Are you a productive entrepreneur?
In the early days of naijapreneur, I wrote a very disturbing post titled Laziness checklist for entrepreneurs. It has grown to become one of the most searched for phrase on naijapreneur from Google generating thousands of visitors monthly. This is the follow up article.
As an entrepreneur you don’t ever consider yourself lazy or unproductive. You rather find yourself complaining of insufficient time, right? But here is the thing; most entrepreneurs are lazy and very unproductive. But before you start throwing stones at me, let’s be sure you understand what it means to be productive, ok?
What Is Productivity?
Productivity simply means getting more of the right things done. It is the ratio of time expended compared to results achieved.
I hope that was what you had in mind?
If not, I think I should be the one doing the stoning. 🙂
The very first sign of un-productivity is having more goals un-achieved. The more goals you have still hanging unfulfilled, the more unproductive you are. I know you have so many items on your to do list that’s why you often complain of insufficient time, right?
Here’s what you need to understand, you are not productive just because you get a lot of stuffs done. Getting a lot of stuff done is being busy —activity. Productivity is about getting more of the right things done. Productivity is about getting closer to your goals one activity at a time. It is not being busy; busyness is the opposite of idleness. Productivity is measured in terms of results.
So here are some questions for you; in your business, are you getting the kind of results you want? In your life, are you getting the kind of results you want? In your finances, are you getting the kind of results you want? With your employees, are you getting the kind of results you want?
If your answer is yes, then you are productive. If no, then we are on the same level. 🙂
How To Boost Your Entrepreneurial Productivity
1. Clarify Your Goals
The first step to getting the kind of results you want is that you define what those results are clearly. The essence of work is to achieve results; we don’t work for nothing, right? So before you start working or doing anything at all, clarify what you want to achieve first.
Here’s an example, at the start of the year I set out with three simple words to guide my thoughts, actions and expectations throughout the year. I wrote about it here, Effective Planning For 2012: Why New Year Resolutions Fail And What To Do Instead. Those words were produce, promote, and prosper.
Meaning, I will do more —produce, market more —promote and sell more —prosper.
For each of these words I created specific goals and revisit them from time to time. How much of them I accomplish is the measure of my productivity or un-productivity this year.
2. Prioritize Your Goals
Now here is the tricky part for entrepreneurs, including me. You don’t find it hard to set goals, right? The hard part is making those goals your priority. Once goals are set, in your quest to achieve them, you get distracted. It happens to every human being, it’s normal. Life is complex, so we end up several times in places or activities we didn’t bargain for.
What is not normal is continuing on this path like nothing is wrong. What is not normal is not retracing your steps every time you get off course. Your goals are like compass, they exist to get you back on track. They are not just for fancy, they are reminders of what you ought to be doing and pointers of where you need to be heading.
So every time you stray off track, stop everything you are doing and get your priorities right. This means you have to periodically review your activities to know how aligned or how off track they are from your goals. Just going on and on without this periodic alignment checks is how to be unproductive.
3. Eliminate Distractions
In the business of life, distractions abound. Some are self imposed and some are unavoidable. In either case distractions are anything that takes your mind off working on your goals.
So how do you eliminate distractions?
- Focus on one task per time: multi-tasking is a myth. You cannot successfully do two things at the same time. At most, you will end up with an average result from each task. Or you end up with so many abandoned projects. When working on a goal, get it done before taking on another one. Just as the great Albert Einstein stated, genius is the ability to focus on one thing until completion.
- Watch less TV: I am often surprised when I see entrepreneurs watching TV like normal people do. You are not a worker that closes from work and relaxes with a TV. You are an entrepreneur; your working hours is not fixed. Now don’t get me wrong, I do watch TV, but only once or twice a week, mainly in the night during weekends. Not watching TV gives me more time to get some more work done. Make watching TV a reward you earn when you have achieved some specific results.
