Category: Personal Development

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“Power Office” Your Workspace

As you already know by now, organization is one key ingredient to increased productivity. Every step of business planning and implementing requires it. Good organization skills lead to better time management, consistency, and focus on getting work done on time, and more.

 

One of the most important areas to organize and get right first is your work environment or office. You need to power office your space or set it up to work for you to lead you to success.

 

What Is A Power Office and Why Is It So Valuable?

A power office is the work environment you create to do your work but explicitly optimized for success. A power office is organized to match work processes and the tasks required to achieve your goals. It inspires confidence and gives you a distraction-free area to highly concentrate and focus on your work.

 

Here’s what you need to set up your own power office successfully to achieve productivity:

 

Analyze What’s Not Working First

When you get to work, what causes the most frustration and anxiety? Do you have paper and knickknacks all over the place? Is there furniture or extra things causing more distraction than good? Before you change your space, go to work first and be more mindful of your emotions and surroundings to get a better sense of the space you need to work optimally.

 

Always Keep in Mind Your Work Objectives

When creating your workspace, keep in mind your main objectives or tasks. If you are on the phone a lot, for example, be sure the phone is right where you need it, or your cell phone charger is there to keep you on track.

 

Adjust the Layout, Setup, and Location

Find the right location and layout that work for your professional and personal needs. If you know you like freedom while you work, don’t use the smallest or most affordable location you can find in your home or elsewhere. It will only do the opposite and stall your work.

 

Declutter and Designate

Let go of all the stuff that you don’t need. In other words, trim the fat and put it somewhere else. If it doesn’t pertain to work or provide any kind of motivation and inspiration to get you to work, it doesn’t belong there.

 

Make It Personal but Simplified

Add things of value you know will inspire you or make you happy but don’t add too many things. You already decluttered the workspace. You don’t want to add it all back. Be mindful of each item you add.

 

Test and Adjust

Test the space and keep in mind when working on the things that are causing frustration and work to adjust those areas. Over time, your needs and business will change, which means your work environment should too.

 

Don’t let your work environment be the reason you can’t get your work done. It will only require a few minor adjustments to make your surroundings work hard for you.

 

Home Office Automation Tips

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Five Tips for Better Task Prioritization

The secret to a successful to-do list or plan is understanding how to prioritize your goals and requirements for life and business. Prioritization orders tasks in the importance of urgency or in the most organized fashion to promote a consistent and smooth workflow. If you think planning is getting in your way of success, it’s likely your priorities that are in disorder.

 

Here are five tips and methods that allow you to prioritize more effectively to be sure you start each day more productively and better manage your time:

 

Consolidate and Analyze All Tasks First

Categorize and break it down into similar properties, deadlines, or time it takes to complete.

 

Keep in Mind All Requirements for Tasks

Consider the effort and the time it will take to accomplish each task as well. Who may you have to work with, or what environments may you need to change?

 

Remember the activities that you have a little resistance to or cause extra stress and anxiety. These tasks should likely be higher on your to-do list as they may take longer to accomplish.

 

Assign A Priority Number

Each day list your tasks in the order they should get done for optimal productivity. Keep in mind due dates or how urgent and vital it is to get done compared to the other tasks. If something is easy, it doesn’t always mean it is the best idea to get it done first when you know you have a deadline for a completely different project coming up tomorrow, for example.

 

Create A Priority Matrix

From the list you created earlier, take each of the tasks and organize it into two categories: important or unimportant. Then list whether the task is urgent, not urgent or if you should delegate and eliminate it instead—the following chart is an example of a priority matrix you can use to order your tasks better.

Chart

 

Use The “ABCDE” Method
Invented by Stephen Covey, the ABCDE method uses a grading system to apply a straightforward approach and visual representation to each task. Allowing you to quickly see what you should get done first without having to analyze too much.

Learn to Create Realistic Schedules

The rules to this method are as follows:

 

  • A – High priority tasks
  • B – Medium priority tasks
  • C – Low priority tasks
  • D – Delegate the tasks to others
  • E – Eliminate the tasks completely

 

This information will help you create your daily to-do lists or 90-day action plan to ensure you use your time efficiently. The last thing you want to do is have the right plan for success, just in the wrong order.

 

 

 

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How to Create Repeatable Workflows for Better Time Management

Setting up the right workflows and process are essential to proper time management and the success of your business. When you create repeatable workflows, you can better improve the quality of your work and stay consistent, saving you more time and energy in the long run. They establish proper communication habits and increase your confidence as you more easily glide through your day and accomplish more goals.

