Staying focused each day is likely your biggest hurdle that you have to overcome. It’s not easy to stay on target with all the distractions pulling at us every day and every hour.
- Family & Friends
- Facebook, Twitter & More (All Social Media)
- Emails that pile up hourly
- Phone Texts
- Immediate Requests or Rush Tasks that taking time away from our planned tasks for the day
- Many, many more
In the end, it just takes discipline to keep things in order and moving forward, but there are some tools that can help you along the way.
Live and die by your Calendar, CRM and / or Project Management System
I use a combination of mostly free online tools to stay on target.
- Google Calendar – My company uses Google Apps for our company email, therefore we are using the Google email and calendar system. I place all my appointments and most important to do’s on the calendar and color code them for my needs. When I have accomplished one, I change the color to grey to show it’s done. I do this for both business and personal items.
- Insightly, Asana, or any other CRM or Project Management System – I have tested many different CRM’s and Project Management Systems. I currently do not use one outside my use of Google Calendar, but if you need one, choose one and use it consistently.
- Trello – Trello can easily be used to track prospects and personal ideas. Some people love it and will adapt it to do anything they want to keep track of and others would never use it. You just have to test and try these different options to see if they fit your needs.
- Evernote – It’s usefulness to capture your thoughts and ideas, create lists, and be able to organize them is tremendous.
There are also, a few disciplines that I try to practice daily.
- I try to clear all emails before I shut down for the evening – I try to answer and handle all emails that come in every day so that I don’t have them piling up. If you don’t, you will miss important emails from clients and potentially miss new prospects.
- I try to perform all tasks that I have assigned to myself daily so I don’t fall behind on getting the things done that need to get done.
- Do your client requests and tasks first, before you do your personal tasks. Your personal tasks can always be put off into the evening or weekend hours.
Take some time in the evenings and weekends to test the various online tools that will help you step up your productivity and assist you in staying focused on the daily tasks, and your business will be effected in a very positive manner. When client’s request something to be done, you will get it done more quickly which will lead to more referrals and therefore more clients.
Photo by Paul Skorupskas on Unsplash
