On June 2 we hosted Stephanie Zafarana, Executive Coach and time management expert, who provided us with some great tools, and tips, for driving our schedules, and improving our productivity. Stephanie shared some examples of how "decision making fatigue" and a "lack of planning" directly impede our success, and fun, in this business. And ways we can all counter these challenges, by taking charge of our sales efforts, and schedules.
Our 3 takeaways from the discussion:
1. PLAN YOUR TIME THE NIGHT PRIOR - "plan your work, then work your plan" has always been a strategy we deploy, and the same applies to planning your time and your schedule. Consider organizing yourself the night before the next day, and simplifying your "to do list" to the 3 most important things you will accomplish the next day.
2. TIME BLOCKING - most of us WANT to block out chunks of our day to focus on sales, or a main objective, but inevitably get side tracked, or react to our emails, client requests, employee interruptions and more. When are you most productive? Take that block of time (2-3 hours) and use it for hyper focusing on those 1-3 objectives you have for the day. Plan your schedule AROUND this time block vs over it. If you can discipline yourself to stay the course, and protect this time block on your schedule, you will find each day to be more productive, and fulfilling. Try it for 1 week and see if it makes a difference in your business.
3. STOP DOING LISTS - As Stephanie put it ..."time is the thing we waste most, and wish we had more of it". Do you even realize what you are wasting your time on? Try this exercise ... take 2 weeks and each day list out the activities/tasks you completed for that day. After 2 weeks you will have a comprehensive list of what you are doing on a daily/weekly basis. Separate out these activities/tasks into 2 columns - TO DO LIST and STOP DOING LIST. Focus on the TO DO (which should be revenue generating activities) and hand off the STOP DOING tasks that get in the way of your productivity. You will be way more effective, and have a ton more fun!
Listen to Stephanie's entire interview below which includes a ton more tools, and tips, for getting in front of your calendar and effectively driving your own sales efforts.
Listen to the interview here: https://www.theswagcoach.com/replays
Make sure you don’t miss the next webinar by registering here: http://bit.ly/swagdhd