Tips On How To Have A Schedule That Works

To have a schedule on a daily basis is like putting the rest of your life in order. Furthermore, it is one of the greatest ways with which you can achieve your goals on time and keep yourself from being unproductive and skipping important things which have to be done.

You might say that scheduling is a very easy task to accomplish. Try to think deeply and you will see that creating an efficient timetable requires appropriate skills. This is the same reason why successful companies and individuals spend weeks in plotting their schedules for the coming year. Browse through the succeeding points which can help you have a schedule that works to your advantage.

List Your Goals For The Day - Your goals here represent all the things you need to achieve on the day itself. Write them down according to priority. However, do not forget to set specific time of the day for standard activities. These are the hours when you have to wake-up, travel to work, cook meals, fetch the children at school and other stuff that are not negotiable. Estimate how much time you ought to spend on each task. For example, finishing a report for your boss in an hour. Ensure though that you are plotting reasonable time frames. An unrealistic schedule can leave you cramming and stressed out.

Use A Calendar - Having a calendar with you all the time is advisable for planning events. Perhaps, a friend suddenly calls up to set a lunch date with you. If you have a calendar at hand, you can say yes or no to the invite right away or have it moved to another date. Make it your personal reminder to attend only one activity for a day. If this is impossible, limit it up to two meetings a day only so that you can still accomplish other important tasks.

Be Open For Adjustments - Cross out the tasks you have accomplished for the day. Doing such will keep you reminded of how much more you have to work on. Be ready to move the unfinished ones to the following day. Be ready, as well, to work fast on the following day - leaving behind no backlogs. If by any chance that you always find yourself not completing your tasks on, reassess you daily schedule or your attitude towards it. This can keep you from making the most out of your time.

Create A Time For Yourself - Ever heard of this: 'All work and no play make a person dull.' You will lose your mind if you have a schedule solely dedicated for work. Include in between your task half an hour to one full hour for yourself. That is besides the time you spend to clean and groom yourself. You can spend this personal time praying, reading a book, sleeping or what have you. On certain occasions, you can choose to spend one full day with your family outdoors or a half day to watch a movie and eat with your co-workers or friends.

Data Management Made Easy - 4 Simple Tips

Regardless of the type business you run or industry you work in, chances are you will be dealing with customers and companies day in day out. Clients, potential customers, suppliers, competitors and partners are just a few examples of the types of folk that come across your radar.

Once your list of contacts starts to accumulate you need to manage this data with a CRM system of some description, at this point it doesn't matter how simple or sophisticated. And as you start to work with your chosen system you need to look at how you can make this data best work for you. There are a large number of steps which can be taken to ensure maximum return from your data and some of these are surprisingly easy to implement.

    Look through your existing system and identify which fields are underused or not used at all. If not why not? Is it because the field is of the wrong type? Maybe you have a free text field where you should have a companies look-up or a pick-list, which would minimise the variations of entries in the system. Instead of having a "St Pauls", "St. Pauls", "Saint Pauls" and "St. Paul's" as four different companies on the system, a pick-list or companies look-up would have created one company record only and thus your data would be far more useful.

    If a field is barely used it may be because it is simply not useful. A data migration or review of your system gives you the chance to rethink your approach, take a step back and look at what has worked for you so far and what has been less useful - too many seemingly useless fields may discourage your users from using the CRM at all if it is deemed unwieldy.

    Are you missing vital information? Perhaps you need to review which fields are made mandatory. You may have too many customers in your system with no contact details, as it is easy to simply save after collecting a new customer name, and hoping to fill in phone and email details later. That later soon dwindles into the back of the mind and the contact record becomes fairly redundant.

    As well as missing vital information due to fields not being used correctly, you may also be missing vital information because there is no field in which to collect it! It is worth inviting your future CRM user-base to contribute ideas to what they would like to see in the new system - something that may be blindingly obvious to those actually using CRM on a daily basis may not be at all evident to other involved in the CRM implementation process.

As well as the obvious factor of getting more useful data into your CRM system, these ideas also help make your new CRM software more end-user centric and this certainly is a determining factor on ensuring a successful user-adoption rate.

Improve Productivity and Increase Profit

There are certain things that can be done in any large business to help improve productivity and increase how much profit you are making. One of the things that you need to consider, however, is the fact that changes must be made on occasion and at times, large changes must be made. It all starts with reviewing your business on a regular basis, perhaps taking a close look at your business every six months or so. It helps to schedule these types of reviews in advance so that they are not let go by the wayside. What are some of the things that you may see which need changed?

Something that may surprise you when doing these reviews is that you are not going to only see problems within the company but you will also see good points that can be used to your benefit. If something is working well, it is likely that you're going to be able to continue to expound on that success. Of course, small changes may be necessary but when you're able to ramp up your success in such a way, it has a very positive impact on your business. This is not only seen in the profits but it is also seen in the productivity that is taking place among your employees and the fact that it helps to raise morale across the board.

You may also need to take a look at the technology that you used in your company to see if changes should be made. For example, you may have grown accustomed to using a certain type of software in parts of your business and it may be difficult to make a change. When the software is synchronized across the business, however, that can really help to boost productivity. Using the right SAP Accounts Receivable software which will integrate into the accounts payable and even into your inventory can allow you to see everything at a glance. Make sure that you use this type of software to your benefit.

