Stop the distractions and be productive with these tips

No matter whether you’re an entrepreneur, designer, marketer, hard working employee, etc. there will be distractions. The key is to find ways to avoid being distracted, because you have goals to reach and not focusing on them will help no one. If you’re busy, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not sidetracked from your duty. Remember it is better to be productive than busy. Here are some suggestions that I feel will help improve your productivity.

Check e-mails and phone less – Modern technology is a gift and a curse, there’s no doubt about that. Constantly checking messages does nothing but waste time. There’s a report I read that the average employee checks their e-mail 36 times an hour. If you’re a startup, you’ll end up checking it more or every time your phone or computer notifies you have mail. I know when I started out, I was constantly checking my phone and not all the e-mails received were important at all. If you can check your e-mail 3 times a day that would be greatly improve productivity. If you can’t do that at least start out by checking your messages once every 3 hours. You will go through withdrawal, but trust me, it’s okay.

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Step back from Social Media – It is important to be interact and engage with your fans, because that helps build brand loyalty. What you don’t want is too be glued to your screen constantly tweeting, posting, scrolling through your Instagram feed, and not stepping back. You should be able to have a strategy when you post on your outlets. You need your followers to look and respond. It’s okay to have some downtime, you can come back the next day to discuss the trending topics of today. With everyone wanting to gain likes, not necessarily earn them, you can become anxious and caught up with why isn’t your great post receiving the likes and shares as it should. Yes, you’ll have to strategize your social media content, but it will be refreshing to put your phone down or temporarily block facebook so you can focus on what is important.

Create a “To-Do” list – Prioritizing is beneficial for your productivity. I never used to believe in it and thought that I could remember everything in my head, well that’s not the case and a very immature way of thinking about it. You may remember a lot, but chances are you’ll forget certain tasks and details. Before you begin your work day or your day for that matter, write down everything you have to do. Put the most important things that must get done on the top to the least important task. The goal isn’t to finish the whole list, but complete the tasks that will reach your goal. No need to put pressure on yourself if something doesn’t matter or isn’t relevant for you to reaching your goal. Another option which does help some people is writing a new list the night before or at the end of your work day, so you can come into work or after your morning routine to begin crossing those items off your list right away.

Looking for Inspiration – I love coming across a book or a site that inspires me to work on creating art or coming up with business strategies. The fuel is lit and I must attack and you should do the same when the spark ignites. What you shouldn’t do is spend time continuing looking for more inspiration or forcing yourself to be inspired. Inspiration will strike, but surfing the web trying to find something that you think will give you that extra boost is only another time waster. If you do find some inspiration on social media that is great, but you won’t always find it and you have to remind yourself to step away from it. If you haven’t taken a walk on a nice sunny day, you should, because it’ll help clear your mind and take your surroundings in which can lead to some great thoughts.


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Organize your workspace – This is another item on the list that I was guilty of not doing when I was younger. From time to time we get sloppy, unless you’re already neat freak, it is important to tidy up your area. Productivity thrives in a clean environment and you’ll notice that you’ll have a clear mind when everything is clean. Think Feng Shui, harmonize your work space and you’ll be in a good state of mind to work.

Take a breather – This may be counter productive, but every once in awhile you may be stressed where you need to relax. Relaxing will put your mind at ease where you can go back to the situation and proceed with a better headspace to fulfill the duty at hand. Anxiety, stress, any negative emotion will not help you reach your goals. Having a clouded judgement will hurt your business, so if you need to go outside to catch some air, grab a drink of water, take a couple deep breaths, take 10-15 minutes to meditate or do whatever you do to calm yourself do that as you will come back ready to perform.

These are only a couple ways to help you from being side tracked. If you have anymore suggestions that you think will be useful leave a comment.