Download The Three Keys to Transform Your Productivity

The Three Keys to Transform Your
Productivity
March 1, 2016
by Crystal Butler
Advisor Perspectives welcomes guest contributions. The views presented here do not necessarily
represent those of Advisor Perspectives.
You set out with the greatest intentions to complete a task, and then you get a notification of an email,
phone call, text message or, even worse, a Facebook post. Before you know it, 30 minutes have
passed, and you are no closer to finishing your task. The productive hours of your day are slipping
away, and you don’t know where they are going.
Here are three keys to improve your productivity and ensure that important tasks get done when they
should.
1. Manage your time!
Managing your time is protecting your time. With technology in every aspect of life, you are constantly
connected, constantly. You have personal emails, work emails, maybe a task-management system,
social media, web alerts, cell phones, laptops, tablets and even the good old office phone. Some days
may feel like one big beep, ping, and click of messages, notifications and alerts. This doesn’t even
include the time spent connected to the World Wide Web by choice.
It is time to take control and turn some of it off – at least for a little while.
To help manage your time you need to:
Limit and restrict your notification settings. Do you really need to get an alert for your
personal emails during business hours? Or could you create blocks of time during the day to go
into “Do Not Disturb” mode, turning off all notifications? Could you limit “water-cooler”
conversation in this same way?
Set aside 30 minutes to check your email in the morning. Stay away from things that don’t
need your immediate attention. Complete what you can and move on. You can see my article on
organizing your inbox for more advice on this topic.
Be mindful of information overload. You don’t need one more resource, one more reference
and one more person’s input. You eventually need to make a decision and go with it. Don’t get
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sucked into mindless web browsing and procrastination.
2. Schedule your time!
There are days when you hit the ground running with the best of intentions and then fizzle out. You
need a plan, and you need to form the habit of sticking to the plan. Being unorganized with your time
can lead to missed opportunities. As a financial advisor, your time is best spent face-to-face with
clients or potential clients. This is hard to do when you are not sure how to accomplish everything
already on your list. Something always suffers – don’t let it be the success of your business.
To successfully schedule your time you need to:
Take one day at the end of every week to plan for the upcoming week. Move tasks that
didn’t get completed, putting them on appropriate days and highlighting the must-do tasks that
are critical to your success and/or have hard deadlines.
Take 20-30 minutes at the end of each day to plan for the next day. At the end of the day,
look at unfinished tasks as well. Plan for tomorrow, and remember that you can always delegate,
delay or delete a task.
3. Be efficient with your time!
Remember that the day is not one long marathon. Know that rest is coming – it is the motivation that
will allow you to stay focused and stop procrastinating. You want to work hard then rest and enjoy
before going back to working efficiently.
To be efficient with your time you need to:
Utilize the 90-30 rule. For every 90 minutes of work, take a 30-minute break. If this time
configuration does not work for your day, change it. Work for two hours and take a 15-minute
break. This will give you the ability to be focused and immersed during your work hours with a
dedicated and planned break to enjoy some of the time wasters I mentioned in the beginning.
Separate your tasks into four categories. Eisenhower's urgent/important principle is a great
way to look at what has to get done right now and what you can reschedule.
A few more tips and tools for effective time management:
Use Google Calendar – Free with Gmail, Google Calendar can track everything, send
reminders and alerts and is accessible everywhere.
Lino – Lindo is like a wall of post-it notes; you can create tasks, prioritize them, check them off
or delete them as they are completed.
Keep track of how much time you really waste – Use a simple spreadsheet or even a timetracking tool to log all of your time, even for trivial matters. Do it daily, and make it a habit. This
will train you to recognize unimportant matters and time wasters.
Process paper only once – Do it, submit it, file it and trash it!
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Instant message your colleagues – Instant messaging limits “walking” time from office to
office, time wasters encountered along the way and office chit-chat.
Know where everything is at any given time – Organize your paper and digital files. Don’t
spend time looking for something; know where it should be, and put it there.
Don’t forget the value ofdelegation. You can always use a professional to do specific tasks that your
business needs to succeed but are not necessarily within your industry. For example, you can hire a
marketing professional to maintain your website, blog, Facebook or LinkedIn pages, marketing
materials and so much more.
Crystal Butler is an entrepreneur, creative marketer and results-driven business consultant with over
a decade of experience helping financial advisors. At Crystal Marketing Solutions, LLC she provides
marketing services for financial professionals by communicating a cohesive brand and building
business relationships to help them grow and thrive. Connect with Crystal on LinkedIn at
crystallbutler or learn more at www.crystalmarketingsolutions.com.
Key words: time management, productivity, financial advisor
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