- Become less social: this is going to annoy someone somehow. The truth is this, as an entrepreneur your success is tied to results unlike an employee who might hide under the collective results of others. Keep less friends, party less, chat less, tweet less, facebook less, browse less. All these are what keep you away from doing what you ought to be doing. My being social online or offline is with my goal in mind. I have realized that the more results you achieve in life and in business, the more friends you attract. Unless you are into public relations, there is such a thing as being over social.
4. Buy More Time
Your productivity as an entrepreneur is largely determined by the use of your time and how much you achieve. But time is limited in supply. You don’t have more than 24 hours in a day and you need more time to get things done, right? So what do you do? You buy more time.
How?
Get productivity tools: this is very important for you as an entrepreneur. You need tools to get more work done.
My business is very dependent on content development — I create resources that help people, businesses and lives to grow. Meaning, a large part of productivity for me is how much creative writing I get done. Whether it is business proposals, plans or profile or contents for a website, brochure, book, article, training/course or speech, I am always writing.
So, I recently checked on my 3-word goals this year [produce, promote, prosper] and noticed how far away I was from the goal of produce –creating more contents. On further analysis, I noticed it was due to poor power supply. In Nigeria where I live currently, power is an issue and you need power to type. I have a generating set that produces my own power, but then there is the cost of fueling it.
To save cost of fuel, I started writing on paper and retyping later when I put on the generator. This meant I spent more time writing, one on paper and the second on laptop. That wasn’t productive at all. I needed to write as long as I could, saving as much as I could both in cash and in time.
So what did I do? I got an Android tablet PC [the alternative to iPad] that have more battery life than my laptop allowing me to type as long as 6 hours straight. Now when the generator is on, I charge it while working on the internet on my laptop. This is helping my goal of producing more contents this year.
Tools are great productivity boosters. Another tool I use to buy more time is my blackberry smart phone. Since power is an issue, with my blackberry smart phone I get all my internet tasks done while on the go. I get and send emails, twitter, facebook, linkedin, blogging and all of my online stuffs are done from my BB.
Lastly, as a business consultant, when working with clients it is important to note every detail as much as possible. In the past, I go about with a notepad for jotting down these details. But this didn’t help much as I often had to interrupt my clients asking them to repeat what they had said earlier so I could put it down on my notepad. I solved this problem with a productivity tool known as digital voice recorder.
With this, I simply got every detail of my meetings with clients on record instead of on paper. This allowed me more time to focus on what the clients were saying and helped me to better create solutions for them. And the beautiful part, clients can’t deny the said this or that because it is on tape!
Conclusion
Productivity is about how you maximize your scarce resources of time and money to get the results you want. Taking a very close look at the way you use your time and on what you spend your money will help you discover how productive or unproductive you are as an entrepreneur. Productive entrepreneurs use their time to achieve set goals and spend their money to buy leverage [productivity tools] to get more done with less time.
Your Turn
What is your biggest productivity challenge as an entrepreneur?
How have you been coping with this and what additional tips besides those above are you familiar with?
What other productivity tools do you leverage on to get more work done?
Hi Tito,
When I saw your email in my inbox, my first reaction was- Delete. Well, after opening it, I’m glad I didn’t.
Many people, including myself think that by having a 25/8 work week, rather than a 24/7 one, we would achieve more and be more productive. The truth is that can never happen. We’ve translated hardwork to be productivity when most times, we’re just being busy with activities (just like you said).
I believe that one major ingredient to productivity is time management and the key to managing our time effectively is to get tools that make us look……. lazy. These tools do what we should have done and all we have to do is enjoy the ride- like you using the digital recorder instead of writing down points on a notepad (it’s less work but more results).
As a freelance writer and Nigerian, power failure is not new to me. For three months, I also tried writing first on paper and then typing them on my laptop. The result was I got drained- physically 🙂
I thought getting a better mobile phone (Smart Phone) would counter-attack this, but my thumbs have started begging for retirement. Well, at least I don’t have to write on paper anymore :-). I think I might just adopt your solution.
“Effectiveness is doing the right things, efficiency is doing things right.”
– Peter Drucker.
Keep up the good work Tito, and keep the posts coming.
Lanre, thank you!
