I had a meeting today with a potential client who asked me why I didn’t have my phone number on my website. I told him it was because we were getting too many inquiries and it was making us unproductive. It got me thinking about the other ways I increase my productivity and I thought I would share some ideas with you today.
1) No phone number on the website. This obviously can’t work with every type of business but if you’re running an online company you will be a lot more productive if you don’t put your phone number online. Talking on the phone is one of the biggest time wasters out there. Screen your calls vigorously as well. I usually won’t pick up my phone unless I know the person and I know it’s urgent. A great example is Young Entrepreneur which only has a web form to contact the admins.
2) Set times to meet people. Tied into #1 is setting up specific times to meet / talk with people. Don’t let people catch you while you’re in the middle of something else and waste your time. Set up specific periods in your day / week to talk with people on the phone or have meetings. Both you and the person you’re talking with will be more prepared and you will get more from the session. I also always have my meetings on one day (usually Wednesdays) where I’ll line up meetings all afternoon. I get everything out of the way at once, don’t let any meetings go too long (or it interrupts the next one) and don’t lose time traveling back and forwards to the office since they are all in once place. Have them come to your meeting place unless they are a really important relationship you want to develop.
3) Do all your admin on one day. It’s easy to get distracted and handle admin issues as they come up. This approach however will cost you loads of valuable time! I keep a record of everything I need to do that is admin related and every Tuesday sit down and get it done. I block out that time, nobody bothers me, I don’t set up any calls or meetings, and I get the work done.
4) Get help. Get people working with you. I have some people who are volunteers for me, I have others who are interns, and I have staff. From day one you should be figuring out how you can outsource the lower value work to others so you can focus on building the business. You don’t always need money to do this – you just need to find an incentive for the other person to work for you (money is only one factor!)
5) Check email once a day. I used to check my email every 5 minutes to see what needed my attention and I responded immediately. This led to multiple threads going back and forward until we finally got a solution. Email should not be like instant messaging and there are very few emails that require absolute immediate action. I tried for one week to go from checking email every 5 minutes to twice a day: noon and 4pm. My business did not fall apart. I didn’t lose customers or partners over it – in fact most people didn’t notice a difference at all! At the same time I had way more time to focus on other important aspects of my business. Now I check my email once a day at noon. If you want a response the same day, write to me before 11:59am 
6) Do your most important work in the morning. I used this idea from the 4 Hour Work Week. Every morning when I get into the office I work on an important project that will help my business move forward. I don’t answer the phones or emails, my staff knows not to interrupt me, and I get a lot of work done. I go until noon and get a significant amount of work done. Then I turn on my Outlook and the rest of my day begins by checking my emails. We often get so caught up in the day to day that we don’t have the time to work on the important business-building projects. Don’t do anything else until noon and you’ll soon see a dramatic rise in productivity.
If you respect your own time people will also respect your time and you’ll become far more productive.
What do you do to be more productive?
Evan Carmichael
