Day 11: Be productive, right now

Productivity Action Day 11.  

Let’s start off saying congratulations. You are on to Productivity Action Day 11 of your 3 TOP Steps for Productivity.

Friday was Productivity Action Day 10 and you did your check-in with where you are now. You asked some questions, got some answers.

What I have found to happen at this point in the system is you have started to realize that you are doing way too much.

You see where you are sabotaging your efforts and where there is room for improvement.

The action for today is simple, yet not so easy to do.

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 11, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Do ONE Thing

Now I know you may roll your eyes.

I did. My thought was “I can’t possibly do just ONE thing”. There are so many things to do, how can I do just one?

Growing up, my father, who was a masterful educational teacher, told me: “Kimberly (yes, that’s what my parents called me when something important was to happen, or I was getting into trouble =), do one thing at a time.”

Truthfully, I never took that to heart. And so that’s probably why I struggled so long in my life and in my business. I always was doing 10 things at a time.

One thing at a time does equal success

This one action took me a long time to get. And it does take some of my clients a long time to get. When we get it, wow! It’s a game changer.

From Productivity Action Day 10 you were to answer several questions and then create a list of actions and ways of behaving in order for you to excel at your productivity.

So your action today is to look over those answers and choose ONE thing to improve on for this week.

Side note: it takes longer than a week to see significant improvements, however, my guess is you will struggle with just focusing on this ONE thing right now. So let’s get set up for success and start slow.

You can (and I hope you will) carry it over into the follow weeks until your one thing is complete. And then you can move on to other important actions.

The One Thing Book

While this is one small action I’m giving you to complete. It’s really a part of a bigger equation. One that, in full disclosure, I work with extensively with my private coaching clients and groups.

I wanted to give you a phenomenal resource that I know will change how you look at productivity. It’s called The One Thing. It is written by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. 

It is brilliant for helping you see the importance of doing one thing. And you will get a step by step plan to first know your ONE thing (if you didn’t already, but you probably do) and then second help you to do it.

You of course, may reach out for a conversation for us to have on how you can receive your own private support. I’m always happy to help people excel faster if they so choose.

I’d love for you to share your thoughts, your results or ask any questions you have. Feel free to post in the comment box or reach out directly to me at kim@kimravida.com

Additional References for you

Book:  The One Thing

Preview of The One Thing:

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Disclosure: Some of the links I have provided for you are my affiliate link. It costs you nothing but I may receive a small commission.  Thank you.

Day 10: Be productive, right now

Productivity Action Day 10.  How are you feeling since your Productivity Action Day 9 of thinking? Did you do it?

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 10, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Check-In

Today, you are going to take the time to look back on the previous 9 Productivity Action Days and see where you are now and how you feel you are doing.

1. Determine the time you actually have to work
2. Take inventory of the Big Picture
3. Do your Time Estimation
4. Create the Small Picture
5. Establish your Revenue Generating Activities and your Non-Revenue Generating Activities
6. Calculate Time Precisely
7. Use your Time Accurately
8. Prioritization
9. Think Tank Time

Each of the steps you have taken are leading you to your TOP Productivity Process.

All of which is allowing you to get the important things done for you and your life and business.

Questions to ask

1. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being not at all and 10 being I’m nailing it), how productive have you been in the last 5 days?
2. What is one thing you feel most satisfied about moving forward or completing?
3. Name one thing that has changed for you regarding productivity over the past two weeks?
4. Which step (if any) do you need to revisit? Or which step has been the hardest for you to implement?
5. How can you use what you now know and improve upon it?

Feel free to ask any additional questions that you think will benefit you at this point.

Productivity is a process. It’s only when we can see where we have been that we improve on where we are going.

That’s all you have to do for today. Next week we’ll talk about what to do with the answer you came up with from today.

And, I know you are going places!

I’d love for you to share your thoughts, your results or ask any questions you have. Feel free to post in the comment box or reach out directly to me at kim@kimravida.com

Additional References for you

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 9: Be productive, right now

Productivity Action Day 9. How are you doing on your Productivity Action Day 8 action?

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 9, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Build in Think Time

Say what? Yes! It’s time to actually stop.

You have been moving along nicely doing your  3 TOP Steps for Productivity Process.

More than likely you have been seeing results, things are getting produced meaning you have been productive and you are feeling great.

Yeeehaaw!

Now it’s time to take time to THINK. Let’s call it Think Tank Time. 

Spend 5 minutes each day thinking about where you are, what you are doing and how you feel you are doing.

That’s it. Super simple, but not so easy to do. I know, I had a hard time with this one too as do my clients. AND it’s the single most productive thing you can do for yourself and your business.

Name your think time and place

Determine when you’ll spend your time thinking and where. 