 

Establishing proper workflows allows you to more easily highlight the areas that need to be improved or eliminated—in return, saving you time to be more creative and innovative within your industry and business. In other words, repeatable workflows allow you to optimize the way you conduct business so you can more smoothly accomplish your goals without delay or frustration.

 

The following are five tips to creating repeatable workflows that improve your productivity:

 

Understand Your Full Needs and Requirements

When it comes to creating a successful workflow, you can’t miss any details. Block out time to really focus on this and list your full needs and requirements for the objectives you want to accomplish. Start with the most important areas of your business first, then work your way down not to overwhelm yourself.

 

Keep It Simple and Standardize

One of the many faults of any workflow is that it is too bulky and tries to be innovative in places it’s not needed. Trim down any unnecessary fat that causes delays and confusion and find better ways to streamline the process. Start with the tried-and-true methods first, then adapt later when you have made a consistent effort first.

 

Physically Map It Out with A Flowchart

Write down one major task required for your business in the center of a document or physical piece of paper, then draw a circle around it. For example, new customer set up or product purchase.

 

Then draw arrows out that direct you to each required step of the process, including the resources needed and who will complete the project, just like a mind map for brainstorming but with a specific direction and set of instructions. The idea is to create a visual and scannable chart so you can more easily see where you need to adjust, streamline, or add more information.

 

Document and Analyze

Add controls and benchmarks so you can measure and analyze the success of your workflow. Something certain in life is change. Businesses need to adjust at a moment’s notice to stay successful. The state of constant change highlights the importance of blocking out time to evaluate your processes, business plan, and long-term goals.

Project Management Tools to Try

The path to success requires consistent and continued action, and repeatable workflows allow you the freedom and ability to do just that.

 

 

 

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The 2-Minute Rule You Need

This is the 2-minute rule you need to finally end your procrastination or other bad habits and achieve more out of life. Procrastination and other lousy time management habits lead to many missed opportunities and chances for personal growth to build up your business. It encourages laziness and lacks accountability, in turn stalling your momentum, focus, and consistency needed for success.

 

What Exactly Is The 2-Minute Rule?

It’s a stress-free approach to starting new habits and kicking bad ones. It’s a rule designed to help you achieve more goals without feeling overwhelmed and keeps you from delaying action any longer than you should.

 

The two main concepts for the rule include:

 

  • If it only takes two minutes, then get it out of the way right now.
  • Establishing new habits or routines should only take two minutes to begin with.

 

As with most methods, if they are misused, they provide the opposite results than you intend.

 

Here’s how to use the 2-minute rule effectively to kick your bad habits and achieve max productivity:

 

Keep It Relevant and Realistic

Only use the rule if it is relevant to whatever you are doing at that time. In other words, don’t just do whatever task comes to mind if it doesn’t relate to what you are actively doing.

 

For example, if you are trying to finish your next content package for your client, it’s not a good idea to go ahead and get that email notification about your next business meeting out of the way. It is unrelated and will ultimately get you off track and prevent you from finishing your course. Instead, think, “what can I do in two minutes to finish this course?”

 

Don’t Make It Hard

You don’t need to gain success or be the best overnight. Don’t make adopting new habits challenging and overwhelming by speeding up the process. Small gradual changes make it easier to accomplish and stick around long term. For example, science proves that those who lose weight over a more extended period of time maintain the weight longer than those who lose it very quickly.

 

Meaning you shouldn’t focus on what you can’t do; rather, what you can do instead. For just two minutes, what can you do towards changing one bad habit? Then the next day, add two more minutes and keep repeating the process.

 

It’s All About Perspective

The main goal of the 2-minute rule is to change your perspective on how you see a challenge or annoying tasks. You can trick your brain into believing a task is simple and easy, even though it can be hard. Anyone can deal with something for just two minutes, and sometimes the most challenging part is just starting.

 

Give this 2-minute rule a try the next time you feel that you need to push off your work to Monday. You won’t regret giving it a try.

The Secrets to Time Management and Why You Need It

 

 

 

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Do This to Be More Consistent in Life and Business

Consistency is about doing repeatable tasks each day, night, or week depending on the goal you are trying to accomplish. Consistency is a smooth and repeatable process combined with the right actions to achieve your goal more efficiently.

 

Just think about the last place you ordered food. It’s likely that one of the top reasons you selected this choice is due to predictability and knowing they will do it right or be consistent in delivering the food you expect. Their ability to provide you the same food each time is why you keep coming back and why they are successful.

