I am often asked how I’m able to get so much done in such few hours a day. In fact, the students in my six-week group coaching program are constantly asking me for my productivity secrets.
In case you don’t know, I work fewer hours than ever while earning more money than ever. My last day job sucked up at least 50 hours of my life. Now that I’ve been self-employed for five years, I’m working around 30 hours a week depending on the week and earning more than ever. I’m also having more fun.
It’s taken me years to get to this point and I’m here to share my productivity secrets so it doesn’t take you as long. Here are a few ways you can get so much done in one day.
Think about how you want to live, first.
My life and business changed when I came across Natalie Sisson of The Suitcase Entrepreneur. She often speaks about the “ideal day” exercise where she encourages entrepreneurs to outline what an ideal day looks like in their lives. According to her, this is what entrepreneurs need to figure out first before building their businesses. Additionally, no one thinks about this so their businesses are not built intentionally.
Well, that blew my mind. And from that point forward, I did start becoming more intentional based on how I wanted to live my life. This is when I started focusing on high end offerings, systems, scaling and influencer work.
At the end of the day, we want businesses that support the way we want to live. If that means you only want to work four hours a day then figure out how to build income streams that allow that. Does it happen overnight? Nope. Not even close. But at the very least you start taking the steps in the right direction. Once you figure it out, then productivity secrets become easy to attain.
Be intentional about what projects you take on.
In addition to being intentional with my life, I’m intentional with which projects I take on. This means I actually do the math and see whether or not projects and ideas fit into my current business and life. This is one the productivity secrets people intellectually understand but don’t act upon.
To give you an idea, I’ve turned down multiple offers just this week because they just don’t make sense financially. I also don’t want the added stress. This allows me to focus on what does make me money without nearly as much strain and effort. This allows me to me super productive because I’m in the flow.
And, of course, batching.
Out of all my productivity secrets, batching is my worst kept secret of all time. I’m a big fan of doing similar tasks at the same time. It works really well for me.
For example, this morning I only focused on edits for a specific client. This afternoon, I’m focusing on batching several articles for another client.
If I do take meetings, I usually only take them on certain days so it doesn’t get in the way of client work. I simply do a marathon of phone calls and call it a week.
Final Thoughts
Productivity secrets are very helpful when we’re trying to get work done. Just note that the best secret of all is to know how you want to live your life. Once you know that, you can design a business where you won’t need hundreds of productivity secrets.
Amanda Abella
Amanda is a best-selling author of "Make Money Your Honey", a book that helps freelancers and business owners understand their relationship with money and how to make it more productive. She's driven by helping others live the most productive and fruitful way possible.