You want your time to think be away from your office or where you do your work. You could step outside for some fresh air, you could expand your 5 minutes, which by the way, you’ll be asked to do a little later in the process 😉 and go for a coffee or even take yourself to lunch.

Moving yourself out of your regular space jars the brain into action. It also gives it a chance to settle down.

Choose what time and where you’ll go to think and then just go and think!

Any question? Ask in the comment box or feel free to reach out directly to me at kim@kimravida.com

Additional References for you

Article:  Why Think Time Is So Important

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 8: Be productive, right now

Productivity Action Day 8. Did you take your action for Productivity Action Day 7 to use your time accurately?

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 8, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Prioritization

Yes! It’s time to move to Step 3 in the 3 TOP Steps for Productivity Process you have been learning.

1. Time
2. Organization
3. Prioritization

The meaning of Prioritization is: the action or process of deciding the importance or urgency of a thing or things.

I’m sure you have lots of things on your list that feel like priorities. However, some need to be prioritized over others and some fall into time prioritizations as in you need to have had them done yesterday.

Hopefully though, through this process you have been learning, you’ll no longer have things hanging over your head.

As a result, by knowing the time you have to work and organizing your categories appropriately prioritization will be the next natural step for you to get things completed.

How to prioritize

Let’s take a step back. You have mastered your time (ok, it’s a work in progress), organized your actions accordingly and the next step is to work on the most important tasks that moves you to where you are going in your business.

Too often you are working on the urgent things, the things that had to get done yesterday.

You may have a little backlog here. If so, be sure to schedule time to complete those tasks.

Look at what you have currently and upcoming and assign some criteria for it. Such as:

• When do I have to have this completed?
• What will I need to have/do for this to be done?
• How long do I think (estimate) this will take to be accomplished?
• Is there something I may be missing in order to see this finished?

It’s more like a project than a one and done. The one and done action can be scheduled and completed easily.

In addition, after you have your steps that you need to take to complete your project you can then assign an order of importance. And from there you know what to do first, second and so on.

Consequently, you then schedule it into your time containers (more on that subject coming soon) to get it completed.

In conclusion, for now, look at what you have on your to do list(s) and assign your criteria so you can begin to prioritize them, schedule them and get them completed.

Any question? Ask in the comment box or feel free to reach out directly to me at kim@kimravida.com

Additional References for you

Blog:  It’s not that hard to be productive

Videos:  Check out last week’s videos on IGTV:

• Getting started
• Learn to use time well
• Determining your RGAs

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 7: Be productive, right now.

Productivity Action Day 7. Did you take your action for Productivity Action Day 6 to calculate your time precisely?

If not, you do want to take that action today. Productivity Action Day 7 builds off of what you have been doing.

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 7, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Use your Time accurately

Yesterday you got super clear down to the second on the time it took for you to get things completed.

As a result, you have the true amount of time it takes you, right now, to complete a specific task.

Let’s say you estimated (Productivity Action Day 3) it took you 30 minutes to on board a new client and yesterday (Productivity Action Day 6) consequently, you realized that it takes you 90 minutes.

It’s eye opening isn’t it? Can also be eye popping as in “I had no idea it took that long.” And it could have also shown you where your process needed improvement among many others things you now know.

Here’s a quick story:

A client of mine knew she was effective in signing on new clients by going to her local chamber meetings (RGA). She resisted because she didn’t like to get dressed in appropriate clothing, drive to the meeting and interact in person.

Above all, she knew what her RGAs were and she went to the next chamber meeting. Within 30 minutes of her arriving, she had $5,000 of new business! And that new business would turn into recurring business over time. 

Therefore, if you factor in the time it took her to get ready, drive, attend the meeting, and talk to people, it equaled less time than if she sat at home trying to reach out and contact people online.

Goldilocks got it right

Because she tried a couple of things, she knew without a doubt what was just right for her.

Hence, look at the precise Time you take to get things done and ask yourself:

• Is this taking too long to do?
• How could I do this fast?
• Is this the right amount?

Finally, once you know the answers you will make solid decisions on your time and how to use it.

Additional References for you

Video:  Goldilocks and the Three Bears

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 6: Be productive, right now.

Productivity Action Day 6. Let’s do a quick check in.

Last week your actions were to: 

1. Determine the time you actually have to work
2. Take inventory of the Big Picture
3. Do your Time Estimation
4. Create the Small Picture
5. Establish your RGAs and your NRGA

Each of them could have brought a knowing, a surprise, an annoyance and many other thoughts and feelings.

What I find is that once you have a clearer picture of where you are it’s easier to make the changes you need to make.

On a recent call with my own accountability partner we talked about how there are so many things we are interested in doing but do they tie back into generating revenue?