 

Become more consistent in life and business by following these five tips:

 

It’s Not Always About Being Comfortable

Push through even if you don’t feel like it or want to do it. It is pretty understood amongst successful entrepreneurs that continuous daily actions, no matter if you feel like doing nor what other problems are currently going on, is the path that leads to success. Even the happiest people realize they will experience discomfort, and it doesn’t stop them from getting what they want.

 

Understand Your True Wants and Intentions in Life

How do you define success, and what values do you live by each day? If you can’t answer these questions quickly, then take a moment right now to answer them and understand them.

 

If you don’t know yourself honestly, you can’t expect to achieve goals, especially not the right ones. Imagine for a moment that you have accomplished everything you want out of life and create a vision board to match it. This way, you can have a daily reminder to help you back on track.

 

Clarify Your Mission and Expectations

Highlight your goals and clearly outline what resources and other requirements you need to get there. The easier it is to understand, the easier it will be to make processes and systems that better flow for you and your business — giving you the resources you need to be more consistent.

 

Organize and Work in Batches

Be sure the work you set to do each day is organized and relevant. For example, schedule a separate time for checking emails or responding to clients and don’t allow yourself to work on anything else during this time.

 

Establish Healthy Routines

The first step you take in the morning is the most important as it determines your path going forward and how well you do. For example, if you wake up each morning in a bad mood, you will likely drag your feet trying to get work done — making your day that much harder to get going. Find the routines that allow you to live at your most optimal mental and physical health to always start on the right foot.

 

Being consistent should be at the top of your priority list and easy to do as long as you plan correctly and commit to it each and every day.

5 Rituals to Boost Your Energy and Productivity

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Be More Proactive and Less Reactive to Achieve Higher Success

Reactive people go about life unprepared and unplanned. To put it simply reactive people, wait around until things happen and then decide to do something or not. They have unclear goals and intentions for what they want and often use their feelings and conditions as excuses to not get work done and are often driven by their feelings and emotions.

 

For example, they commonly use excuses like “I can’t run today because it’s raining” or “I can’t do this thing until this happens.” They are more likely to blame others and hardly take full accountability for their actions or lack of effort. They also tend to build their lives around other people’s emotions, making them feel more dependent and reliant on others.

 

Proactive people are the direct opposite. They are and strive to be organized as much as possible and always take accountability and ownership. They always see failure as an opportunity to learn and do better. Their behaviors and actions are a conscious choice as a direct result of their values or morals.

 

They use other people as inspiration but compare it to their values before they react and hardly feel dependent on others. They are confident and believe they have what it takes to get it done, and they never wait for success to come; they make it come to them. They act and never avoid it or make excuses. With these attributes, it’s obvious to see why being more proactive leads to more success.

 

Here are a few ways to be more proactive and less reactive in life:

 

Always Look for Ways to Improve

Research shows that those who look for things to do at work rather than wait for instructions from higher-ups are more likely to get promoted. Don’t wait around for change to happen or for the stars to align perfectly to go after your goals finally.

 

Act and understand that it is your responsibility and only yours to get going. Find more ways to educate yourself and never skip opportunities that allow you to improve or invest in training.

 

Understand Your Values, Morals, and Goals

Have weekly self-evaluations and highlight what you believe in and hope to strive for. Use these morals to guide your day and to control your emotions to stay on the right path.

 

Strive and Welcome Change

Anticipate problems and never expect things to stay the same. Change and stepping out of your comfort zones are crucial to personal and professional growth. Long-term success relies on your ability to adapt and change as needs change. Otherwise, you’ll only be left behind.

 

Ultimately being proactive is about acting and finding what you need to do to get the things you want done. Don’t let your emotions or lack of action take away your chance of success. Use these tips instead to be more proactive with your life and accomplish more of your dreams.

How to Find Your Most Productive Hours

 

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Treat Yourself and Take A Day Off

Skipping breaks and other self-care needs neglects your business just as much as it, does you. As a business owner, it’s important to pay attention to your health, physically and mentally, before it negatively impacts your success.

 

The following are crucial reasons why you should never skip breaks or feel guilty about self-care:

 

  • To De-stress And Optimize Health – To promote mental clarity and happiness to make the right choices and decisions for your business. Poor self-care leads to depression, cardiovascular disease, and many other health problems that can ultimately change the trajectory of your life you don’t want to go down.
  • For Gratitude and Generosity – Mental clarity provides you a moment to be thankful for the things around you that inspires happiness.
  • To Inspire Creativity and Innovation – Studies show a link between alone time and increased creativity.
  • To Maintain Energy and Focus – Ultimately improving your performance, communication, and engagement.
  • You Deserve It – Lastly, and probably one of the most important reasons to take a day off and treat yourself is because you deserve and are worth it.

