Tag: Barbara Genest

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How Sleep Impacts Your Productivity

American businesses lose an estimated $60 billion of revenue yearly simply due to poor sleep. A Baltimore sleep study in 2018 found that those who received less than a whole night’s rest of 7 to 8 hours of sleep regularly had significant productivity loss.

 

Anywhere from 19 percent less for those who got five hours of sleep and up to 39 percent for those who got even less sleep – showing just how important even one to two hours of sleep can make.

 

The numbers got worse if the employee experienced insomnia, snored, or have sleep apnea. Poor sleep and other factors contributing to your health affect every part of your body and your business. It compromises your memory, decision-making and problem-solving skills, mood, performance, bone, organ health, and more.

 

Proper sleep as well as adopting a good diet and exercise routine prevents:

 

  • Burnout – Sleep deprivation is the number one cause of burnout. You must rest to expect your body to work at its best.
  • Lowering Your Life Expectancy – Being sedentary, not getting enough or getting too much sleep, and getting the wrong foods can ultimately lower life expectancy. You can significantly increase your life expectancy by fueling your body appropriately, exercising at least thirty minutes a day, and getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep per night.
  • Memory Loss – When you get the right amount of sleep, you can improve your ability to remember things and learn. Sleeping well gives you the mental clarity to make better decisions and perform at your best.
  • Mistakes or Injuries – Sleep deprivation leads to mental and physical impairments that can cause poor decision-making and accidents that create significant consequences like lost revenue or, worse, your life.

 

Three Tips to Help You Get More Sleep:

 

  1. Exercise and Diet – As annoying as it is, always to hear this, exercise and diet are the most important if you want to get a whole night’s rest or live a healthy life. Most problems stem from a poor diet and exercise routine.
  2. Avoid Stimulants – You may be drinking too many cups of coffee in your morning, which is easily crossing over into your sleep time. Start reducing your coffee intake; no more than 2 cups a day or less.
  3. Stay Consistent – Pick a nighttime routine and set a time and stick to it. Eventually, your body acclimates, and you’ll soon want to go to bed without you even trying.

The Areas of Life You Need to Design for Success

If you want to live your most productive life, feel better about yourself, your body, mental and physical well-being, you must sleep. Your business success and health depend on it.

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6 Habits That Are Destroying Your Productivity

Are you constantly scratching your head at the end of the day, wondering why you feel like you worked so much to get nowhere? The good news is that you are not alone, but unfortunately, there is bad news too.

 

The bad news is the habits you have adopted over time are killing your productivity. It doesn’t matter how busy you are. If you are not doing the right tasks to complete the job, you will never get it done.

 

Here are six habits that are destroying your productivity that you must end today:

 

Doing Everything at The Same Time

Most tasks require your undivided attention to get done and get it done well. Stop multitasking and expecting too much from yourself at all given times. You are not productive. You are only causing unnecessary stress, confusion, and poor-quality work.

 

Avoiding Technology or Using Too Much

Are you still keeping track of your bills, inventory, and tasks on paper? That is slowing you down too. Utilize technology where appropriate but be sure not to overdo it. Technology can be great until it becomes a distraction instead.

 

Not Following A Schedule or Routine

While it can seem like a business owner waking up and going with the day’s flow would be fabulous, the truth is, it’s not great for business or productivity. Routines and schedules make your day easier and help guide you in the right direction. When you have a clear idea of your goals and what to do next, you can get it done faster and with more confidence.

 

Poor Sleep and Diet Choices

It’s not something anyone wants to hear or admit to, but your diet and exercise routine has a direct reflection on how you perform throughout your day. Your work, business, relationships, and mental state are all affected by what you do and eat, negatively and positively. You’ve already heard the common phrase “you are what you eat,” and it’s true. Too much sugar and not enough nutrients from your diet leads to mental fog, body pain, and fatigue that can negatively strain your overall performance.

 Avoid Burnout: How to Exercise and Sleep More

Poor Communication Skills

Too much back and forth and confusion takes away the time you need to get work done efficiently. Not only that, poor communication means it’s likely not getting done correctly either. You are only pushing your schedule back and getting you off the path.

 

Poor or Distracting Work Environments

Working at a coffee shop or home is a dream come true for many entrepreneurs, but they quickly learn it comes with many challenges. If you are easily distracted, your work environment needs to be completely free of distractions.