Truth be told, not everything you do or will do will lead to money but 85-90% of the actions you take should. You are a business. Businesses make money.

Think of it this way, you want to be doing everything you can that somehow leads to money. This week we are going to begin narrowing things down for even greater clarity.

Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 6, if you so choose to accept it is to:

Calculate Time Precisely

What you want to do is to get super clear, and I mean down to the second on your time.

Take that list you have been creating (make sure you did all of last week’s actions) of your categories, estimates and RGAs (and NRGAs) and beginning today (and all this week) as you take action, note down the time you start and when you complete your task. After you have that, calculate the exact time your task took you. 

You now have the true amount of time it takes you, right now, to complete a specific task.

Here is how to do this action:

• Take a sheet of paper and on the left side write out your action.
• Next to the action write down your estimate.
• As you take the action write down the time (or even set a timer).
• When you complete your action note the end time.
• Finally, calculate the exact time it took to complete the task.

This means you need to stay on task and not jump around. Oh I hear you! It’s hard to stay on task. However, multitasking is NOT going to give you the data you need for this.

Knowledge is powerful

Two things usually happen once you complete this action. You feel really good about yourself because you see that your estimations were spot on and maybe you even get things done faster than you thought. Or you feel defeated because you see that your estimations are way off.

This is a good thing. It’s where you can see how you may be squeezing 30 minutes of work into 15. Knowledge is powerful.

It is in this space that you’ll begin to shed the light on what is not working. Coming up, you’ll learn how to make specific-to-you changes so you run on all cylinders effortlessly and get your things done.

I know today’s action may have been challenging. Having this information is where you’ll be able to make your changes and see your improvements. From there you’ll learn how to best “manage” your time and your activities for TOP Productivity!

Additional References for you

Blog:  Competence or confidence?

Video:  Productivity Action Day 1 video

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 5: Be productive, right now.

Productivity Action Day 5. Whew, you did it.

You now know the amount of time you have to work and what you have been doing in that time (or not doing).

Today is the fun part. Well, it will be fun once you get over the shock of seeing it on paper.

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 5, if you so choose to accept it is:

Revenue Generating Actions

Get out your list. Next to each of your specific categories (make sure you have done Productivity Action Day 4‘s action) you are going to determine if it is a Revenue Generating Action (RGA) or a Non-Revenue Generating Action (NRA).

After you do that, you may have to pick yourself up off the floor. It’s shocking. I know. You will not be the only one who does things that lead to absolutely no income.

For now ask yourself:

• what can I do less of?
• how can I not do at all?
• is there something I can do MORE of?

Don’t give it too much thought. From everything you have done so far (remember that brain connection), answers will appear. 

You may doubt them and you more than likely will not like some of them. Trust them.

Be open to new thoughts and ideas

My suggestion for you is to be open to what comes to you. At first, we balk and think “I have to do that” and if that is the case, the question to ask is “but do I really have to do that?” 

If you still say yes. Ask: by doing this, what do I get from it?

There are so many more questions you could ask but for where you are right now, just continue to get clear on what you are doing.

As we go along and get into time organization and prioritization you’ll have a lot more knowledge, clarity and confidence over you and your business that you’ll find you make choices based on what you truly want even if they initially feel hard.

Well done! You have taken five Productivity Actions that are leading you to your TOP Productivity!

For easy reference, your first four Productivity Actions were:

1. Determine the time you actually have to work
2. Take inventory of the Big Picture
3. Do your Time Estimation
4. Create the Small Picture
5. Establish your Revenue Generating Activities and your Non-Revenue Generating Activities

You’ve done well! Enjoy your weekend.

Next, we’ll move into learning how to best “manage” your time and your activities for TOP Productivity!

Additional References for you

Click here to go to the blog to see each of the previous blogs posted for your review.

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Wondering how to get personalized help? Email me privately at kim@kimravida.com

Day 4: Be productive, right now.

Productivity Action Day 4. How are you doing so far? Are you noticing anything about what’s happening with your time?

At this point it is not uncommon for you to begin to see little threads of thought and wonder.

When I work with my private and group clients on the 3 TOP Steps for Productivity it is at this point they have begun to see some light. Meaning, they are now understanding why they can’t seem to be productive.

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 4, if you so choose to accept it is:

Create clarity.

Take your list that you created on Productivity Action Day 2 (and continued with on Productivity Action Day 3) and go over it with a fine tooth comb.

You want to do two things today.

1. Look at your categories, are they too broad, do you need to break them down
2. Is there anything you listed that you now know you don’t  want to do or be the one to do it?

Let’s say you wrote down Marketing and estimated two hours a day.

