How do you keep your productivity?

Productivity is important. There are only so many hours in a week and entrepreneurs can never find enough of them, so short of inventing time travel (if anyone has let me know), how do we make the most of the time available to us? **Not in a ‘we’re all going to die’ way but in a ‘there are only 24 hours in a day 7 days in a week’ way…and we can’t work all of them.

“Nobody ever became an entrepreneur so they could avoid working hard. Running your own business stretches anybody’s work-life balance to the absolute limit. And it has now emerged that micro-business owners are working an average of 52 hours a week, 63 per cent longer than the average worker, according to research by call handling firm Penelope.” – Jack Torrance, Real Business

However, the problem with a 52+ hour working week is it comes up against this other well known fact.

“For decades, studies have shown the diminishing returns of consistently putting in more than 40 hours a week, while some economists (and Google founders) have repeatedly pointed out that with technology doing more and more of the heavy lifting when it comes to productivity, it might be wiser economically and socially (and hey, maybe even spiritually) if we all worked a bit less–say, 30 hours a week.” – Jessica Stillman, Inc.com

So we are working on average 12 hours where our productivity is consistently falling. What can we do to help with that?

I would love to know, how do you clear your head and reset?

I have a theory…entrepreneurs like hard work, are constantly thinking about their businesses and struggle to switch off. My personal experience is that things that used to help me relax, when I had a 9 to 5 job like reading or watching TV, don’t work anymore. I get distracted or feel that I’m not using my time effectively. So my new approach is weightlifting!

Stay with me and I’ll explain why I think weightlifting is an excellent way of switching off for entrepreneurs. It’s really complicated, you have to concentrate, it’s physical not mental, you can fit it into 30 mins, it lifts your pulse rate, is good for your health and gets you out of your head and into the moment.

So how do I improve my productivity. I clear my head and reset by lifting heavy!

…or you could try mindfulness 😉

4 thoughts on “How do you keep your productivity?”

In the early days of my coaching business, I was working ridiculous hours, often into the early hours of the morning. Eventually something had to give. I cut back to approximately 7 hours a day and approx 4 hours over the weekend. My productivity levels are so much higher for cutting back. More hours certainly didn’t mean more producive for me.

Claire says:

June 14, 2015 at 5:13 pm

Yeah I don’t think longer hours are productive, but the problem is I still get stuff done…just really slowly 😛

Reply

I think Abraham Lincoln nailed it with his quote: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

For me the most efficient way of being productive is to set a time limit for myself and connect it to a real event. For example if I’ve planned meeting a friend at 17:30 then I’m more likely to get my work done than if I could piss about till bed time.

Also having a clear idea of what needs to be done and in what order helps me a lot. That way I can stop when browsing Facebook and ask myself; “is this really where I want to invest my time and energy right now?”.

Agree on the working out! That really helps clearing your mind. And if you split your life up in different areas like work, love, training, friends, etc I think it’s easier to deal with setbacks in either of them.