps me focused on a bigger scale.

For example one of goals is to reach X amount in sales in my first year. Micro goals include:

• Start a VIP Facebook Group
• Post 2 reels a month for a year
• Post 1 blog a week for a year
• Host 6 private shopping parties
• Host 4 pop-up shops
• Develop Palmer Girls Influencer Program

I could keep going, but I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty. From that list I now know what my goals are to put Palmer on the right trajectory to reach the MAIN goal .

It is important to realize that just because something takes you a long time to complete does NOT mean it is effective or productive. Try to accomplish more in your day by eliminating busy work. Have you ever heard of the 80-20 rule- 80% of results come from 20% of time and effort?

If you have thoughts about how to increase productivity or want to just engage in a productive conversation, please reach out!