- Productivity is essential for entrepreneurs because it improves stress levels, efficiency, well-being, and the company’s bottom line.
- When it comes to productivity for entrepreneurs, the biggest challenges are wearing multiple hats, needing more structure, and minimizing distractions.
- The best ways to improve productivity are pre-planning your week, tracking your productivity, and prioritizing and outsourcing tasks (more on this below).
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How to be productive as an entrepreneur:
Why is productivity important for entrepreneurs?
Getting more done in less time helps entrepreneurs increase revenue, while they improve their work-life balance. You see, 45% of entrepreneurs feel stressed. At the same time, 33% of small business owners work 50+ hours a week and 25% say they work 60+ hours a week. Being productive can lead to benefits like:- Lower stress levels and improved well-being
- Increase in efficiency
- Increased engagement
- Higher profits
Ultimately, you can build a life YOU want instead of dreading to go to work every day. We’ve used the systems we’ll talk about below to go from 80-hour work weeks to 2-hour weeks and build a business that allows us to travel the world.
We’ve also…
- Grown our business to 8 millions in sales
- Written a WSJ and USA Today bestselling book
- Helped thousands of clients
Time management and prioritization
1. Pre-plan your week
Pre-planning your week is the one productivity secret for entrepreneurs that will change EVERYTHING. Before I and Demir started pre-planning our weeks, we felt like we were hanging on by a thread. We were always biting off more than we could chew and ended up spending all of our time focused on the wrong things! But all that changed when we started planning our weeks. All of a sudden, we were leveraging our time. You can hear about why it works in this video: 🏆We call it our Winning the Week Method (and we love it so much that we wrote a book about it!). It’s a simple process that only takes about 30 minutes each Sunday. I walk you through our process in this video: Here’s how it works.
- Choose your number one priority for the week.
- Review your past week and figure out what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved.
- Determine what’s actually important instead of what seems important.
- Look at your calendar and the time you have available in the coming week (this is called time supply).
- Look at your to-do list to understand what’s competing for your time (this is called time demand).
- Align your time supply and time demand by calendarizing your to-do list.
2. Clarify your goals
Clarity is a HUGE part of productivity. Without it, you end up feeling stuck and unmotivated. So, you have to figure out what your Definite Chief Aim (DCA) is.
To determine your DCA, ask yourself, “If I could only accomplish one big thing this year, what would I want it to be?”
Having that kind of laser focus is what makes progress possible.
And a big part of that focus comes from internal motivation, or your inner drive to accomplish incredible things.
💪Hear about how to work that internal motivation muscle in this video:
3. Prioritize the right things
If you want to be productive, you HAVE to learn to prioritize your tasks intentionally. We swear by creating to-do lists using the 1:4:5 rule:- 1 high-priority task
- 4 mid-level tasks
- 5 low priority or simple tasks
Think about your to-do list.
Which task would you celebrate getting done with a bottle of champagne?
It’s a great way to strip away that shallow work and focus on the more meaningful stuff.
And it doesn’t even have to be a big thing – even if a task takes five minutes, it’s still a Champagne Moment if it makes a difference!
