Buying or selling your business in the New Year, how is your Productivity Plan?

12:01 am

So you’ve made your New Year’s resolutions which included building a business plan.  This includes setting your personal and business goals.  You also did a budget to make sure you can afford to do what you’ve planned.  You are therefore all rested and dressed up and ready to go.  Bring it on you say.  My question is therefore, you know WHAT you want to do but HOW are you going to do it?

Chances are you have a list of projects and tasks you want and need to do.  It probably doesn’t include answering phones, sending and receiving emails, reading articles and newsletters, attending conferences, staying on top of compliance items that affect your industry but numerous day to day activities that lead most entrepreneurs at the end of the day to say “Where did the day go?”  And that’s the point of a Productivity Plan.

A Productivity Plan is an attempt to put some system into each month, week and day.  Whether you are the President of the United States or the unemployed person looking for a job, we all have exactly the same amount of time in a day.  While we may not always be able to control who we spend our day with, we can control how we spend it.  For example, do you know how much time each day you spend on email?  Do you respond to each email as it arrives?  If so, you are not being productive.  An email is a non urgent means of communication.  If it was urgent you would be using the cell phone or other telephone line.  The goal of a Productivity Plan is to plan and manage your day, firstly, so you enjoy it and secondly, so you get the important tasks done while the less important tasks wait.  Closing down your email so you answer each email in a window of time and then again in the afternoon allows you to be more productive