Being busy and thinking that busy means productivity is also a bad habit. That thought process must be changed. Break your bad habits now so you can work less and do more.

 

 

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Get Your Goals into Your Calendar

Accomplishing your goals requires action. Stop waiting for the perfect time. You can create the perfect time. Pick a time relatively soon and realistic to your goal needs and put that goal into your calendar.

 

This means you need to:

  • Pick a start date and time for your ultimate goal
  • Set proper and realistic deadlines
  • Fully understand the tasks needed to reach your goal
  • Then schedule times and deadlines for each task required to reach your ultimate goal.

 

Adding your goals to your calendar forms a sense of commitment and re-establishes your sense of purpose or direction. It develops healthy routines and habits that inspire you to stay on track and keep you working towards your goals. It’s a great way to create instant motivation. When you can see it, you are more likely to want to get it done.

 

Essential Things to Keep in Mind When Goal Setting:

  • What is the end or ultimate goal?
  • How much time do you need? Have you timed yourself doing these tasks before? What if you don’t get as much sleep?
  • Are there things that could protentional go wrong or get in your way?
  • Who needs to do it? Can you complete each task or do some things that require help from others?
  • Group similar tasks and utilize technology to work more productively and save you time.
  • Get the most crucial items out of your way but keep in mind that little tasks add up over time.
  • Once you set a time, stick to it and don’t permit yourself to change it.

 

These are important questions and tips to keep in mind so you can pick the right deadline for your goal. You don’t want to create the opposite reaction and turn your goal into a nightmare because you took on too much work too fast. Slower is better than rushing it and pushing out shoddy quality work or products.

 

Research shows that more time is better for creativity anyways; however, just like too little time can have the opposite reaction, so can too much time. You must be realistic and take the time to evaluate. On the other hand, get going. Don’t wait or sabotage yourself any longer.

What Methods Work Best to Ensure You Make Your Goals?

The most productive and successful people utilize their calendar any moment they can.

Overall, the number one tip to achieving your goals and improving your time management skill and productivity is setting deadlines, adding them to your calendar, and then sticking to them. The more you schedule, the more you will achieve.

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Learn to Create Realistic Schedules

Take a look at your schedule right now. Are your goals listed yet? Do you even use one? If not, you should be. They improve your productivity, organization and help you achieve your goals both personally and professionally. However, adding them to your calendar is only the first step, you must think realistically too to be successful.

 

Keep in mind the tips and tricks when creating realistic schedules:

 

Define Your Goals and The Resources

For every goal and main objective, there are little tasks or to-do lists needed to get there. Highlight each one and then list the resources required to complete the work. For example, do you need to purchase specific equipment, or can it all be done from home?

 

Always Include Breaks and Vacations

Schedule your breaks, or you won’t take them and cause yourself to burnout. Burnout, fatigue, and lack of motivation won’t allow you to work efficiently no matter how much time you schedule yourself to work. It’s a myth that breaks are only for lazy people. The most highly productive people take breaks, and they take long ones too.

 Avoid Burnout: How to Exercise and Sleep More

Schedule Extra Time

Add around ten to fifteen more minutes to any scheduled task for things you can’t predict. Over time, little tasks you weren’t aware you were even doing, but are required to survive – like go to the bathroom – will add up and steal you away from doing the important tasks. To keep you on track and still complete what is required, expect to use a little more time than you believe you need, just like showing up to work fifteen minutes early, for example.

 

Be Aware of Shortfalls and Potential Snags

Each task you need to get done will likely have different variables or expectations, such as driving time to various onsite meetings or working with clients with different time zones. These examples can cause different kinds of delays that you are not used to or even aware of.

 

Commit to Distraction-Free Work

When you schedule tasks, you need to commit to the work time. If you don’t, you will only permit yourself to work over your breaks or other essential duties. If you commit to distraction-free work, you can ensure you get your job done on time every time.

 

Expect Change and Variability

Planning is only there to support you and guide you. It is not full proof. Don’t expect it to be.

 

Reevaluate for Accuracy

To improve any systems, you must schedule a time to review where things go wrong and where they went right to do even better next time.

 

Don’t Forget About the Little Things

Little tasks build-up, even five minutes or two minutes here and there, which could affect your schedule.