Carey talks more about the Champagne Moment in this video:
4. Track your time
A big reason I see entrepreneurs struggling with their time is because they don’t know how they’re spending it. And that’s where a time audit comes in. A time audit is the single easiest way to get accurate data on how you're spending your time. With it, you can identify the “low-hanging fruit” and make better decisions. I talk about why it works in this video: I’ve seen clients get more than 10 hours back! For example, Margie didn’t think she had any extra time to spend with her husband or at the gym. But when she spent two weeks tracking her time, she found that she was spending 11 hours a week watching the news! And with that knowledge, she could make better decisions about how she was spending her time. Here’s how to conduct a time audit:
- Choose a time tracker or task manager
- Track your time in 30-minute blocks for two weeks
- Analyze your results by organizing your activities into buckets (e.g., work, hobbies, relationships)
- Change how you spend your time
5. Block out time for tasks
You could pre-plan your week perfectly, but it's a moot point if you're not intentional about how you'll spend your time! I’ve found that the best way to do this is by creating a structure and blocking time on my calendar for specific tasks and unscheduled time. When there’s a time and a place for every task, I can rest easy knowing that my priorities will get done. Another important part of productivity for entrepreneurs? Getting organized and creating effective systems. Let’s talk about them.Effective organization and systems
6. Build a system
Whether you realize it or not, you already have systems in place. Your morning routine? System. How you conduct meetings? System. But to boost your productivity, you have to make them even better. Take my client Alexis. When we started working together, she was running a hair salon franchise with little structure and no time to spend on scaling the business. But after implementing systems, she was able to sustainably scale her franchise so that it landed a spot on the Inc 500 list of the fastest growing franchises. And her systems helped her spend more time on the things that really mattered to her, like coaching her daughter's water-polo team. Now, there are two kinds of systems to improve: leveraged and delegation. Leveraged systems are business functions like marketing, sales, strategy, and delivery. Optimizing them will save you time and money. And a delegation system is one where you identify processes that another team member can do. (Effective CEOs know how to delegate well.) This is crucial. The average entrepreneur spends 36% of their week on administrative tasks. That’s over fourteen hours of your precious time – gone! 💨
I get that it’s hard to let go or fully trust someone else to do certain tasks. But you can create clear training documents and videos that help them to do it successfully!
With a delegation system in place, you'll find that you can focus more on the tasks that drive your business.
(Or, in my case, take an afternoon off to indulge in some self-care.)
7. Outsource personal task
But you can hand off more than just your work-related tasks. Outsourcing personal tasks lets you focus on growing your business instead of the list of things that need to be done in your personal life. And it's a game-changer. Hear why in this video: Believe it or not, you can outsource almost everything, including:- House cleaning and laundry
- Home management, including things like calling the bank or organizing the kids’ closets
- Meal planning and prep
- Errands like getting dog food or picking up a birthday present
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Mindset and focus
8. Keep the right mindset
As an entrepreneur, your motivation has to come from within. My number one piece of advice? Put your game face on. Prime for your day by taking time to get ready for work. Ditch the pajamas, hop in the shower, and get dressed (even if you work from home). I’ve even seen clients get ready and drive to get a cup of coffee because it signals to them that their day has begun. These cues, even the small ones, make a huge difference in getting you ready to tackle your day. But I see way too many entrepreneurs who believe they have unlimited time and energy. That’s NOT the right mindset to have. 🛑 It’s crucial to accept that you have limits and adjust your mindset to “You can do anything – but you can’t do everything.”
Believe it or not, this simple mindset shift will make your entire life better! You'll be able to balance your priorities better and create a more sustainable lifestyle.
Learn more in this video:
9. Minimize distractions
The single biggest productivity killer? Distractions. One distraction costs us as much as 25 minutes of productivity. ⌛ It also causes us to make more mistakes, impacts our decision-making, and worsens our work performance. And the truth is, we’ve got distractions coming at us from all angles – colleagues, phones, emails, meetings, and even our environment. But as an entrepreneur, you HAVE to find ways to avoid those distractions and stay focused on the task at hand. As an entrepreneur myself, I’ve found that these are the ways that work for me:- Close the door
- Silence your phone
- Take breaks
- Use noise-canceling headphones
- Create a communication policy
Work-life balance
10. Take breaks
I know, I know – taking breaks feels counterproductive for productivity. But studies have found that they’re actually a great way to improve productivity. Scheduling this kind of regular downtime gives you a chance to disconnect and recharge. I love taking a 10-minute break each hour just to get outside, move around, and stretch my legs. It’s a great way to maintain my energy and avoid burnout. 🚶 The most effective breaks involve creativity, movement, nourishment, and socializing. Being able to take a step back when needed is a part of our freedom lifestyle that we really value. A freedom lifestyle means that you have control of your time (and how many breaks you can take). Read more about their lifestyles and how you can make it for you in this guide.11. Set boundaries
So many people assume that your work has to take over your entire life if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. That’s not true! If you want to stay productive, setting boundaries, communicating your schedule, and protecting your time is crucial. And sometimes, that means saying no. 🙅 Truthfully, the key to productivity for entrepreneurs is being able to say no. That's exactly what my student Dietmar did. When we started working together, Dietmar was stuck in the “rat race.” He felt he didn't have control over his time and he spent it on things that didn't move his business forward. One of the biggest shifts Dietmar made was to stop being available all the time and working on time-consuming tasks. Instead, he reduced his workload to 6 hours a week and doubled down on his goal to make passive income in his business. Want to learn how to do the same? Take a look at this guide. So, we’ve covered the best ways to be productive as entrepreneurs. But what challenges might stand in your way? I’ll talk about those next, so keep reading!What are the biggest productivity challenges for entrepreneurs?
