Author Archives: Jeff Blaylock

About Jeff Blaylock

Jeff Blaylock is a freelance writer who knows that time management and planning is everything. He is also a personal development coach. Now he continues his research to learn more about productivity strategies and share his knowledge with the audience.

How to Plan a Super-Productive Schedule

Posted on by Jeff Blaylock

It is hard to deny that planning is the key to success. A strict plan is something that helps managers and employees avoid numerous problems and know how to cope with those that were not predicted. Managing your time smartly is crucial for project completion. When talking about small businesses, one should admit that the number of occurring planning challenges is enormous. As a rule, developing companies have fewer resources than large ones. However, they still need to pull things up.

The necessity to plan the day cannot be overestimated – whenever you decide to let things slide, problems become unavoidable. In this article, we will discuss some productivity hacks and efficient ways to plan a project within a small business. Hopefully, these tips will help you follow the right direction!

Plan Smooth Coordination Between Employees

Make sure not to overload the employees – stress ruins productivity. Start by defining roles and positions in a team. You need people to work on particular parts of the project as well as managers to control the process.

As a rule, small companies have small staff, so some members will have to execute numerous responsibilities. The number of people in a team will depend on the amount of work and deadlines. If the project is large and time-consuming, you may need to hire more experts, management consultants, and testers. Consider finding a sponsor if your budget is too tight.

Plan Meetings

It’s crucial to meet with employees, team members, customers, and sponsors to check the progress and solve current issues. Even insignificant and small meetings should be planned. When people have a strict schedule at hand, they know how to arrange their everyday activities. Set the same day and time for regular conversations with the team members to check the progress. Sometimes, such events will take no more than a couple of minutes. However, this will help you correct all minor mistakes and problems at their very source. If you neglect this opportunity, the issues will grow and take hours to be solved.

Plan for a Week/Month

Indeed, you won’t get too far without thinking about the future. While a daily schedule maker can help you with short-term planning, you need to look at the larger picture. When students fail to plan their learning hours, they end up looking to get essay help online.

However, when employees and managers rely on short-term planning, they end up missing an important deadline. For assistance in structuring your weekly plans, consider utilizing the schedule planner app. Know what you will do each day of the week! Make Monday a planning day. Check your inbox, take a look at the task list, plan meetings, and think about the main priorities.

Routine Needs Scheduling

How to organize your life and schedule around it? Well, all of us have routine tasks to do every day. Even if this activity is repetitive, there is always a room for surprises. If you set a schedule for your most routine tasks, you will know how to approach them. Checking your inbox, calling your customers, making deliveries, or whatever you do – make sure to keep these things in order. Leave some blank hours in the day, and you won’t get the jitters if something unexpected happens.

Image source: inc.com

Don’t Make Your Schedule Too Tight

Include free hours into your plan because clear space is a lifebuoy ring. Extra time will help you deal with surprises efficiently, and you won’t feel like being on a sinking ship. Let’s be honest – building an ideal schedule is impossible, and even if you do, distractions and unplanned things can happen. Sometimes, your tasks can take more time than you thought. The other tasks can depend on your colleagues, and you cannot predict if they do everything timely. Free time will help you catch up with everything. If everything goes as planned and no unexpected events ruin your schedule, these extra hours can become a pleasing time for rest, YouTube videos, or a walk.

Some Additional Tips

  • Get an online planner and share it with your colleagues to manage group projects
  • Don’t hesitate to revise the calendar
  • Have free spots in your schedule and use them wisely
  • Plan in advance
  • Try to improve your scheduling methods all the time

Conclusion

The better you manage your time, the more work you complete. Productivity is all about smart planning, not working till the late evening. When planning your projects at a small company, there are so many things to consider. It’s crucial to schedule as many daily and weekly activities as you can, including even the most routine tasks. Share tasks with your employees and colleagues, plan meetings and don’t forget that free space in your schedule can save your day and even an entire project. However, if you will follow these simple tips, you will be prepared for unexpected situations much better. Use them for yourself and share with your teammates!

