Ten successful entrepreneurs all give their two cents on gaining time and increasing your productivity. These are absolute musts for event planners who have one of the most stressful jobs in the world.
So, let the tips below serve as insipration for you!
- Send everything to voicemail
Beth Doane (founder and chief executive of Raintees) has a terribly busy agenda and lets all unsolicited phone calls go strait to voicemail. "Otherwise, I’d get nothing done", she stresses. At the end of the day, she returns people's calls; and for the most urgent matters, you can always contact her assistant. - Intelligent multi-tasking
According to Eric Casaburi, founder and CEO of Retro Fitness, multi-tasking makes you more productive, but only in doing repetitive tasks that require virtually zero concentration combined with things that require your undivided attention. Do conference calls while on the treadmill for instance. - Online assistants
Kate McKeon started her own private tutoring service two years ago. She delegates routine tasks to her online assistants so she has more time left over to make the decisions that really matter (she, herself, uses the U.S. company Fancy Hands, but sites like oDesk and Mechanical Turk offer similar options). - Personal rewards
Joe Silverman, founder of New York Computer Help, motivates himself through a personal reward system: "Write a blog article and get a mini-chocolate. Call up clients and get coffee at Dunkin Donuts. The key for me is to stick to my system. If there’s something I don’t do, then it's no reward for me." - Brief meetings
Bobby Harris of BlueGrace Logistics hates meetings. They waste too much time, he thinks, but sometimes there’s no way you can get out of it. His two cents: "Never go to a meeting where you don't get a clear agenda in advance, and ask beforehand how long you'll need to be there as well. Whatever the answer is, divide it in half!" - Clean desks
According to Priscila Barros, founder of Babiekins Magazine, many entrepreneurs underestimate the benefits of a clean desk. Barros has a separate folder for each project and each task. Once she is done with something, she marks it off her to-do list and files away the folder. This helps her focus 100% of her attention on one thing at a time. - Get outside for a bit
Mark Slater, CEO of Pingup, goes outside every day for a half hour to re-energize and move around a bit. "Too many people (especially in cold regions) go the whole workday without setting foot outside. Yet, that's just what will boost productivity", Slater claims. - Evernote
Samira Far is the owner of Bellacures and organizes her professional life by way of daily, monthly, and quarterly Evernote to-do lists. - E-mail snoozing
James Borrow, co-founder and CEO of SHIFT says, "Snooze all e-mails that bear no relevance to your weekly goals and objectives. Then start treating your inbox like a to-do list instead of always trying to respond to everything immediately."
- Productive morning
Lucas Donat founded the Tiny Rebellion advertising agency and uses the 'magical hours' between four and seven in the morning to get through the most difficult tasks of the day. The early morning is his most creative period of the day, when not a single soul is around to distract him.