 

Don’t let the best productivity tool lead you down the wrong path. Use these tips and tricks and take the time now to rethink your schedule so you can achieve all your goals and aspirations quickly and productively.

 

 

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How to Find Your Most Productive Hours

The news is out. The standard 9 to 5 is dwindling, and many studies show that it’s bad for business. Even worse, you only have about two to three actual productive hours. To get the most done, you should take advantage of them and figure out what time and day you perform the best.

 

Experiment with Your Sleep Schedule

Figure out what your body likes the best. Are you a “night owl” or a “morning lark?” Even if you think you might know, give each type of schedule a try. Don’t just stick to the traditional 9 to 5 unless you have to. Research shows these are not the most productive hours. They were only designed to help offset manufacturing workload requirements and prevent child labor.

 

Keep Track with A Journal

Keep track of the information above in your journal. Take notes of both periods of inactivity and activity. Write down the times, the project you worked on, your mood, and other important details like obstacles that happened that normally don’t or if you got something done even faster than usual.

 

Also, keep in mind the environment you are working in, how much sleep you got the night before, or other stress factors – the more information you can provide, the better. After a week of building and experimenting with this data, you will determine your best hours to work.

 

Use Applications or Technology

If keeping track of this information on your own seems tiresome, then take advantage of technology or applications instead. RescueTime is an automated time tracker that pools all this data to track where you spend your time the most. They also generate reports and provide other tools that allow you to block distractions and improve your productivity.

 

Peak, Trough, Recovery

These are the stages you go through as you work. When you first get going, this is the peak where you have most of your energy and motivation. Then as your energy starts to go down, you are in your trough period.

Never Quit: Go After Your Breakthrough

Recovery is at the end of your shift, and best left for mindless or easy tasks. This means that when you get to work, no matter the time of day, always do the most important or most challenging work first. You will have the best energy and mental focus to get through it faster and more efficiently.

 

Overall, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to work a total of eight hours to be productive. You need to find the time that is best for you.

 

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How to Use the Right Tools and Technology for Your Business

Around 77% of all small businesses in American use technology for personal and professional purposes. There is no surprise or shock to this as technology provides many incredible and different benefits.

 

As a small business, you should always take advantage of tools and technology for the following reasons:

 

  • To earn twice the revenue or more.
  • To save time, energy, and other resources.
  • To have more energy, momentum, and focus on producing higher quality work.
  • Provides you the opportunity to improve or be the leader in your industry.
  • Ensures proper communication between your customers, you, and your business team or both depending on your company’s size.
  • To make your life and business more manageable, more organized, and productive.

 

This is only a shortlist of the many benefits that technology can bring to your business. However, to reap these rewards, you must find the right tools and technology for your business and needs. Just because a tip works for everyone else doesn’t mean it will benefit you too.

 

The following are a few things to keep in mind when using and choosing the right tools and technology for your business:

 

Be Mindful of Your Pain Points or Frustrations

What areas of your business provide you the most pain and discomfort? When having trouble organizing all your projects, customer information, or delegating tasks, for example, project management systems such as Trello or Basecamp, will keep you and your team on track.

 

What Is Taking Up All Your Time

Are there tasks that need three hours or more of your focus at a time? Accounting and other administrative tasks are the first spots to look at in this case. These tasks are often time-consuming and require a lot of concentration and understand to get done correctly. QuickBooks helps keep track of your inventory, invoices, projects, customers, bills, and more.

 Benefits of Creating Processes and Systems

Be Aware of Your Workspace and Workplace Requirements

While there are many tools and technology that can benefit you, they may not be best suited for your workspace or environment.

 

What Are Your Weaknesses and Strengths?

Your lack of skills can be made up for with proper use of technology—freeing you from stress, frustration, or taking away your time trying to learn something you don’t want to or care to know. Just because you own or run a business doesn’t mean you have to be a mastermind or an expert at every and all skills.

 

Ask Your Customers or Employers

The best information to help is directly from the source. Your customers and employers want to use technology that makes their life easier too. Opening up this line of communication also shows your audience that you care and want to provide value.

 

As you can see, tools and technology can increase your productivity and provide many benefits. Find your weaknesses, pain points, and frustrations, and let technology do the work for you.

