Work Smarter, Not Harder

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. 

A working mom spends long hours at the office trying to be a successful professional. At the end of the day, she takes home more work to get done in the hours before she goes to bed (which she does way too late because she’s trying to get everything done). She says she’s spending time with her family, but even though she’s physically with them, she’s not really present because she’s always working. She feels guilty about not spending enough time with her family, but she would feel just as guilty if she worked fewer hours because she would feel like she was letting down her employer and coworkers.

---

Sound familiar?

That’s the situation I found myself in up until a few years ago. Eventually I started getting migraines that apparently came out of nowhere, but in hindsight it’s clear I had been piling things onto my to-do list, but somehow “self-care” never made the list. No wonder my body rebelled!

​Spending more time with my family without sacrificing my income is a big reason I started my business, and it’s a common thread that runs through most of my clients. We all want to get more done, but the last time I checked, no one is adding any hours to the day, so how do we fit it all in?

​The answer is to work smarter, not harder, and I’m going to give you tips on how to do just that so you can get more done in less time.

​Get Organized

The first step is to get yourself organized. Whether you prefer to work with paper or digital files, make sure you have a system that works for you so you know where everything is and can easily find it when you need it. You might not think you’re spending a lot of time searching for your notes, but that’s the kind of thing that can sneak up on you and end up stealing a lot of time from your day/week/month before you’ve realized it.

Automate, Automate, Automate

We all have tasks we do over and over in our business: scheduling meetings; following up with leads; sending welcome emails. It might not seem like it’s something worth stressing over because most of these tasks only take a few minutes, but how many times do you do them each day? Each week? Those small increments of time build up quickly, and the more your business grows, the more time you have to spend on those tasks, giving you less time to work on the more important aspects of your business.

The sooner you figure out how to automate as many things as you can, the better off you’ll be. I use ActiveCampaign to stay in touch with prospects because it lets me schedule automatic emails and reminder tasks, such as calling a prospect I recently talked with on the phone. It also lets me save templates of all the emails I send out over and over, so I don’t have to keep rewriting them.

I use Acuity to schedule meetings so I can just send people the link and there’s no back and forth trying to figure out what time works best for both of us. They can immediately see the dates and times that work for me, pick one that works for them, and it shows up on my calendar. If they need to reschedule, they can do that in Acuity as well.

Delegate

One of the biggest mistakes small business owners tend to make is thinking they have to do everything themselves. Not only is it unrealistic to think you have enough time to do it all, but the fact is there are tasks associated with running a business that don’t play to your strengths. If marketing or bookkeeping aren’t part of your genius zone, hire someone else to handle it for you so you can spend more time doing what you love and what really makes you shine!
​
If you want more information, customized to your unique situation, on how to work smarter, not harder, schedule a free Business Clarity Call today to start getting more results in your business with less effort.