Carefully planning your day, while a challenge for some business owners and entrepreneurs, can greatly enhance your productivity.
Kazakis says creating a “default diary” of tasks you have to achieve, even if they’re not glamorous, can help keep people focused.
“These are tasks that you will need to execute that are not exciting you or may even be very low value for your skill set,” he says.
“Move forward with precision and commitment… and you will delegate and eliminate these tasks to another person in the team as the business grows.”
Kazakis says business owners shouldn’t plan 100% of their week, but structure 50% of it around the relevant three.
“The other 50% needs to be unstructured to allow for distractions and discipline failure. If you stick to this strategy and test and measure it, you will be more productive and more successful.”
Reflection can help keep a business owner on track and ensure they identify opportunities and risks.
Gleeson says danger arises when a business is in denial.
“That’s why there needs to be checks and balances in place so the business owner has someone to run ideas by and bounce off,” he says.
“Business owners should reflect at least on a monthly basis, but for this to be effective you need to have determined how to measure business success.”
At some point in time we’ve all wished there were more hours in a day, so imagine what it would be like if you could achieve 10 times as much in a single hour.
Kazakis calls this the “hour of power”.
“Find one hour in your diary every week which is non-negotiable to execute a times 10 hourly rate outcome,” he says.
“For example, if you believe you are worth $100 per hour, then the hour of power is worth $1000.”
Kazakis says to think about what strategies or activities you could do in that one hour that would allow you to achieve 10 times more than any regular hour.
If the business needs to boost its sales, this could be dedicating your time to cold calling potential new customers. If you’re in the services sector, you could dedicate that time to personally calling clients to make sure they’re happy, resulting in continued business.
“If you achieve the outcome you want from your hour of power, why not block out two hours a week or three hours,” he says.
“This is the separation point from being effective versus just an employee or a business owner that bought a job.”
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