11 Steps to Enhance your Mind, Focus & Productivity

Are you feeling time poor?

#1. Develop a Routine

Starting the day with a bang will certainly get those brain cells working! Get started with a meditation or Affirmation chant to get those creative juices flowing. then follow on with an exercise – walking, pilates or gym work out you find the program that works for you, your age and your fitness.

Now plan the day by organising that not so tidy workspace and then create the achievable list for the days challenges. Block out time for a break, walk or another chant and ensure that you stay focused and turn off all distractions when you are in the midst of your creative area.

#2. Determine early if your are the creator or the Organiser

You have created the idea and now feel totally overwhelmed with the idea of how many tasks you have created yourself! Decide early which of these tasks you are comfortable with and start looking for an individual or more to accomplish the tasks you feel are best left for others. You don’t need to move straight to paying someone to do the work but at least knowing when it gets to overload capacity you are able to move quickly to that person(s) that you have defined as suitable for the position or project.

#3. Learn to “Time Boxing” your activities

Time management technique where you allocate a fixed time period to a planned activity

Used by the rich and famous this is also called Time blocking and its where you fix an amount of time to achieve each tasks and add these blocks into your daily schedule. The question is “Why would you do this to yourself?” and No, you certainly are not a robot with such segregated time allocation. As we all know with social media, unstructured free time can often be a bad thing! Parkinsons Law states that “work expands to fill the time allocated for it” so structuring seems to me to be on the positive side not so negative.

#4. Identify your “Making it Happen”

Do you have one major project or challenge that must be finished by that specific date?

Concentrating prodominately on this one task as a block each day will get it achieved. And, as we know we can get the little projects done within the time allowed for that larger project as we diversify a little block each within the larger block time you have allocated. It feels like time blocking is certainly the way to go. So, build the whole picture by focusing on what the picture looks like and create the time blocks needed to complete at the time required. Minimises the stress and the time wasting periods.

#5. Planning your week

Spend 1 hour a week to on getting your calender and all it needs to acheive sorted and planned. This way you can see what you may need to allocate out to your new crew to accomplish the task. This hour is not for creating it is just for planning. Plan the blocks of the major project first then allocate necessary programs, content creation or daily school routine you need to add to your week and all that is ahead of it.

I have added a schedual for you to create and follow to save you time in trying to locate a style.

#6. Creating Your Default Diary

• Ability to enter monthly default tasks
• Ability to enter one-off projects
• Drop down boxes for quick entry
• Automatically colour-codes the different types of work
• Calculates the time spent on each client and type of work weekly and monthly, along with the available hours that remain
• Includes graphs showing time spent on clients and type of work
• Includes simple instructions

Use this simple spreadsheet template to enter your regular monthly tasks which will keep you focused and improve time management. I have taken the liberty of adding the home life duties in so you can get completely on top of life and all that it challenges you with.

#7. Stay Clear on your Priorities

This is where you really need to complete your default diary first then on a weekly basis take a look at the priorities you need to acheive including your home life and make the diary work so that life and challenges do not get in the way of the requirements you have to complete this week.

#8. Daily to-dos added to your diary

We all have changes every day to our “Planned” life so you already have your weekly assessment of whats required looking forward so each morning straight after morning mantra and your exercises jot down any extra’s that have popped up.. Can you add them into a blocked out time without causing yourself too much discomfort? If not can you get one of your new “Staff” /”Creators” to do this job? or a different task so that you can achieve it?

#9. Emails – we can’t do without them!

We will be running your new found business with a huge emphasis on emails so we need to learn their priority and also their misgivings!

Emails can become the bain of your life if you are the type of personality that needs to jump everytime you hear a notification. TURN OFF the notifications and set a BLOCK aside to visit and analyse your emails. Remembering that you will want to extend the email viewing to check out the stats of your campaigns and see how everything is tracking (Very important to do this) however ensure it is within a block so that you completely stay on track!

#10. Social – When do we need it?

We work with social but just like emails they are very distracting! Be disciplined and set yourself time allocation to how much you waste on “Researching” your social feeds. It is very easy to become distracted by the new puppy next door have purchased, however again it is a necessity in this new world you have joined to track and manage your social.

#11. Productivity tools a must!

When you first start out it feels like everyone wants a piece of that income you haven’t started making yet! A good practise is to know what tools are available and where they will enhance your productivity just like I spoke earlier on the creators you should surround yourself with if you are unable to achieve ultimate productivity. I have written a whole piece on what you should and could use to assist your productivity and the best tools to achieve success