 

 

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How to Be Realistic About Time

You know it, and practically the whole world knows it: time is money. It can instantly steal your success if you aren’t being realistic or use it right.

 

The following are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you are realistic about your time:

 

Time Yourself

Make sure you understand how long each essential task takes. How long is the average for you or the person you are working with? Don’t try to rush it or see how fast you can do it.

 

You want the actual time it takes to accomplish each task plus a few minutes to account for variables and unpredictable events. Write these times down in your schedule so you can be sure you schedule enough time out of your day to get finished without interruption or being late for other things.

 

Could You Be Automating That?

Investing in technology or outsourcing your work are great solutions that allow you to add more time to your day essentially. While you may only have 24 hours each day, that doesn’t mean you can’t make it by paying for other peoples’ time.

 

Outsource your blog post content, repeatable social media and email marketing tasks, accounting, and more. Anything these days can be automated as long as you have the income to do it.

 

Stay Focused and Keep Moving

In other words, don’t let yourself get off-plan or run off schedule. Planning, creating goals, and scheduling tasks only work if you do it and stick to it. In fact, the less you stick to your plan, the more work you create. Staying on track prevents burnout, stress and keeps you motivated as you continue to see progression each day.

 

Schedule Appropriately and Don’t Over-Book

No matter how lucrative, fast, or talented you may think you are, overbooking is terrible for business. That is the best way to lead you straight to burnout and dread coming back to work. You don’t need to rush the process to be successful. Remember, slow and steady wins the race.

 

It’s Not Just You

As easy as this may sound, it’s easy to get into tunnel vision and only think about what you need to get it done. When in reality, no matter what you do, more than likely other people will be involved too. Never expect the same type of work ethic you display, and always be sure to over-communicate when scheduling meetings or delegating tasks.

 Scheduling to Avoid Burnout: Learn to Take More Breaks

 

eliminate, delegate, automate

In the end, to create a realistic and successful schedule, you need to take time to evaluate every aspect of your life and others. Be aware of your expectations, other people’s expectations, and never underestimate what it takes to get there.

 

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How to Create an Effective To-Do List

To-do lists are the most popular and widely used time management strategy and essential productivity technique adopted by many successful entrepreneurs and business owners.

Lists

It is even a great way to achieve your own personal goals. However, not just any to-do list will do. Each to-do list you make must be designed appropriately and strategically to be successful.

 

Here are six tips and tricks to implement when developing an effective to-do list:

 

Tip #1: Choose the Right Medium

Choose the proper medium you enjoy, such as paper, a phone application, or simply a word document. What you pick doesn’t matter as long as you understand it and enjoy the process to inspire your creativity and get you working. The medium you choose only frustrates you or has a high learning curve. It won’t be helpful.

 

Tip #2: Use Your Schedule to Guide Your Day

Before you make a list, look at your schedule. Do you have any important meetings or assignments that must get done first? For your to-do list to be effective, use these times or important objectives to guide you. Therefore, don’t make a to-do list for a goal that requires more of your time if you know you will be interrupted.

 

Tip #3: Make It Clear and Precise

Don’t use too many words or go overboard with the tasks. While breaking it down is necessary to highlight the actions required, you can go overboard and overwhelm yourself. Be a realist and make it scannable.

 

Tip #4: Make Deadline or Time Limits

For each task on your to-do list, make time requirements or schedule deadlines and add it to your calendar. This way, it becomes a commitment, and you won’t forget about it either.

 

Tip #5: Limit Your Daily Tasks

Remember being busy doesn’t mean you are productive. In other words, you don’t want to break it down so much that each and every little task is highlighted. This can overwhelm you and require too much time to set up in the first place. Highlight the most important information such as times and what exactly needs to be done. You don’t need to include every time you might go to the bathroom, for example.

 

Tip #6: Add Ways to Keep Track of Your Progress

Seeing the work that you finished is a great way to motivate yourself to get even more done. This way, you can get yourself back on track if you notice you are not getting the work done.

 

As long as you make your list clear, direct, time-driven, and aligned with your goals, you’ll improve your productivity exponentially.

 

Hope you are having a very productive Day!

Here is a Great Speech from Art Williams. Very inspirational.

You must be Tough and Never Quit!

Just Do It Speech….

