Chapter 7
Productivity Tools

Now that you have designated the time you have available for your business, you have completed your business planning, and you are clear on your objectives and next steps, it’s time to put all of that to work for you. We talked about using your time wisely in Chapter 3; in this chapter we’ll dive into it more, with the goal of increasing your productivity. The most important thing to remember—and to own—as you get started is the fact that you are both a mom and an entrepreneur. We’ve said this before but it’s important to remember because your time is likely more limited, your schedule is likely more variable, and your priorities are likely a bit different from those of some other business owners. As you design your days, your weeks, and your months, you need to be sure you are also keeping in mind all of your commitments, obligations, and priorities.

Because time is a limited resource that can greatly impact how quickly you’ll progress toward your goals, it makes sense to get a good handle on how best to use it. First, we’ll look at some common stumbling blocks when it comes to time. These are the things that can get in your way. Luckily, they are all within your control and fairly easy to manage.

Lack of Boundaries

Setting boundaries around your time is incredibly important. Other people can certainly impinge upon your boundaries, but it’s likely that you are the major culprit getting in your own way in this regard. Here is the solution in a nutshell: When you’ve scheduled time to work, let yourself work. The unscheduled calls coming in to your cell phone can wait. By answering the phone, you are letting someone else decide how you spend your time. If you work from home, the laundry can wait. By folding the laundry during work hours, you are sending yourself the message that those towels are more important than your business objectives. Even Facebook can wait. Seeing all of the great things that other people are doing does not in any way help you do your own great things. Yes, the call deserves your future attention, you are going to want folded towels at some point, and we’re all for catching up on what everyone on social media is up to, but those things do not need to happen during the precious time you’ve set aside for your business. (One caveat: You may be using social media to connect with your audience. If so, be sure to observe the boundaries between doing work on social media and playing on social media. Both are great but they need to be done at the appropriate times.)

Distractions and Interruptions

Take a minute to think about the distractions and interruptions that show up on a regular basis. Write down what they are, and write down a plan to deal with them.

Think: texts, phone calls, social media, e-mails, the sale at Banana Republic, and so on. (By the way, redrawing your boundaries can take some time. While you get a bit stricter with yourself, it’s a good idea to notice when you are distracted. Distractions usually happen either because we fail to limit our exposure to them or because we need a break. Learn to notice the difference. We talked about energy levels and how they affect your ability to be productive in Chapter 3. If you do indeed need a minute, instead of scolding yourself, go replenish yourself and come back ready to roll up your sleeves and get back to work.)

Doing It All Yourself

How are you at delegating? How about automating? As the head honcho, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you have to do everything yourself. Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or the head of a large corporation, doing it all by yourself just doesn’t make sense. Sometimes it comes down to money, of course, but there are creative ways to help you get around that. More often, it’s not feeling ready to relinquish your control and trust that someone else will do things as well as you can. As we talked about in Chapter 5, you’ll be better off if you can use your skills and strengths as often as possible. Of course, that means minimizing the time you spend doing things you either don’t like that well or aren’t good at. That doesn’t mean you get to hand over the reins to another person and not check in with them from time to time. A powerful CEO carefully trains and checks in with her team and constantly reviews her automated processes to make sure things are running smoothly. Of course, getting things set up will take some initial time, but you’ll get that time back—and then some—once you’ve cleared off some of your to-dos and can focus on the things that you do best as well as the things that are best for your company.

By the way, virtual assistants (commonly known as VAs) are an amazing and affordable resource. Think about some tasks you could either automate or delegate, and check out “22 Things You Can Outsource to a Virtual Assistant” in the Appendix if you need some ideas.

Resistance to Change

Next up on our list of things that hinder productivity: the fact that many of us are resistant to change. That’s true when it comes to the route we take to work and the way we wear our hair. It’s also true when it comes to your business and what we affectionately call “the way you’ve always done it.” The way you’ve always done it can be great. Maybe it’s the most efficient way to do it. Maybe it’s a boon to your productivity. If that’s true, great. More power to you. However, it might be worth considering that the way you’ve always done it could use a tweak or two. The thing is, technology is changing everything. Think of any issue or tasks in your business and we can almost guarantee that there is an app or piece of software that can help streamline it. So be open to new ways of doing things that might just increase your productivity.

Estimating Your Time

Ah, time again. Incorrectly estimating both how much time you need and how much time you think you have are common stumbling blocks as well. First, let’s talk about underestimating the amount of time something will take. This is one of those things that just gets easier the longer you’ve been in business and the more you’ve done similar tasks. That said, estimating time naturally comes more easily to some than to others. If you notice that tasks consistently take longer than you thought they would, you might be someone (we’ll call you a time optimist) who always believes she can get things done faster than she really can. Signs that you fall into this camp include never leaving enough time to get places, over-scheduling yourself because you forget to factor in traffic or bathroom breaks or the need to eat, and failing to notice that your weekly meeting that’s scheduled from 9 to 10 a.m. always adjourns at 10:30. If any of these sound familiar, you’ll need to make some adjustments to how you estimate the amount of time you’ll need to get something done.

