10 Productivity Tips For Ease In Your Day

We don't need more hours in a day. We need to be more efficient with our time. Ease comes from squashing distractions, running on clear energy in your body and mind, and being in control of your day. On today’s podcast, Lisa Pezik outlines ten productivity tips to help you increase your productivity and raise your energy level, your clarity, your peace, and your stamina. Do even one of these ten and you will see a massive change!

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10 Productivity Tips For Ease In Your Day

I want to dive right into talking about productivity. Many times, you hear people, entrepreneurs, small business owners, moms, dads, grandparents, workers say, “I wish that I had more time. I wish there were more hours in the day.” That is a death trap to say that because it's not about having more hours in the day. It's about making the most of the time that we have. It’s being ninja about distractions, being intentional about what we're doing, being incredibly present in the activities with the people that we are communicating to and collaborating with. You can get so much done in a short amount of time when you're intentional, focused and realistic about what you can get done and what you can achieve.

My husband, Eric and I who run our agency, we have been beautifully humbled since this time hit in March. We were already pretty stretched thin for time. We had been through a few babysitters with no help. My family lives in Pennsylvania. We're here in Toronto. My husband's family aren't involved, and we got pretty used to doing everything. When Coronavirus hit, our housekeeper couldn't come, our gardener couldn't come, our student who helped us with laundry couldn't come. We're blessed to have all this help, but when that's taken away from you, you're going, “Now I need to go back to the drawing board.” I need to navigate how to run a household, how to take care of our health, how to virtually homeschool our six-year-old, and how to still provide incredible not only customer service, but quality of the business that we're doing for our clients. For me mostly, still do outreach to connect with people, collaborate, take on new clients, speak and write, and do all the things that we do.

It came down to our habits. It came to ten things that I want to share with you that we should have already been doing. This should have been in place long before March 2020 hit. This is a blessing that this time humbled us and challenged us to change our habits. I want to dive right in to these ten things. I want you to do an audit or an assessment or look at these things in your business and your life. How are things going for you? Does this need to change? Even if you change 1 of these 10, you're going to see a massive change in your productivity. You're going to see a massive change in the outputs. You're going to see a massive change in how you feel. Your energy, clarity, peace, stamina and productivity are going to change.

PRODUCTIVITY IS NOT ABOUT HAVING MORE HOURS IN THE DAY. IT'S ABOUT MAKING THE MOST OF THE TIME THAT WE HAVE.

Only Check Emails After Morning Routine

Number one is the dreaded email. I need to tackle email first because it is the bane of every person's existence nowadays when we are being hit left, right and center from everything, from the people we follow in business to the specials at the stores that we shop at. Whether you are on your email for personal or on your email for business, do not dive in first thing in the morning. You must get up. You must take care of yourself first, whether that means meditating, journaling, walking, stretching, having a cup of coffee or tea in peace. Ideally banging out that thing that needs to get done first thing in the morning, then you can dive into your inbox, which is according to my previous mentor, Brendon Burchard says, “The inbox is full of everyone else's demands, wants and wishes of you.” Your inbox is everyone else's priorities, not your priorities. Email after you take care of yourself first, or you get done those new and moving things in business first.

Only Check Emails 2x A Day Max

The second thing about email, only check it 1 to 2 times a day. I check my email around 9:30, 10:00 AM. We don't have calls then. My little guy is already rock and rolling with virtual school in this landscape. By 9:00, 10:00, I've banged out that important thing that I need to do in my business. That's when I can get on and start answering to other people, getting what I need to be doing what's asked of me when it comes to clients and things like that. 10:00 AM is the first time, 4:30, 5:00 for me, it's to sleep well at night. I make sure that no 911 emergency has come in. I'll do one more check and that's it. If you stop and answer every time an email, a ding, a message or something comes in, you are decreasing your productivity by 33% every single time you get pulled away and you check that, and you go on to something else. Only you know what those right email times are for you, no more than 1, 2 times a day.

You train people how you respond. We went away to a cottage in Northern Ontario and I had a client who I love so dearly, such a sweet woman. She reached out to me on a Saturday and we went to the cottage on a Sunday. We were there Sunday through Thursday, home Friday, and it was Tuesday. She wrote me an email. She sent me a video script back that we were working on together for one of her modules for her membership. She said, “I haven't heard from you. Was my script that bad? I'm starting to panic. What's up?” I look back and I'm like, “Didn't she email me? How long has it been?” When I looked back, she emailed me late Saturday night. It had been Sunday, Monday.

It had been one business day, two actual full days and she was freaking out thinking something terrible happened, or I didn't know how to let her know that her stuff was terrible. It was not. That was all internal fear that she was worried about because when we started our working relationship together, I would answer that day, that night, an hour later, five minutes later. Going two days was like, “What is going on?” I went to explain and she was like, “I totally get it. You were at the cottage. Have fun.” You train people how quickly you're going to respond. If you set that standard that you respond within 30 seconds or within an hour, within a day, that's a hard standard to keep up to. Keep that in mind.

Set A Timer For Social Media Scrolling And YouTube Watching

Number three, set a timer for social media or YouTube. Don't get me wrong. There's this video going around of Mexican Shih Tzus. They're dressed in Mexican wear and they're running, pictures and videos of dogs being rescued. I will get sucked into the black hole of YouTube and social media so quickly that I set a timer for ten minutes. Some people will tell you that you need to use social media and YouTube only as a business tool, and know your intent when you're going on there. That's true but for some of us, for me, I live in Canada. A lot of my family and friends are in the US. It's a way that I'm able to share pictures of our family, communicate, wish people happy birthday, and make connections to pick up the phone and call each other. I do like to be social on it. I just have to limit myself to ten minutes, no more of scrolling the feed, reaching out to people saying hi. I'm on there but I'm still intentional about why I'm on there.