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Yes! You Can Automate That

Automation can simplify your life and provide you more time to focus on the things that truly matter to you. It leads to better communication, higher productivity, and overall success in your business and life. The secrete to gaining more free time or time to accomplish more tasks is automation.

 

Here are five things you can automate in your business and at home:

 

#1: Grocery Shopping

Companies like Shipt, Instacart, and Cornershop by Uber have created a business model to shop and deliver your groceries for you. Grocery shopping can take hours and sometimes be stressful. Let others do it for you. Pick the items you want and the time you wish to deliver, and you’re all set.

shopping

#2: Inventory Management

Keeping up with inventory is costly and time-consuming, even if you have a small business or just buying groceries at home. Setting up a proper inventory management system right away is crucial. Software like NetSuite and Shopify will do this for you after the initial setup.

 

To combat this at home, create laminated lists for each category and mark the items off as soon as you throw them away. This way, you know exactly which items to buy again when you create your next grocery order on Shipt.

 

#3: Budget and Expense Management

Keeping track of everything on paper isn’t needed anymore, and in fact, you are only opening yourself up for mistakes if you insist on staying old school for everything. Accounting software such as Wave Accounting or QuickBooks provides the tools you need to set up a budget, generate sales or other business reports or pay your bills or taxes on time in an instant.

 

#4: Task Delegation or Chore Assignments

Trello, Basecamp, and other project management systems are an easy way to streamline your task delegation. These systems have many different tools and widgets that make it fast and easy to communicate and send or share resources to different or the same people. Chorebuster.net is another excellent resource that automatically assigns, schedules, and sends printable chore lists to the whole family.

 

#5: Contact Forms, Autoresponders, or Other Online Marketing Materials

Pop-up forms or other plugins should be downloaded to your websites or blogs to make email collection almost automatic. If someone has a question, contact forms are a great way to keep it organized too. Other programs like Zapier can help automate your social media campaigns by scheduling the posts for you.

Free and Low-Cost Automation Tools You Can Implement Today

Thankfully as technology advances, your life gets easier with automation, so you can spend your energy and time where it’s needed. One reason you want to work for yourself is to gain free time. You might as well set yourself up to achieve time freedom.

 

 

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The Secrets to Time Management and Why You Need It

The most successful entrepreneurs have this key skill down to a science: time management.

It’s time to get the cold, hard and ugly truth out of the way. If you have not realized your goals and dreams yet, it’s likely your time management skills, or lack thereof, are to blame. As with any skill, there are things you can do and implement to improve it.

 

The following are the secrets to time management and why it’s a must-have skill to run a successful online business: 

 

Proper Time Management Is A Choice and A Skill You Can Practice

You can make a choice and commit to get things done on time and not procrastinate. Poor time management always stems from something, and as a responsible and successful adult, you must make the conscious choice to understand why and develop strategies to overcome it.

Scheduling to Avoid Burnout: Learn to Take More Breaks

Increases Creativity and Makes Innovation Easier

Proper time management means you have the right amount of time for the tasks and areas that matter the most. It means you are no longer wasting too much time on mundane and tedious things that don’t get you to where you need to be—freeing your time and allowing you to be more creative and innovative in your industry.

 

Take Full Responsibility and Understand Your Value

You know why you didn’t get something done on time or what is causing you to procrastinate more times than not. Please take responsibility for your actions and realize the value you bring to yourself, your business, and the world to overcome it.  

 

Schedule and Implement in Order of Importance and Urgency

This way, you can be sure to give yourself enough time for each task required. If you plan a task that needs your total concentration, knowing you will be interrupted quite a few times or need to leave soon, you simply won’t finish it. Don’t ignore reality, or you’ll set yourself up to fail before you even get started.

 

Be Aware of Your Main Objective

Always keep your main objective for the day at the top of your mind. Unfortunately, you won’t always be able to plan for everything. There will be distractions in work and life, but if you train yourself to keep your main objective on your mind at all times, you will know when and how to snap back easier.

 

Be Comfortable with Abnormality

In other words, in order to establish proper time management, you will probably have to go against what your peers or co-workers are currently doing. You have to say no to longer lunch breaks or any other activities you know will only further distract you.

 

Overall proper time management starts with taking responsibility, creating a daily to-do list, sticking to your schedule, and remove unnecessary distractions to ensure you always stay on track.