6 Tips for Writing a To-Do List That Will Boost Your Productivity

Posted on by Jeff Blaylock

Nothing sounds quite as easy as writing a to-do list…after all, isn’t it all about putting down everything you ought to be doing on the next day and boom-let the productivity begin! Nonetheless, if you have tried writing a to-do list before and found it to be anything but easy, then you may need one or several of the following techniques to make your to-do list much more effective. This is especially if you are running a small business as efficiency is necessary to boost overall productivity and success of the company.

To guide you through, here are several tips which help you write a better to-do list and subsequently make an essential difference for your overall productivity.

1. Start with a paper and pen

Yes, as hard as it is to believe, a paper usually holds you more accountable compared to an app.  A written piece of paper containing your to-do list provides you with physical proof of an item/project you have skipped through the day.  Essentially, whether you dispose of the paper or even cross it out, it will still be there.

What’s more, a paper and pen is not anything that we routinely make use of anymore and is typically something different from what we are used to. It is this newness that will not only psych your brain and prepare it to meet your business targets.

2. Make it appealing

Back to the earlier point, when it comes to pen and paper, not just any typical pen or paper will do.  Usually, when writing our to-do lists, it is not uncommon to use some old, basic notebook.  However, this never really ends well as we end up not ever using it.  Why? It is not inspiring, and opening the boring notebook only invites boredom.

Alternatively, you can purchase a bunch of colorful pens and a nice-looking planner. This way, anytime you are looking to start your activities, you will feel excited to open it.  Use different stickers, drawings, colors-but always ensure its pleasing to you!

3. Be practical

Just like with your business goals, if you are looking to boost your productivity, you must be realistic.  While it would be amazing to accomplish all your tasks at once and take the extra days off, it would definitely be better both for your health and mental state to practically decide on what to do the next day and what you cannot do.

For instance, if you are trying to beat the deadlines for the submission of your college essays, rather than attempt to finish all of them at once, you can enquire about online freelance writing by typing something like ‘how to find someone to write my essay for me’ on your webpage and hire professional assistance. This way, you can realistically accomplish all your assignments and still guarantee quality work.

As such, if you have a massive ongoing business project, divide it into several sub-tasks, and then work them out one after the other. By doing this, you not only simplify your task, but you will also feel way better to see four crossed out tasks rather than a massive one still waiting to be done.

4. Plan for your breaks

Typically, like with our bodies, our brains function better when well-rested and refreshed.  Imagine what would happen if you decided to jog endlessly without stopping, wouldn’t you certainly wind up in a hospital?  If so, then why give your brain a different treatment?

In the current era, our attention and focus have been significantly shortened by our reliance on modern technologies. And even if this were not the case, we wouldn’t expect them to continue forever!  As such, carefully plan your rests also, but be practical.

You understand yourself better, and you are, therefore, aware of precisely how long your focus lasts before you start to slow down or even make mistakes.  Nonetheless, don’t force it, either. Plan your rest time in accordance with how long you have been working.  For instance, if you work for an hour, you can set aside a break of 20 minutes.

5. Write both the task and the time

One other factor that hinders productivity when writing to-do lists is failing to write down when every job starts and ends. It encourages procrastination.  To boost productivity, it is essential that you also write down time frames for your to-do tasks.  This inspires you to try and beat the deadlines for all your tasks, subsequently making your business more productive.

If you are uncertain about the amount of time you need to accomplish a task, afford it several more minutes, but ensure you will not get stressed for lacking adequate time. Moreover, once you achieve it in advance, jot down the duration it took and allocate a similar amount of time for the next day.

With the extra time, utilize it for more rest or to begin your next task in advance. This way, you can cross your whole to-do list faster than you anticipated.

6. Start small

Lastly, no matter how busy your business is, your day’s first task need not be a long project that takes a lot of time to complete.  If you can complete several tasks, notwithstanding how little, you will be feeling more motivated and energized to cross out the rest of your tasks.

Nonetheless, be sure not to go overboard! All the breaks and tasks need to be approximately equal. Be sure to include both in your planner.

Conclusion

For such a simple item, there are numerous ways a to-do list can be complicated. However, if writing down your business tasks every morning isn’t really getting you to achieve your goals, be sure to try any of these few techniques to not only refocus your business task list but also boost your productivity.

Author’s Bio

Jeff Blaylock is a freelance writer who knows that time management and planning is everything. He is also a personal development coach.  Now he continues his research to learn more about productivity strategies and share his knowledge with the audience.