As a business owner, you know that productivity for entrepreneurs is sometimes easier said than done. The biggest challenges are:
- Wearing multiple hats and playing every part in your business, from accountant to marketer to CEO. Being spread too thin can make it hard to focus on what really matters, lead to inefficiency, and cause burnout.
- Inadequate systems that result in mistakes, wasted time, and other inefficiencies.
- Adaptability is crucial for entrepreneurs – you have to be flexible and open to change to stay productive and competitive.
- A lack of structure (or messy ones) can lead to inconsistent productivity, a chaotic work environment, and terrible time management.
- Not setting or tracking SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) makes it difficult to gauge your progress and lowers motivation.
- Overcommitting and stretching themselves thin.
- High stakes and the pressure to succeed can lead to stress and anxiety, which can impact decision-making and productivity.
- Little to no work-life balance, which leads to mental health problems and burnout.
- Too many distractions or interruptions. On average, we’re interrupted 60 times a day – and each of those distractions can take nearly half an hour to recover from.
- Excessive communication, whether it’s from emails, meetings, or messages, can be time-consuming and take away from what’s important.
- Trying to get more done by multitasking doesn’t work – instead, it leads to more mistakes and costs 40% of your time.
- Figuring out how to prioritize your numerous tasks and goals and making the rookie mistake of believing that you have unlimited time and energy.
- Limited resources, like insufficient financial resources, few sources of personal support, or inadequate technology, make entrepreneurs work hard to do more with less.
FAQ: Productivity for entrepreneurs
How can you be productive as an entrepreneur?
To keep productive as an entrepreneur, you need to learn how to plan, prioritize, and delegate your tasks. However, a big part of productivity is learning to take care of yourself, including getting enough sleep, eating right, and exercising.How does entrepreneurship improve productivity?
Entrepreneurs are often some of the most productive people because their time management is everything. Entrepreneurship helps you become more innovative, resourceful, adaptable, driven, and decisive.How many hours do entrepreneurs work on average?
Most entrepreneurs work more than 40 hours a week. Over half of entrepreneurs work 50+ hours a week. 33% work 50+ hours a week and 25% work 60+ hours a week.Build your business faster!
Productivity, for entrepreneurs, is essential for building your business fast. And yes, productivity tips like these are a great place to start. But for sustainable and lasting change, you need support and accountability. And that's where a dedicated productivity training program can help. Our own program, Lifehack Tribe, has supported thousands of people who've decided to turn their lives around and do more with the time they have. It's the same system I used to rebuild my own life, so that I could go from 80+ hour workweeks to working a few hours a week, while taking care of my family and traveling the world. The reason Lifehack Tribe works is because we use a science-based approach. You see, accountability and peer support are some of the most effective ways to get things done and achieve your goals. And that's exactly what you get when you join. You’ll also get:- Monthly live group calls
- A step-by-step productivity roadmap
- Access to a members-only podcast
- Access to a productivity training library full of videos, blueprints, and PDFs
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Demir & Carey walk you through the Winning the Week Method®: the 30-minute weekly ritual our members use to reclaim hours every single week. Pick a time and watch.
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