The life of internet entrepreneurs isn’t all glamorous and luxurious. In fact, to build a real business, you have to work and you have to work hard!
Most internet entrepreneurs are wearing all of the C-suite hats, especially when they first start out. They’re leading the business, but also doing sales, marketing, finance, human resources, product development, operations and taking out the trash.
Juggling multiple functions at once can be difficult, but doable. Here are some productivity hacks to make sure you’re getting the most out of your day.
Identify Critical Tasks
The day can easily get away from you with urgent tasks, fires to be put out and people pulling at you from all directions. That is why it is of the utmost importance to identify the 1-2 tasks that are critical for you to accomplish each day.
That may not seem like a lot of tasks and you probably feel like you need to accomplish way more than that to survive, but it’s not true. In fact, studies show that people who have more critical tasks than that which require intense focus to accomplish usually fail to achieve them all.
Knowing you’ll be inundated as soon as you get into the office, you must identify what your priorities will be the night before. Before going to bed, or better yet, before you leave the office the evening before, make sure to write what those 1-2 critical things are for the next day.
Rest for Increased Productivity
This may sound counterintuitive, but studies have shown that rest is required for high productivity. That is because your body and your brain need time to recuperate after an intense session of work. Without it, you’ll be left with doing menial unimportant tasks.
Sprinters who are training for the Olympics is a great example. If you’re around them all day as they train, you’ll notice that they take a lot of naps. Again, it seems strange that elite athletes would be sleeping so much, but they need it to regenerate after their intense workouts.
If you want to be an elite internet entrepreneur, you have to take lots of breaks and rest when not working. Business owners are notorious for never taking time off and always have work on their minds. If you do this, eventually, your productivity will decline and will lead to burnout.
Productivity isn’t just about time management. It’s more about energy management.
Each task you perform takes a certain amount of energy out of you. If most entrepreneurs are truly honest with themselves, they’ll admit they don’t maximize their time. If you dig deeper, you’ll realize that it’s not for lack of trying or managing time. It’s that they’re not managing their energy well, which leads to them procrastinating on important tasks and relegates them to working on shallow tasks that may be necessary, but not critical to success.
That is why is important to shut down at the end of the day and give yourself permission to not think about work. Instead of feeling guilty that you’re not working or thinking about the problem, you should be motivated by the fact that you’ll perform better the next day if you allow yourself to rest properly.
Work Smart, Not Just Hard
Internet entrepreneurs, more than most other types of business owners, have the luxury of software and tools at their disposal to, not only make their lives easier but also to boost productivity without requisite effort.
E-commerce merchants, for example, have entire software solutions where they can list all of their products on all of the major third-party marketplaces from a single platform. As an online retailer, why would you list your products one by one on Amazon, eBay, NewEgg, Etsy and a host of other marketplaces when you can automate it with something like Magento Enterprise.
Even if Enterprise Magento pricing is prohibitive, there are many other solutions like Shopify and Big Commerce where you can get started for a very small investment to start. And these platforms are built so you can scale up to a higher priced option seamlessly once you get to that level.
There are other amazing productivity tools for project management, vendor management, bookkeeping, and recording mileage on your car, that can save tons of time and energy. Onboarding onto a new technology or software platform can be hard, but it’s well worth the investment to get the productivity out on the back end.
One Change At A Time
These are just a few productivity hacks that are available to all internet entrepreneurs. Most change management experts will tell you to pick one change you want to make at a time and work on it until completion. I encourage all entrepreneurs out there to take one of these hacks and leverage it, and just watch your productivity soar!
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