Auto Responders And Airplane Mode Are Key To Focus

Number four has been a game-changer for me, autoresponders and airplane mode on your phone. I would be addicted to the ding, the Facebook message, the tweet, the email coming in. Even though I put my phone to the side, or I close out my email or I minimize it and I think, “I'm not answering email,” I'm writing this book or I'm writing this chapter. I'm going to write out my notes for a podcast or I'm going to watch this client video or watch this work or write this email. Every time the ding would come, I would feel like I would have to check it. When you are thick in creative work or doing work in general, put your phone on airplane mode. Put in autoresponder on your email that says, “I'm in creative work for the day. I'll get back to you tomorrow.”

PEOPLE RESPECT BOUNDARIES WHEN YOU SET THEM BECAUSE THEY HAVE BOUNDARIES, TOO.

I started putting autoresponders on my emails on the weekend. That was a learning curve for me what happened with that client. I said, “I'm not working on the weekend. I'll come back to you on Monday. Take care, stay safe and have a wonderful weekend.” When you tell people and it's there, for me, I felt like I could breathe because people knew and the expectation wasn't there. They’re not going to panic if they didn't hear for me for a day or two. People will respect boundaries when you set them because they have boundaries too. When you're in the thick of working, airplane mode and autoresponders. When you don't want to be plugged in, autoresponder is a great customer service.

Know What To Delegate And Do

Number five. This is the general business thing that you need to know. What are you doing and what are you delegating? I learned that so well in our personal life when we were able to hire out a gardener, a babysitter for a bit of help, a house cleaner, handyman, all of that people. We’re quite capable of doing all of that, but that's not where our best time is spent. It took me a bit longer to learn that in business. The best way that my current mentor, Bo Eason, described it to me is what are the three activities that make your business go up, that make your impact go up, that make your income go up? Those are the three things that you do, everything else you delegate. For me, that's speaking, whether it's on the podcast, on a client call, on a summit, on social media, going live, speaking, writing my blogs, books and recovery. Those are the three things that make my business go up. Everything else, I'm delegating. I hired Podetize, who was the company that is now helping me with the show notes and to bring this show to life because I was writing my own show notes and creating the cover graphics. I had a VA who was editing and helping out with that. It was beautiful to find someone that I send them this and they bring it to life and make it happen. What do you need to do? What makes your business go up? What do you need to delegate?

Allow Proper Time For A Task And Allow Proper Rest

Number six and seven, allow proper time and allow proper rest. When I say allow proper time, I used to get incredibly frustrated when I would block off an hour to do a podcast and write a blog. The next thing you know, my Yeti mic wouldn't work and have issues with technology. It would take me 40 minutes to get myself set up when there was a technical issue or something’s going wrong. Even trying to do a blog, I get writer's block or I'd be trying to force myself to write something. That is not a realistic timeframe in a calendar to be blocking off one hour to do two things in that hour. This leads to number eight which is, multitasking is a myth. Allow proper blocks of time. How long is it going to take you to do that thing? What is a realistic timeframe to do that? It's like when you're driving to somewhere and you plunk it in the GPS, and it tells you it's going to take an hour, but you give yourself that buffer because you know you're going to be driving through rush hour traffic or where there's construction. Give yourself that buffer when you're planning your activities.

Multitasking Is A Myth

Also, don't book yourself back to back. Where is the white space? White space means you're doing nothing. Where is the white space in your calendar to rest and recover? You're not going to be productive if your brain is fried. You're not going to be productive if you haven't drunk water or eaten properly or gone outside for some fresh air. Allow that time for recovery. For me, I use the rule of three. I try not to schedule more than three things in a day. I don't schedule any more than two. I've learned it’s about what I can manage with being a mom, virtual homeschooling, not going out to eat, cooking meals. It’s no more than two things a day and that multitasking is a myth. Not two things in the same block of time. I think about our son who's in virtual school, grade two, he doesn't have art and math in the same hour, or literacy and math in the same hour. They're chunked in hour blocks of different subjects. You’ve got to treat your business the same.

Meditate To Run Clean

Number nine, meditate to run clean. If you are holding on to someone that ticked you off, something that upset you, whatever is clogging up that space in your head and in your heart, you're not going to create from that authentic space. I found that things are going to flow easily. I found meditation to be what helps me get in a proper state to be able to create cleanly, to show up authentically, to speak what's on my heart and on my mind. That could be painting for you, exercise, walking, reading a couple pages of a book or listening to a funny video. You know what sparks that creative, clean energy in you. For me, it's meditation. I never used to meditate. I could not sit still. I used to curse thinking, "This is so stupid. Who can do this? Who can sit for this long? Who can quiet their thoughts?” Now I crave my 20, 30-minute longer meditations because it fuels my soul.

What You Did Today Is Enough

Lastly, number ten, what you did is enough. I was on a Peloton ride, low-impact ride, fifteen minutes. Robin Arzon, who is one of my favorite instructors, said, “Take that fifteen minutes for you. What you did is enough.” This is all you have, these fifteen minutes. It's enough. It's consistency. It's not what you do once. It's what you do over and over again. In order to keep that clean energy running, that clean creativity, I want you to think of the same thing. What you did is enough. If you want to write a book and you set a timer for an hour that you're going to sit your butt in the seat and write, at the end of those 60 minutes say, “Thank you. I'm glad I did this. What I did is enough. I'll tackle that again tomorrow or the next time I have that blocked in my calendar.” Creativity is a process. Business is a process. Give yourself that grace to know that what you did is enough.

Written by Lisa Pezik

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