If you spent time in the corporate world and/or if your business is home-based, you might be especially prone to the second estimating issue: overestimating the amount of time you have to work. That’s because when you are actually in an office setting, it’s generally easier to focus on just work. Remember those distractions we were talking about? If you are working from home, it’s all too easy to quickly throw a load of clothes in the washing machine or unload the dishwasher. We actually think these things can be perks of working from home, but be careful, because they can also eat into your productive time. Just be really honest when you are planning your days. If you know that you’re the type to tidy up a bit during the day and you decide that’s time well spent, make sure you schedule in time during the day to do those things.

Here’s an example of how it doesn’t make sense to schedule eight hours’ worth of work each day if you don’t have eight hours to work: A few years ago one of our clients came to a coaching session frustrated and overwhelmed. She was a hard worker and truly believed she was giving a 100-percent effort in everything she did for her clients and her family. But no matter how hard she worked day after day, she just couldn’t complete her work projects and was starting to drop the ball and miss deadlines. She couldn’t sleep at night, given the anxiety she felt about her workload. To see what was happening, we had her track how she spent her time every day for a week. She was simultaneously shocked and relieved to finally see that despite starting her workday morning at 6:30 and working as hard as she could all day long, her family commitments (as a mother of preschool-aged children living in a rural area of Canada) were taking up all but about three hours a day. No wonder the eight hours’ worth of projects wasn’t getting done. The lesson in this story might seem obvious, but we can assure you that many of the mom entrepreneurs we work with have exactly the same disconnect between the time they have available to work and the amount of work they schedule on a given day.

As a mom entrepreneur, you are bound to feel frustrated if, day after day, you fall short of your goals. You may be pulling out your hair and questioning your abilities. The solution is to reset your expectations and plan projects that will fit into your timeframe. After doing that, instead of feeling completely overwhelmed and frustrated, you will likely find that you are able to meet your goals and feel quite productive. Make your schedule realistic and sustainable and you’ll be on your way to feeling productive at the end of each day.

Techniques

Now that you are aware of the things that zap your productivity, let’s look at a few tools to help you increase it. The rest of this chapter will lay out some techniques for productivity that will make a real difference in the way you feel about your days—especially if you fall into the category of those who look at the clock and think, How is it already 7 o’clock?

Chunk It

One popular time-management method is called the Pomodoro Technique. This technique is based on the idea that frequent breaks actually make you more productive. If you want to try it, the steps are simple:

1. Set a timer for 25 minutes, and work during that time.

2. Take a short (3- to 5-minute) break to do something unrelated to the task you are working on.

3. Set the timer for another 25 minutes, and then take another short break.

4. After four of these cycles, called “Pomodoros,” take a longer (20- to 30-minute) break.

This technique can be tailored to suit your needs, but we find it’s helpful to think of your total available time in “chunks” of some sort. Lara prefers to work in two-hour chunks with breaks between each chunk, because the idea of taking a break every 25 minutes would impact her ability to stay focused. Experiment with different chunks of time. Try working until you notice your mind wandering or until you start to feel antsy. Note how long you were able to stay on task, take a break, and then set the timer for that same chunk of time again. Tweak it until you find a rhythm that works well for you.

Map It

Another clear and proven method for managing time and also increasing productivity is something we call project mapping. In its simplest form, project mapping is plugging tasks from a project into the available time slots on your calendar. The first step is to determine the different parts of the project and how much time each will take. For example, if you need to write a blog post, you might need to spend 20 minutes figuring out your topic, 30 minutes writing it, five minutes coming up with a title, and five minutes posting it. Because the whole project will take an hour, you can look for an hour-long time slot on your calendar or you can find periods that fit with the different tasks within the project—in this case, a 20-minute time slot, a 30-minute time slot, and two five-minute time slots. Then, you schedule those specific tasks on your calendar. Simple, right? This can also work for huge tasks such as getting new retail accounts. Again, you’d break the project into smaller tasks and schedule each of those tasks on your calendar. Based on the size of the project, you may find that you need to add designated work time by working late a few nights or bumping some other activities from your calendar until the project is complete.