Have you considered the information lifecycle management that is utilized by your company? Most businesses tend to look very carefully at the physical storage of any items that are going to be shipped to customers. Information lifecycle management, on the other hand, is directly related to the storage systems as well as the computing devices that you are using. The strategies that you use to store information may need to be updated from time to time as that can make a difference in the effectiveness of the storage devices.

There may even be times when the entire infrastructure of your business is going to need to be changed to the core. Of course, nobody enjoys making major changes such as this but there are times when they will be necessary. Just make sure that you have a well thought out plan that will help you to remain productive during the times that these changes are being implemented. It really can make a difference in your business now and in the future.

One Productivity Tip You Don't Hear Every Day

We all want to be more productive. We all wish there were more hours in a day to get everything done: wash the dishes, clean the house, go to work, pick up the kids from school, etc. It's no wonder everyone drinks coffee and has no time to take care of themselves.

Conventional productivity wisdom tells us to create checklists, keep track of our time, and maybe wake up one hour earlier and go to bed one hour later.

However, here is an unconventional tip that works for me, and will work for you too.

Watch what you eat.

Huh?

Believe it or not, diet plays a key part not only in your long term health, but also in your productivity. There are tons of diets to choose from, and I am not going to get into which diet you should choose because this article is more about productivity than health. If you must know, I am currently doing the paleo diet.

On this diet, my energy levels and focus have actually improved drastically. I really think that when you nutritious food, you just feel better overall. Feeling better keeps you motivated and focused for a longer time.

I used to come home from work exhausted. I would then either take a nap (ugh oh!), or go to a coffee shop and load up on caffeine. Man, I still love my caramel macchiatos...

Loading up on caffeine works short term, but in the long term in can wreak havoc on your productivity like it has mine. Ever since I switched over to the paleo diet, I just feel happier and fresher. That is why I think you should seriously look at your diet and see if you can make a change, and I almost guarantee you will be more productive. You must take care of your body.

One other thing I noticed, after going paleo, is that if I eat a crappy meal, like a burger or any kind of processed food, my energy levels go down a lot immediately after the meal. I am not a doctor, and this is my opinion not backed up by any scientific evidence, but I think your body uses a lot more energy to digest processed food, and processed food obviously has less nutrients than natural foods like fruits and vegetables. Perhaps this is why it seems that everyone feels so tired after eating lunch or dinner. Just my thought...

So before you worry about checklists and coffee, try to take care of your body by dieting. I urge you to try it for 30 days. Compare how you feel on your new diet and how you feel when you eat regularly. If you're already on a diet and feeling great, keep up the good work!

I will leave you with one quick analogy. Imagine your body as a car fuel tank. Would you fill up your car with junk? No, of course not. In the long run, it will break down and become a lemon. The same should go for your body. You always want to be running on all cylinders. Your family and career will thank you. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

3 Myths of Multitasking That Are Robbing You of Productivity

Imagine waking up in the morning, getting all of your money making task done in your business without any interruptions or distractions. Not only were you laser focused but you got your important task done in half the time and increased profits in your business. You also completed your tasks by early to midafternoon so you had the rest of the day to relax, hang out with friends, go to the beach and do the things you truly enjoy. Wouldn't that be wonderful to experience on a daily basis?

Most entrepreneurs don't experience that but you can if you didn't believe these 3 myths of multitasking.

Myth#1: I Get More Done When I Multitask.

So you think you are good at multitasking? We live in a world were multitasking is the norm and unfortunately your progress is being slowed down by this. Your ability to make profit and create the lifestyle that you want is being greatly affected by working in an ineffective matter.

A recent Harvard Business Review post says that multitasking leads to as much as a 40% drop in productivity, increased stress, and a 10% drop in IQ.
That is one upon thousands and thousands of studies of how bad multitasking is for you and if you continue to do it you will reach your goals later rather than sooner.

Myth#2: I Focus Better When I Multitask.

You may feel that you focus better when you multitask but that simply is not the truth. According to Russell Poldrack, UCLA associate professor of psychology, "Multi-tasking adversely affects how you focus, Our data supports that distractions force you to pay less attention to what you are doing, you don't focus as well as if you had paid full attention."

The remedy for this is to focus on your money making task in your business in uninterrupted blocks of time from 60-120 minutes. Focusing in chunks of time allow you to get more done in less time while increasing your profits.

Myth#3: By Not Multitasking I Won't Be Able To Get Anything Done.

According to OnlineUniversities.com people are incapable of conducting more than two tasks at once. The jobs become inefficient and inaccurate with additional multitasking. On top of that, it induces stress to the over worked brain.

So you may be asking, "If I shouldn't multitask then what should I do?" The answer is counterintuitive, schedule your interruptions. By scheduling your interruptions, specifically the activities that aren't money making task in your business i.e. running errands, checking email, etc. it will allow you to not scatter your energy and get more done in a shorter period of time.

So schedule a time for example from 12pm-1pm or 12pm-2pm where you do all your multitasking so your energy isn't all over the place when you are doing your money making task.

There you have it - 3 myths of multitasking that are robbing you of productivity. To get the 12 mindsets of productivity go to my website: http://www.PeopleTrainingSystems.com

About the Author: Eric Castaneda is an Author, Speaker, and Productivity Expert. He is also the owner of People Training Systems LLC, which has helped thousands of business professionals, small business owners and entrepreneurs increase their leadership skills, productivity and profitability.