Are you productive or just busy? Although many people think that they pack their days full of productive activities, the reality is many of us are just busy. We get wrapped up in doing things that may not help us achieve our goals, but, because they have to get done, we mistake this busyness for productivity. And if you are having trouble deciding whether you are productive or just busy, imagine how your team feels. So, how do you differentiate between the two so that you can optimize your productivity and the productivity of your team?

Productivity vs Busyness

The best way to improve your productivity is to decide whether an activity is productive or just busy work is to decide whether it fits in with your priorities. We can’t add more hours to the day; however, we can prioritize the activities that will help propel us forward. Our success largely depends on managing our priorities, and this involves giving them the majority of our focused time. When you are focusing on your priorities, you are investing your time rather than wasting it. Although time is linear, we all use it differently. That is, we all get the same amount of time to use each day; it’s up to us to figure out how to use it most productively.

3 Steps to Prioritize Your Day

1. Make a list

It’s difficult to manage your time if you don’t know your priorities. The first step in prioritizing your day is to make a list of all of your current and desired daily activities, tasks, and responsibilities. What do you do, or want to do, each day to charge your business forward? Also, include the tasks that you would like your team to do each day to drive their businesses forward.

Once you have a list, remove any tasks or activities that are no longer relevant or are not giving you a strong return on investment. For example, if you’re creating a weekly newsletter that continues to have a very low open rate after several months, You may wish to consider doing the newsletter monthly. This would free up some time in your daily schedule so that you can do more productive tasks. Next, you want to prioritize your list from the most important to the least important tasks. This will help you ensure that you’re optimizing your performance by getting the most important tasks done first before you begin on the least important tasks.

2. Plan your calendar

The second step is to plan your calendar. You’ll want to set aside 20 minutes each week to plan out the week. Whether you decide to do this first thing Monday morning or last thing on Friday is up to you. First, you’ll want to include the most important priorities such as birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, appointments, etc. What do you have coming up in the week ahead? These top priorities are the things you’ll want to focus on most. 

Next, you’ll note your routine responsibilities, these include taking the kids to school or camp and picking them up, going to work, etc.  These routine activities often have a lot of waiting-around time built in, allowing you to do mini Power Hours. Or, you can use your commute time for personal development and listening to podcasts or audiobooks that will help you improve your skills and techniques. This allows you to focus on your priorities and make the best use of your extra time.

Finally, you’ll write in your family time, your power hour and conversation/follow-up time, and then your personal development and exercise time. Although all of these tasks are important, you will input them into your calendar in order of importance to achieving your goals. With this, you have your to-do list for the week. Follow it to improve your performance.

3. Plan your day

Once you’ve planned your week, take time to plan your day. Unpredictable things occur. This is why we encourage you to set aside 10 minutes each day to plan your day. You’ll want to focus on the things of the day that you must complete. This is your opportunity to prioritize the activities on your to-do list. Place a star or Circle the most important one or two activities that you must complete, no matter what. From here, pinpoint the next most important activities of the day. Next, you’ll want to prioritize your calendar based on today’s actual needs. For example, if you decided that you needed to focus on follow-ups today, then make follow-ups the priority of the day. Follow this plan if you wish to optimize your performance every day.

Make Optimal Productivity a Habit

Optimal performance relies on habits. That is the habits that you build to achieve your goals and achieve success. The key is to make the aforementioned steps a habit in your day. Habits are the things that we do every day without even thinking about them. Think of brushing your teeth. How funny do you feel if you forget to brush your teeth? Many of us can’t even imagine it. That’s how you want to feel if you do not do your activities each day.

So, how do you build a habit? With practice and with the daily intention to complete that particular activity. Habits take a while to build; however, they can be gone in a flash. This is why it’s so important to focus on the intention of building the habit. You need to get in the habit of listing your priorities in the order of most to least important. Additionally, you have to get in the habit of planning out your week and in the habit of prioritizing your day. These things are simple, however, they may also be very easy to forget if you are not in the habit of doing them. Until you have built the habit, you may need to make these activities to complete each day and each week. Once you don’t have to think about doing them, you’ll no longer need to write them down.

Share Your Productivity Tips with Your Team

Chances are, you’re not the only one struggling with trying to improve your performance and achieve the goals you’ve set. Your team is likely struggling with the same thing. They may also be struggling to achieve all of the past they need to complete each day, especially in the face of distractions. Or, they also want to improve their performance and become more successful. They just need to be shown how. Help them improve their performance and their business by sharing the steps with them and helping them build the performance habit of their own.

In addition to telling them how to do it, they should see you doing it as well. Show them how you do it each week and each day by going through the process with them. Also, if you’re finding it a challenge to build the habit of creating a prioritized to-do list, share that struggle with them, But be sure to explain why it’s so important to do the activity in the first place. This transparency will help you build trust with your team.

Teamzy can help you optimize your performance

We created Teamzy to help you boost your performance. More than a CRM, we give you the tools you need to build the foundation for a strong network marketing business. From knowing who to contact each day to setting and tracking smart goals, we have the tools you need to build a business you love and to help your team do the same. Click here to see how Teamzy can help you build your network marketing business.