Calculate It

This leads us to a simple method of increasing productivity that has to do with choosing what gets on your calendar in the first place. It seems so obvious to do the things that have the most impact and get you closer to your goals, but we’re guessing that you do a lot of things that don’t fit that description. The Pareto principle, or, as it’s commonly known, “the 80/20 rule,” deems that in any situation, 20 percent of whatever you are talking about is vital and 80 percent of whatever you’re talking about is trivial. For our purposes, it means that 20 percent of what you do leads to 80 percent of your progress. In simpler terms, you’ll get the most benefit from doing the most important 20 percent of your tasks. If you really stop to think about it, we bet you’ll see the wisdom in this. (And, if you want to apply this to other areas of your life, you probably wear 20 percent of your clothing 80 percent of the time, and in the sales world, it’s often said that 80 percent of your income comes from 20 percent of your clients.) The takeaway? Figure out what your 20 percent is and focus on that.

Quarter It

Check out the following table: The Four Qs of Productivity. Here, we have divided our tasks into four quadrants. Each quadrant has several tasks most mom entrepreneurs need to do each day. Q1 (Quadrant 1) is full of the tasks you do that make you money. Q2 should include a list of items that fill your sales pipeline with income-generating opportunities (such as all marketing activities). Q3 tasks don’t make money but must be done. These are the operations that keep your business going and the lights on. And Q4 is the quadrant where you put all the other stuff that winds up on your to-do list but that can usually be delegated or deleted from your task list altogether.

Grab a pen and paper and write out your own Four Qs of Productivity.

Challenge yourself to put at least five tasks in Q1 and Q4. It’s usually fairly easy for a mom entrepreneur to fill in Q2 and Q3. Now, practice spending 80 percent of your time doing the tasks that fall in Q1 and Q2, and only allow 20 percent of your time to be spent on Q3. Notice you’re out of time to do much of anything in Q4? That’s right. You need to get those time drains off your list so you can be a productivity rock star.

The Four Qs of Productivity

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone.

—Lin Yutang

Time It

Timing is a huge factor in determining how productive you can be as a business owner (especially when you’re also a mom). Let’s take another look at energy through the productivity filter. Consider your energy flow. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Does your energy wane every day after lunch? Do you constantly have the best ideas at 10 p.m.? It makes sense to pay attention to your biorhythms and use them to your advantage. Lara used to schedule teleseminars and Webinars in the evenings, thinking she’d be able to reach more of her target audience (moms) at that time. The problem was that once she put her kids to bed, her brain basically turned off. Trying to work in the evenings just doesn’t work for her. She lacks the clarity that she has during the day, and each task ends up taking five times as long. Obviously, that is not time well spent.

As we mentioned earlier, scheduling your work time into chunks can really boost productivity. However, we know a lot of entrepreneurs who like to do marathon productivity blasts. Instead of clustering or chunking their tasks by the hour, they prefer to chunk their tasks by the day. For example, they may spend all day Monday on self-care, relaxing, de-stressing, and filling up their tanks with quality time spent by themselves, with their partner or kids, or with their friends. Then on Tuesday, they spend their entire day on their Q1 activities. In other words, they make a lot of money on Tuesday. And that’s a nice way to spend a whole day. Wednesday is a catch-up day that allows for Q2 and Q3 tasks, and then they start the cycle, over.

You might follow a traditional five-day workweek or you might not. We know you are juggling work, running your household, and caring for your kids, among 5,000 other things. Tap into the timing that allows you to be the most productive you can be so your precious time is well-spent.

Question It

For all of those tasks that get bumped from Tuesday to Wednesday to Thursday, check in to see if the task is worth doing at all. “Do I want to do it? Do I have to do it (Q3)? What goal does this help me move toward (Q1 or Q2)? Which priority is positively impacted by doing it?” If you are able to answer these questions, and the answer seems to be that the task is worth doing, here are two last questions for you to consider: “What would make it easier or more appealing? When is the drop-dead due date?” Write the task on your calendar and don’t let yourself wiggle out of it again. The tasks that keep getting pushed to the bottom of your lists take up a lot of mental energy that would be better spent elsewhere. Not doing something at all is actually a great way to see your productivity go up (and also to free up some time).

Maximize It

Another technique is to group tasks so that you can minimize transition times. Every time we move from one task to another, we lose valuable time because it takes our mind time to change focus. That’s why it’s pretty smart to group similar tasks together so that you are tackling them one after the other. If you need to make sales calls, set aside enough time to make them all (or at least several of them in a row). You’ll benefit from the practice that comes with the repetition. If you need to write blog posts, write a few at a time. If you are going to be out visiting clients, make sure to visit all of the ones who are geographically close to one another. If you make a phone call, answer two e-mails, research something, and then make another call, it’s likely that you’re losing time transitioning from one task to another. Instead, group the similar tasks together so you can leverage your momentum.