 

Here are a few tips to help you more easily take breaks and treat yourself even with a busy schedule:

 

Schedule Them in And Be Strict

Add short breaks, vacation, and essential appointments for self-care to your schedule and clear a spot for them first. Then don’t permit yourself to skip them.

 

Just as they say that you should always pay yourself first, including adding in time off and other vital needs right away before you allow yourself to schedule over it, remember, your health should be a top priority; otherwise, your business won’t be one either.

 

Commit to It and Take A Day Off

Practice self-discipline and do absolutely no work during your day off to reap the fullest benefits. Don’t use this time for chores or planning your next business moves. Rest and commit to activities make you happy.

 

Release Guilt and Be More Selfish

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being more selfish in life when protecting your mental and physical health. Stop feeling guilty for your purchases or days where you do absolutely nothing and recognize their benefits.

 

Establish Proper Time Management Habits

Simply put, the more time you have, the easier it is to take a day off. Find the right habits that allow you to get ahead or maximize your productivity in the shortest amount of time possible. A 90-day action plan and working in block schedules are great ideas and areas to start.

Stop neglecting your health and using the excuse that “I just don’t have time.” The only thing that statement is saying is that you don’t value yourself or your business enough to make time.

5 Rituals to Boost Your Energy and Productivity

 

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Managing Your Energy Is A Must

Fatigue leads to poor choices, potential injuries, and more problems that will only waste your time and deplete your skills. For maximum productivity, you need persistent consistency, which requires you to manage your energy. Burnout will destroy all the work you put in along the way. To better manage your energy, you must add it to your plan, ensuring that the habits you build work for you, not against you.

 

Here are four ways to help you better manage your stress so you can be more productive in life:

 

Adopt the Right Diet and Exercise Routine

No one likes to hear it, but it’s crucial and one of the most valuable tips to managing and harboring energy. If you don’t adopt the proper diet and exercise routine, it won’t matter how many other habits or practices you adopt. If you are unhealthy and your body needs crucial vitamins, you must listen to your body.

 

Being a professional athlete or adopting the next fad diet isn’t required for success here. You need to find the proper balance that works for you and your schedule. This requires honesty and mindfulness to be done successfully. Providing your body the right food and resources it needs go far. If you’re serious, you’ll research ways to use up all the extra energy you have instead.

How Sleep Impacts Your Productivity

Stop Being Busy All The time

Believe it or not, the most productive people have free schedules. They are not always busy because they understand that it’s more about the quality of their work and how it impacts their ultimate goal that leads to productivity. The goal is to do less, with less but achieve more or maximum success.

 

Being busy drains your energy and prevents you from performing at your best, and makes you forget your life goals as you work to get through each day. When you give yourself a more realistic schedule, you can better use your energy to master your skills and achieve goals more efficiently with ultimate focus and precision.

 

Stop Trying to Make Everyone Happy

Unfortunately, you won’t, can’t, and shouldn’t please everyone. This high expectation will only overwhelm you and lead to poor communication and engagement among your audience. You would have to juggle a million different personalities to please them all successfully. In everything you do for your business, all focus should be on your target audience — only. Your target audience is unlikely to be everyone and is something you should narrow down right away if you haven’t already.

 

Don’t Dwell on What You Can’t Control

Stop negativity in its tracks and only focus on the things you can control. It’s a draining and exhausting never-ending rabbit hole otherwise. You can’t make everyone buy your products, but you can control the quality of work and put the best product out there to change their minds, hopefully.

 

As you can see, with a bit of change of perspective and adopting the right habits, you can manage your energy efficiently. Maintaining your energy is essential so you can consistently use it to focus on what truly matters for you and your business needs.

 

 

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Why Your To-Do Lists Are Failing You

Did you make a to-do list for the day? If so, how far have you gone, or did you completely forget about it already? Well, don’t worry too much. As roughly 41% of items on most people’s to-do lists never get done, you are not alone.

Get Your Goals into Your Calendar

Most people are not making the right to-do lists either.  The best way to fix it and have it work for you and not against you is first to understand the common reasons why they fail in the first place.

Here are five common reasons to-do lists fail and how you can do better:

 

Way too Many Things to Do

To-do lists should never be pages long or used for the long term. Instead, they should focus on daily tasks within a certain period of time you plan to get to work. Meaning you should have multiple to-do lists, not one overwhelming one that will surely get you lost.

