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What planning method should entrepreneurs use to be more productive?
I get variations of this question all the time and the truth of the matter is that there is not one “best planning method for entrepreneurs.”
Absolutely any planning method–time blocking, good old fashioned to-do list, to special planners–any planning method can work really well for you as long as you have the four following keys that I’m going to share with you.
4 Keys to Making Any Planning Method Work
Key number one is strategy.
There needs to be an end goal for absolutely every single task on your to-do list or planner.
I find that we think we have this, but we don’t really.
- If you are posting on Instagram, why are you posting on Instagram? What’s the end goal of that?
- If you are writing a blog post, what is the purpose of that specific blog post?
All of these things, everything we do needs to have a strategy behind it.
Key number two is prioritization.
Declutter your schedule so that you’re doing the very few things that make the most impact and letting go all the rest.
You can get started with this by asking two of my favorite questions:
- What is working that you can do more of?
- What is not working that you can do less of?
A quick look at where your income, clients, or traffic are coming from will help you make these decisions so that you can double down on what’s working.
Key number three is working distraction-free.
Everyone knows this, but hardly anyone actually does it. It makes more of a difference than you can possibly imagine if you’ve never done it before.
The first time I truly worked distraction-free, I was able to get a project done that I thought would take me a month in a few afternoons. Yeah.
Key number four is having daily power hours.
This means scheduling a chunk of time for you to do all of the little ten-minutes-or-less tasks in your business so that you can do them all at once and free up more time to do deeper, focused work.
If you feel like you just can’t find the planning method that works best for you and you keep trying all different things, it’s likely because you’re just not using all four of the keys. All four. Not just one or two of them. Really, you need all four.
So I hope that helps. I would love for you to leave a comment and let me know which key you think you might be missing and that you want to start working on.