Plan It

Successful entrepreneurs take the time to prepare for the next day by making a plan that allows them to hit the ground running. We know, we know—you probably work until the last second before you have to rush out the door to do carpool, or you work late into the night and just can’t wait to turn off your laptop and hop into bed. We get it. We are here to tell you, though, that the time you take setting yourself up for the next day will be time well spent. Besides, it only takes a few minutes. Look at your calendar first to see what appointments you have and to get a feel for the time you have available, and then write down specific tasks that you want to do the next day. Hint: Rather than jotting down broad areas like “work on marketing,” be specific (“identify five potential clients and send them an introductory e-mail”) so you can hit the ground running.

Break It

As counterintuitive as it may seem, taking a break is actually a very effective way to be more productive. According to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, giving yourself a break helps you come up with solutions to your problems.¹ When you hit a wall or face an issue that seems insurmountable, walking away from things can actually allow you come up with a fresh perspective or find the answer you’ve been looking for. Take a shower. Go on a walk. Just do something that takes your mind (at least consciously) off the issue you are dealing with.

Focus It

Here’s another technique for you that can work wonders: narrow your focus. This means to put all of your energy into only the most pressing activities or projects. There are times when a broad focus makes a lot of sense. For example, when you have established your business, you have had some success, and you are in a stable mode, you are likely focusing on sales, marketing, distribution, and customer relations all at the same time. Each of these categories gets some of your attention. There are other times, though, when you’ll need to focus more narrowly so you can get done what you need to get done. For example, while we were writing this book, our focus became pretty darned narrow. We did the bare minimum to keep our businesses healthy but we pretty much stopped the extras because the book needed most of our attention. (Doesn’t this remind you of times when one of your children is going through a period when he or she needs you? You almost automatically let some less-important things slide to the back burner.) When we promote the book, the focus will be much broader and will include our goals for our businesses. There are certain stages and periods in the life of your business when the focus will need to be narrow and times when the focus will need to be much broader.

Moms Talk

Something I have learned but still need to remind myself of is that stress does not equal productivity. I am usually able to get as much, if not more, accomplished when I am calm and methodically move through my checklist for the day or week. I also remind myself that I am not superhuman, and can only do what I can do without losing my mind.

—Kea Rensch, Merin Totes

When you’re running a business from home you need to be ruthless with your time. Otherwise you’ll find yourself burning the candle at both ends, which is a detriment to yourself and your business. Being organized is a must. Take time each night to plan your next day out. This will allow for you to quickly get started and keep the focus on revenue-generating activities. There are many different time-management applications and systems to use, but the important thing is to have some sort of system in place.

—Holly Hanna, The Work at Home Woman

My favorite strategy for maintaining productivity is to stay relatively busy. When I was in college, I worked every quarter except one. That quarter I received dismal grades. I found that by having to closely manage my time, I had no choice but to use the time when I wasn’t in class or working to get my homework and projects completed. I have found this to be true in my entrepreneurial life as well. I schedule out chunks of time for work, volunteering, and fun, and it makes me much more productive. Also, it seems like something unexpected comes up every day, so I make sure to schedule in at least an hour of flex time.

—Julie Fry, Business Among Moms

Productive equals effective plus efficient. Being effective means doing the right thing, and being efficient means doing it quickly. Doing something quickly when it’s the wrong thing to do won’t increase your productivity, so check in with your objectives and make sure you’re spending your time doing the right stuff. And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to be productive every minute of the day. That’s the exact attitude or mindset that makes some entrepreneurs turn into workaholics, and you can bet their overwhelm cycles kick in and make them miserable. With all the self-care hacks we shared with you in Chapter 4, we’re sure you can manage being productive without sacrificing your well-being.

Make sure you give a few of these productivity tips a try when you feel you’re stuck or spinning your wheels. And be aware that you probably have some longstanding habits that are zapping your productivity. We all do. It may take some time to change them, but start with taking some baby steps with the tips we’ve provided here.

We can’t leave this chapter without saying that even with the best-laid plans, you will get off track now and then. Your son will get sick. Your daughter will need a last-minute costume or poster board. Expect to be waylaid on a somewhat regular basis, and perhaps even build that into your schedule. We’ve found that adding in a buffer when you create your calendar is almost always a good idea. Best case? You’ll have more time than you scheduled for yourself. Worst case? You’ll still have time to work and make the cookies that you just found out you are supposed to deliver to the bake sale this evening. We’ll talk more about staying on track and getting back on track in Chapter 8.

Bottom Line

The best gift you can give yourself as a busy mom entrepreneur is being productive with your time.

Watch for common stumbling blocks that routinely zap your productivity.

Try out some of the productivity techniques we included in this chapter to see what works best for you.