 

Unclear Deadlines

You must set hard deadlines and have the discipline to follow through. A to-do list without them only gives you the permission to take your time or not do it at all. Understand how long it really takes to do each activity, including prep, and clean up – and never assume you can do double the amount of work you can do overnight.

 

You Don’t Account for The Unexpected

No ones’ schedule is perfect, so don’t plan it that way. Account for flexibility and always include an extra fifteen minutes each day for the unexpected. You may end up in the bathroom or traffic a little longer than you realized, for example. So, don’t schedule important meetings or errands to accomplish back-to-back with the idea that everything will go smoothly.

 

It Was Created with A Long-Term Mindset

In other words, you are giving yourself too much time to complete tasks or are creating to-do lists for more than one day. Your to-do lists will guide and maintain your 90-day action plan. They are not meant to replace it. Be sure the lists are to the point and a direct path for achieving your primary objective for that day or even a 90-minute period.

 

Unorganized and Unclear Main Objectives

Taking the time to dissect and pinpoint what you want to achieve is crucial to accomplishing them. If you can’t have a firm grip on what you want, you can’t be sure you will have the right plan either. Unclear objectives lead to unorganized plans, ideas, and actions. Learn to understand what you need and want and prioritize to get things done in a timely and orderly fashion.

 

Don’t let your to-do lists fail you anymore. To-do lists are great to utilize and guide your day to ensure you are on the right trajectory to long-term success, as long as they are done correctly.

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Monetizing Your Email Messages

You have created an extraordinary and compelling lead magnet that is persuasive and solves one problem in a hurry for your ideal customer, depending on who you’re targeting in their buying journey, but just getting people on the list is not the end. You have to find ways to make money too. You only make money by making paid offers.

Lead Magnet Ideas You Can Use

  • Promote a Product You Use – If you’re part of your own audience, the products and services you use to solve those problems are of utmost interest to your audience. Tell them what you think about each resource you use and invite them to use it, too, with your affiliate link.

 

  • Promote Your Own Products and Services – Every three to four emails, send information about the products and services you have created for them. Anytime you bring up one of these problems, you can promote the solution.

 

  • Promote a Service You Love – Did you use a service you like recently that will be useful for your audience too? Let them know about it. Just like you’d tell your best friend about the yummy restaurant you went to last night, you should tell your audience about the services you get results from.

 

  • Tell Your Audience About a Product They Need – Even if you don’t use the products because you’re not part of your own audience, you should tell your audience about the products you need. Just like a doctor tells their patients what they need.

 

  • Create a New Product or Service – As you learn more about your customers, create products that fit into your niche that solve their problems.

 

  • Promote Memberships and Subscriptions – Continuity programs are awesome to promote whether you own them or not. Subscriptions and memberships usually require a monthly payment, which can really add up over time.

 

  • Sell Another Product on Your Download Pages – Anytime you create a thank you or download page, add the next product or service based on what they’re getting now, whether a freebie or not, as a suggestion.

 

  • Maximize Error Pages – Edit your error pages to take advantage of the space by recommending products, freebies, or whatever your current promotion is at the time.

 

  • Host Flash Sales – Keep your audience open and ready for more email messages by surprising them with list member-only sales periodically that thanks them for being VIPs.

 

  • Segment Your Audience Based on Their Behavior – Remember that you can keep segmenting your audience even after getting on your list by telling them about your newest offers, freebies, and so forth and using the automation inside the autoresponder to segment and tag them based on their actions.

 

  • Set Up Low-Cost Tripwires – A tripwire is a low-cost product that tests your audience’s interest. Usually, the cost is less than $27 dollars and is also a great way to build your list with your ideal audience.

Value Ladder

  • Up-Sell, Cross-Sell, and Down-Sell as Needed – Send the right offers to the right people. Based on their behavior, you may need to send information for up-sells, cross-sells, or even a down-sell if needed to keep their interest.

 

  • Remarket to Your List Members Via Paid Ads – One effective way to keep your list active is to use technology such as remarketing ads via social media. You simply upload your email list, and only those who are on that list will get your ads. You can use this to remind them to check their email.

 

  • Email Regarding Abandoned Carts – If you have a shopping cart, set up automation that automatically sends reminds to them if they abandon their shopping cart. You can do this via email, but you can also use remarketing ads to bring them back too.

 

  • Offer Coaching and Consulting Services – Personal one-on-one services and consulting is a very lucrative way to earn more money. Make these offers to those who have purchased most of your products and services.

 

The more ways you can offer opportunities for your audience to buy something you recommend, the more money you’re going to make. That’s just math. Make more offers, make more money.