I admit it.

I have failed.

I had to deal with a huge amount of work over the last month and I haven’t published any post during November.

 

I admit that I felt overwhelmed by my workflow. I panicked and had to sacrifice something to move on with work.

It was my fault. I didn’t have a plan B.

And that’s why now that the storm has ended (kind of), I have researched and elaborated a plan to prioritise and focus my tasks, just in case I have the same problems in the future.

 

The thing is that every time I was reading a blog about productivity or prioritising, I came up with these vague and general ideas (such as the 80:20 rule). As interesting as they may seem, there was nothing that I could apply to my business in a practical way.

 

That’s why I stopped reading other’s blogs and focus on my business. This is how I came up with a plan that may help other business out there with the same problem.

Can you relate to this?

Then, keep reading; let’s see what we can do about it.

 

Classify your tasks to achieve everything you want

And this is key!

If we want to get our workflow under control, we need to analyse all the tasks that we have to face and classify them in a way that allow us to prioritise without sacrificing the rest.

 

This is how I did it:

 

• Tasks A: Tasks that directly generate income. In other words, the main activity of my business. In my casa, this group of tasks covers translation and interpreting assignments, copywriting assignments and any coaching programme that I am working on. These are all the tasks that directly generate income. Without doing these tasks, my income at the end of the month would be 0. So you can guess why this is the first group of tasks!
• Tasks B: Tasks that indirectly generate income. These are tasks that serve as a complement to the first group; tasks aimed at targeting clients or increasing my sales. This group covers any business or marketing strategies that I’m implementing, as well as the blog (although I’m not earning anything writing this posts, a good part of my clients come from implementing a content marketing strategy), my social media networks, etc.
• Tasks C: Tasks derived from running your own business. These are all the tasks that you have to do when you’re running your own business. These are normally compulsory tasks that you can’t avoid and normally they have a deadline (that maybe you can establish) or need to be done before a certain date. I’m talking about bookkeeping, paying taxes, paying/hiring outsourcers/employees, checking your business plan, among a long list.

 

I’m sure that you could possibly design a more accurate list of tasks, but this one works for me in order to prioritise and organise my workflow.

Now let’s see how you can achieve everything you want.

 

Getting your workflow organised

I came across with this plan. My tasks A are all lined up in my schedule in a way that every single day I will have to work and devote most of my time to them. I can’t afford to stop earning money to work on other type of activity, so these are the tasks that I want to prioritise.

 

However, tasks B also need some time in my daily routine. That’s why I try to devote at least a couple of hours a day to them. These tasks need an ongoing monitoring. It doesn’t make same to carry out a marketing action if then you don’t follow up. I have decided that although these tasks aren’t the most important ones, they are more significant in the long run and that’s why I need to pencil them up in my daily schedule.

 

Finally, tasks C are a priority, but they need to be carefully planed. That’s why I need to pay special attention to their deadline. For example, I know that I need to pay my taxes at the end of the year, so that the deadline that is set in my Google Calendars, and I know I can’t miss it. As I bear this deadline in mind, I can make the most of the moments when my tasks A and B are a bit quieter to focus on tasks C. The same happens with my bookkeeping at the end of the month.

Try to make a list with your tasks C and assign a deadline to each of them. Then you know that you have to get them done before this date and you can pencil them up whenever suits you better.

 

Productivity versus focus

Have you ever felt that, after a very long day of work, you haven’t done anything that you had in mind?

And there’s this preconception that productivity is a great tool for self-employees to get more done in less time. Well, let me burst your bubble.

 

[Tweet “Productivity is worthless without focus.”]

 

People say that you invest 80% of your time doing 20% of the tasks that you want to get done. Well, what about if we only focus on these 20% of the tasks and left the rest aside?

 

We would end up working less and doing what is important to do.

 

If you want to achieve your objectives, you need to focus on focus (not pun intended!)

 

Now that we have organised our time and our tasks, we need to know WHAT tasks we need to do to achieve our objectives. I might need a whole post to talk about this, but I just want you to think about this.

 

You may have work on your productivity, and maybe you have already started to do more in less time. But are you doing what you really need to do to achieve your objectives?

 

If you tend to move from one task to another without any control whatsoever as I used to do, take your time to organise your tasks and your schedule. You’ll see how in no time, you’ll start working in a smart way to get everything you want done.