When you say marketing, what exactly are you doing for marketing? Are you going out of the office and networking, are you speaking, are you writing blog articles, are you having phone calls with others. What exactly are you marketing activities?

This is where interesting things happen and you’ll: 

• Realize you don’t even know what you are doing for marketing 
• Have no idea how to be effective at marketing
• See that you are doing way too much marketing with way too little results
• And many other things may come to light here

In order to create clarity, first break down your activities into the smaller activities. You may have automatically done this when you did your estimations. 

It’s easy to lump things together and that’s where it gets sticky. Creating a blog post and actually going outside your office to network have two completely different time parameters, actions and mindsets involved.

Your goal is to use your time effectively.

Remember your goal is to use your Time effectively and in order to know how to do that, you need 1) know how much of it you have for work and then 2) know what it is you are doing during that time.

That is what you have been working on this week.

It may sound granular. What it is doing for you is taking you from the big picture view that you created earlier to now a smaller picture view.

You could say, the view where the rubber meets the road.

It is necessary for you to see exactly where you are spending your time and how much of it you are spending.

Only when you can see both the big and small picture, will you be able to see why the things you are doing aren’t fitting into the time you have to work and why you don’t get things completed, have too much on your list and feel frustrated. Not to mention never getting to where you want to go.

By investing the time to do this now, you’ll save yourself so much time later.

Additional References for you.

Blog: Productivity Actions That Will Help You Be Productive

Video: It’s Not That Hard To Be Productive

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

Day 3: Be productive, right now.

Productivity Action Day 3. How did yesterday go?

Did you do your list of everything you do in your business? If not, take about 10 minutes now and do that. Click here for your action for Productivity Action Day 2.

Today’s Productivity Action is going to build on what you did yesterday. It’s part of the first step of Time in your 3 TOP Steps for Productivity process.

Today, your Mission Possible, if you so choose to accept it is:

Estimate your time.

Take yesterday’s inventory and next to each line item, write down an estimate of how long you think that activity takes.

We mentioned things like planning time, administrative, networking, marketing, sales, meetings, phone calls, emails, text messages, social media, content creation, leadership activities, managing team (if you have a team) and everything you do during your day.

After you did Productivity Action Day 2 you now have a big picture view of what you are doing in your business and you may already see how after Productivity Action Day 1 you have too much to do. That’s ok, we are getting closer to your ultimate productivity and eliminating stress, overwhelm and frustration.

We are still looking at the big picture view of what you do during your working time so just do the estimates for today. This should take you no longer than 10-15 minutes.

If it takes longer, you probably have way too much on your plate. We’ll address that later. It’s a killer for productivity. But you more than likely know that already.

That’s it for today, just write down your estimates of the time it takes you to do the activities you are currently doing in your business. We want a real-live view of where you are right now.

Additional References for you.

Blog: How To Never Let Time Get Away From You Again.

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.

And as always if you feel you want personalized help for your specific business, reach out to me at kim@kimravida.com 

Day 2: Be productive, right now.

Here we are on Productivity Action Day 2. Did you take action yesterday? 

Yesterday you were determining the amount of time you have to work.

If you haven’t read Productivity Action Day 1 yet, click here.

Before you move to today’s action, it’s important for you to determine the amount of time you have to work. And please do not say “I work 9-5” because in truth, you don’t.

You may be at work 9-5 but you aren’t working a solid eight hours without a trip to the bathroom, lunch, social media excursion and so on. 

When you have determined the time you are actually working, it’s time to move on.

Your Mission Possible for Productivity Action Day 2, if you so choose to accept it is:

Take inventory.

Inventory, that is, of everything you do in your business.

I did say everything.

Things like your planning time (hopefully that is on your list to do), administrative, networking, marketing, sales, meetings, phone calls, emails, text messages, social media, content creation, leadership activities, managing team (if you have a team) and everything you do during your day.

Your business is specific to you so while you may do similar things that other business owners do, just list out what you are doing in your business.

This gives you a big picture view of what you do during your working time.

I believe in the power of writing. My suggestion to you is to use pen and paper for this initial activity.

There is a connection that occurs in your brain when you write rather than type. I know, I type way faster than I write too, yet that’s the point. You don’t want to just fly over these, you want to connect with what you are doing in order for you to become better at being productive.

As you are in the writing process, what more than likely will happen is, you’ll think “do I need to do that?” or “I hate doing this.” Make a note of it, you’ll use that valuable information later.

That’s all for today. Put your list aside (your brain will begin percolating on it in the background). This is good, let that happen.

Until tomorrow…

Additional References for you.

Article: The Power of Writing Things Down.

Article: 7 Reasons Why You Should Write Things Down.

If we aren’t connected on social media, follow me over on Instagram where we’ll keep the conversation going.