Congratulations on choosing the solopreneur career path. It’s a rewarding experience because you get to create your destiny. However, because you work from home and don’t have managers and supervisors breathing down your neck, it can be such a huge struggle to stay on top of your schedule.
Often, solopreneurs find themselves switching between tasks and realizing how little progress they made at the end of the day. Are you able to relate? If so, keep reading, because I’ve prepared a list of the best productivity tips that will 10x the way you work today.
1. If a task can be completed in two minutes, do it.
There will be tasks that come up that aren’t on your to-do list, but you know that not all of them are a priority. However, to keep these tasks from piling up, here’s what you can do: Ask yourself if a task can be accomplished in as little as 2 minutes. One example is responding to an email. If your answer is yes, do that task and move on to your main tasks.
2. Dress for success.
You might find it weird to wear work clothes while working from home. In fact, one of the reasons why office workers think of working from home is that they can be in their PJs every day! Soon enough, you will realize dressing for work puts you in a work mindset. So go ahead, choose an office attire. Wear leather shoes if you must.
3. Organize your work day based on your most productive hours.
I want you to get completely honest with yourself here. Do you find yourself most alert and focused during the day? Are evenings better because they’re quieter and everyone else at home is asleep? Figure out your daily rhythm and schedule your work hours based on that.
4. Avoid listening to music with lyrics.
Music is a great tool for helping you maintain focus. However, remember that your choice of music can also be a source of distraction. Tunes with lyrics, especially tunes that you’re familiar with, tempt you to sing along so you get distracted from a task at hand. Furthermore, music that is soothing to the ears will calm you down. It’s perfect for beating business-related anxiety.
5. Make sure that others respect your work schedule.
We live in an imperfect world, and that simply means you can’t completely get away from distractions. However, you can teach those around you to respect your time better. Time is limited, and the last thing you need is people making random requests throughout the day. Show people at home that you follow a consistent work schedule. Most importantly, respect your own time by learning how to say “NO” unless something is urgent.
6. Stick with tools and methods that work for you.
In this digital age, there’s an endless list of resources that tell you how you should be running your business and the best tools to use that boost your productivity. Most of these tools and techniques are fluff, and at the end of the day, you only need to do and use what works best for you. If you prefer taking down notes using a pen and paper, do that. If you love using Excel spreadsheets to keep track of things, stick with that.
Over to You…
Now, it’s time to implement what you learned. Also, do you already use a productivity hack that helped you a lot? Share that hack with us!
