5 Productivity Planning Ideas To Get You Moving In 2015

The first Monday of 2015 seems like an ideal time to look at productivity planning. I was reminded of this when my SFM business coaches dropped me a line on Skype linking to some excellent productivity panning advice and tools they’ve put together.

Productivity planning is important to everyone in business but it’s damned crucial to entrepreneurs working from home on an online business. I was actually given this advice by my mentors and coaches at a live event in London when I got started.

I took notes and told myself I’d follow that advice and I have to some extent but this was a timely reminder and on reflection I’ve let things slip a little since then. So let me share some of their valuable advice and tips on planning your productivity properly.

It’s simple stuff really. When you work from home, or wherever, as you do with an online business, it can be difficult to keep to a strict schedule. Ironically that’s one of the things you want to escape from when you start working from home but in reality you do need to put some form of schedule in place. You really do.

So without simply plagiarising some one else’s work here’s a couple of ideas from some highly successful people.

Create a daily schedule For Productivity Planning

This can be a simple spreadsheet divided into the days of the week and the hours of the day. What you put in there will obviously depend on what you do but it should include: Regular daily tasks, mealtimes, breaks and family time. Be honest about how long a task takes and appoint the appropriate time. Don’t multi-task – stick to the schedule.

This gives you a structure so you don’t just get up every day with a vague idea of what you’ll be doing. To help with this part of your schedule should include an end of day – plan for the next day time slot.

TIP: Type – “daily schedule template” into google and then hit “images” – You’ll find a ton of downloadable templates if your struggling with this. 

Use a Priorities Plotter.

Whatever your schedule is comprised of break it down into the 3 things that absolutely MUST be done tomorrow and copy them into your daily schedule. These could include: People you must talk to in order to complete a project, chasing up people you are waiting for in order to complete that project.

These are just two ideas that should help you with productivity planning so that the bulk of your activities are money producing. Some others are:

Leave off checking email and logging into social media until a SCHEDULED time. Although these things are important (particularly in an online business) they can lead you down rabbit holes of non-productivity. They can make you reactive rather than proactive – being drawn into someone else’s agenda instead of yours.

 Here’s a Couple of My Own Productivity Planning Tips.

The first was also part of my coaches’ tips but it’s something I’ve done for years both as a songwriter and as an entrepreneur. Keep a notebook by the side of the bed. If like me, you are one of those people who get bright ideas in the dead of night, scribble them down then go to sleep.

That way you not only get to keep them till the next day when you can do something about them, you also avoid spending a sleepless night trying to remember them!

Make wherever you work from like a place of work. At the end of last year I made some sweeping changes to my home office. I turned the desk around so that I no longer face a wall. I also removed the large digital recording machine from the desk where it had languished unused for a year. It just sat there making me feel guilty about neglecting my music: A constant distraction.

I told myself that whilst I’ll always be a musician, I’m now building a serious business. So the recording console is under the bed until I have time for it. The desk has a new angle poise lamp, a lot more space and feels like a fit for purpose productivity space.

Stroll on!