These 8 steps to make the most of your time and increase your productivity.

Effective time-management is one of the priorities of any entrepreneur, because the success of your projects lies precisely in your ability to make the most of it and increase productivity, after all “time is money”; so, today’s post aims to give you a guide to better manage your time and be more productive.

Through 8 tips we will help you to make the most of your time and to make every step in the creation of your business more productive. The truth is that these tips will help you so much that you will want to take them to all aspects of your life.

1. Know yourself

The first tip is to introspect on how you manage your time and review how productive you are. In this guide you will be reading tips that may not suit you at all, for example, maybe you work better under pressure and it will help you to set shorter deadlines or you prefer to work little by little on each project and decide not to stress for quick results.

You need to know how you work, under what conditions you work best and, most importantly, to recognize your organizational problems and distractions. Being aware of this will help you design a plan that really suits you and that you can take with a better attitude, so before moving on to the other tips, write down what are your virtues with time and what are the mistakes that make you lose it.

2. Prioritize tasks and delegate

One of the most common mistakes is that it seems that we do not have enough time for all the activities we have to do, and we end up with time on our hands doing everything almost at the last minute. To prevent this from happening, the main thing to do is to review what activities you have to do and the time you have for them.

Ideally, you should list each of your activities and calculate more or less the time it will take you to do each one, while also listing the delivery time or the exact moment when they have to be done.

From this pair of lists, start to order and prioritize each one according to the ones that have the closest due date, so you will know where to start and in which activities you have to hurry more than usual. Setting deadlines will help you put pressure on yourself not to get distracted and finish this to-do list faster.

It is also very important that you learn to delegate the pending tasks among your collaborators, this will ensure that each one gets the necessary attention.

3. Set clear and achievable goals

Once you have clear priorities in your task list and the time to accomplish them, you can set clear and achievable goals that allow you to feel motivated every time you finish a specific task.

This organization should be taken even to your day to day work, set clear and achievable goals that you can finish in a short time helps you feel motivated. On the other hand, trying to fit too much work on a single day will make you feel frustrated and it can hinder your work dynamic.

4. Avoid distractions

Avoiding distractions is the cornerstone of promoting productivity and making the best use of your time. It is usually one of the most common pieces of advice, but it rarely materializes into something more specific.

To avoid distractions, it is important that you make an introspection to identify which activities distract you and which ones you can eliminate from your routine completely. Surely you will not be able to eliminate all of them, but when this is the case, it is best to try to reduce them to a minimum.

If you have the possibility, it can help you a lot to have your own place where only you have access and where you can veto those things that distract you.

Despite how dangerous it can be for your productivity, you can use the activities that distract you as an incentive to work faster, because you can reward yourself after accomplishing a goal with a trivial activity that you find satisfying.

5. Take a short break between tasks

As unbelievable as it may seem, organizing your time involves leaving a space for rest. Even if you have enough time, you can extend these breaks to hours or days if you have finished a particularly strenuous task.

Taking time to rest will help you get back to work with new energy and a much clearer mind. You will notice the difference if you take these short breaks.

6. Create a routine

Making changes in the way you work and vetoing everything that distracts you is an important part of increasing your productivity, but this is only the beginning. The goal is to make these positive activities become a habit, experts say that to achieve this you must repeat them for 66 days.

Nothing better to start disciplining yourself and transforming your day to day and the way you use the time, than to make it a routine. Establishing your planned activities, breaks and small rewards in a routine drastically reduces the chances of falling back into bad habits, as well as helping you increase your productivity.

7. Get a good night’s sleep

In general, your state of health directly influences your work, it is not the same to start working after a good night’s sleep than to start working after a sleepless night.

Surely it has happened to you that after not sleeping well for a night, or several nights, when you try to work you do not perform as well. It does not matter if you dedicate the planned time to this activity, if the lack of sleep is affecting you all the time will be a waste. Therefore, it is very important that you start each workday rested to have a clear mind.

8. Use technology to your advantage

You will not be surprised by statements like “there are apps for everything” or “you have your life on your cell phone” because deep down you know that they are full of truth. Nowadays, not taking advantage of the tools that technology puts at your fingertips to solve an everyday problem is a mistake; so use technology to your advantage and start using applications that help you manage your time and increase your productivity.

These tools can help you both to manage and organize time and tasks for your company and with your employees as well as to manage your personal time.

Some applications that will help you create a to-do list are: Todoist, an app in which you only have to write down the tasks you have to do and its software and artificial intelligence categorizes and arranges them according to the order of importance; in addition to automatically schedule reminders and archive the ones you have already done.

Toodledo is another application very similar to the previous one, in which you enter your list of tasks and the due date, with this information the app will determine the priority of each activity and the time you should allocate to it; it also serves to organize work with your collaborators, as it allows you to share and manage task lists.

If you want to measure the time you spend working you can use Toggl, a time tracking application that works on different devices (tablets, phones and computers), so no matter where you work from you can record and measure the time you spend on each task. It can give you a detailed report of how you spent your time, as you can imagine having this information in such a specific and quantitative way will allow you to determine how productive you are and what you can do to improve.

Jiffy is an application that simulates a timer that will measure the time spent on a task, project or client, it will also give you detailed statistics on the time spent on each task, breaks or minor tasks such as sending emails, which will help you make the necessary changes in the areas you need to improve.

We hope you find this guide useful, because there is nothing more valuable than time, especially for someone who is starting their own business.

What did you think of this guide, do you know any other tips to be more productive? Tell us in our social media, we love to hear from you!