9 ways successful people increase their productivity Part One

According to a 2012 report on Mashable.com, as of 2011, the average time Americans spend on various activities are as follows:

• 6.9 hours on social networks;
• 4.8 hours on the phone, checking email and postal mail;
• 21 hours socializing in person;
• 15.3 hours taking care of household members;
• 59.4 hours watching TV offline; and
• 23.1 hours watching TV online.

If you’re a typical small business owner, phone, email and social networks are probably the things keeping you from being productive, even if you’re not aware of it. They can feel productive – but they’re not. So how can you be productive when there are so many things to distract you?

First, you need to embrace the need for change and trying new things. Then, pick some of the items below to try..

• You need to set specific goals
  Do you know what you’ll be doing five years from now? Where will you be? You need to have specific goals because this will give you a purpose and vision that you can work toward.When you have a specific goal, you will be able to manage your priorities, time and resources to attain that goal. A goal will also help you discern what is worth spending your time on and what will distract you from achieving your objective.
• Make a to-do list
  A task list is essential to improving your productivity. How many times have you had the feeling that you seem to have forgotten to do something? If you have a to-do list, you can easily which tasks have been accomplished and which ones have yet to be done.
• Learn to prioritise
  To make your to-do list more effective, you need to prioritise your tasks. You can use the “A to F” coding system used by many people. “A” being the highest priority and “F” having the least priority. You can also use applications such as Evernote and Asana. These apps will help you put conversations and tasks together to help you get things done with less effort.
• Set realistic deadlines
  Procrastination is a bad attitude that will surely kill productivity. However, setting deadlines that are unnecessarily short will stress you out and in the end, may cause you to be more unproductive.You also need to keep in mind that taking on too much work will not automatically make you more productive. Start slow, maybe up to 2 tasks a day at first then, work up to a comfortable pace. The key is to focus and get something done. When you try to complete too many things, you may end up leaving several tasks unfinished.
• You have to delegate other tasks
  You need to delegate everything that is not essential to your overall goals. It is not wise to spend time doing tasks that other people are capable of doing.Stop putting a heavy burden on yourself. Delegating frees up your time and energy and enables you to concentrate on more important aspects of the job.

It’s time to put some of those suggestions above into action! If you’re on top of all of those things, the next part of this article gives you four more ways to increase your productivity.

For updates join us at Google+