Awesome comment bro, awesome. I really like your intro, thanks for not deleting the mail. Some times, all it takes for a miracle to happen is a little leap of faith. You took one and the mail proved to be worthwhile.
The issue of productivity is a matter of effectiveness first before efficiency. You were so thoughtful by including the quote by Peter Drucker. This totally sums up the whole point of the article -productivity is not activity!
I can relate with your smart phone typing strategy. I have been there too, I found out just like you said, typing for long isn’t convenient. The keypad are so closely link that it makes the thumb seek retirement as you jokingly noted.
The Nigerian circumstance is a truly challenging one for we entrepreneurs. So much factors to contend with, but I am so glad when I hear from people like you who despite the odds, still find a way to get things done. Keep on keeping on bro, this is our life, we will make it COUNT!
If you have so many goals in life to achieve, its hard to achieve and you’ll become unproductive; its good to start in one goal or two as long as you can handle the situation and focus on what you’re doing.
Its fine also to have varieties of goal goal provided that you’re holding different people and you’re just the seer and director.
Hello Marc,
The source of un-productivity is always having too much on your table, list or on your mind. Complexity or ambiguity just stifles productivity and creativity. I really believe the best advice is this – LESS is MORE!
Thank you for your comment.
Very good insights. I strongly agree with seeing less TV. Now I do not see TV at all, but when I was a teenager I wasted so much time playing video games and watching TV and this did not have any positive result in my life. It is crucial to be aware at every second of our life of what we are doing. It is surprising how often we spend hours doing nothing and it takes us a long time to even think about what we are doing (it often happens watching TV or when we do things that put us in passive mode).
However, and you were expecting some discussing over this issue, I disagree about being less social. I would rather say be “smartly social”. Being social is crucial for any entrepreneur, we need to understand the needs of the people, their perceptions, we need also to relax and have fun instead of just focus on results or productivity. There are times in which the best ideas come from a social moment drinking a coffee with a friend or doing sports with some friends. I think the point is being “smartly social”. I would say keep chatting, observing, listening… but be aware that although all people are equally important not all of them are going to lead you to better results and performance in life. Be natural, be yourself and have fun with all your friends, but spend more time and discuss more with those you think you can learn more from.
Great Juan, absolutely loving your view point here, wow!
Precisely what I had in mind when writing that. ‘Being less social’ is what you just redefined as ‘being smartly social’. The emphasis here is on the word, LESS. At our core, we are social beings, saying no to being social will not only be unproductive, but it will make us less human.
The point is simple, don’t be social for social sake. As an entrepreneur, play is work and work is play. If you must play, play with your senses turned on!
As you pointed, ideas come even from play. Just taking a coffee while hanging out. The problem is that a few people don’t carefully tap into this rare opportunities and end up being social for just socializing sake. To those ones out there, take heed!
Thank you Juan, for bringing on such a valid counter opinion. Much appreciated.
Hi Tito!
And i thought i was the most productive person in the room, it is hard wired in my brain that entrepreneurs are never lazy in nature. Apparently, i am proven wrong with this write up of yours! Yes, i think productivity is always a struggle between determining priorities. With a disorganize schedule, you would be pretty much going back and forth with your tasks, ergo, wasting your time and effort.
So what is the biggest productivity challenge? The classic one which is meeting the quota utilizing scarce resources. How am i coping? Prioritizing and determining which works best, consultation, and investing in productivity tools. Just about getting the right thing to make things work more efficiently. These are really smart advises Tito, keep pouring them out!:)
Hey Chris,
Thank you for the comment. It is true that as entrepreneurs the thought of being lazy or unproductive is hard to imagine considering that we never seem to have enough time on our hands. I understand the ever increasing challenge of achieving goals with scarce resources. This is the more reason why clarifying and prioritizing goals becomes our best bet for getting ahead.
Again Chris, thanks for the comment!
Awesome post! Wao really like this.
It really helps sharpen my understanding that socializing is a good thing but what makes it real good is when you do it right, that is, doing it with the right set of people, those who share the same vision as you do and those who make you better each time you are around them. One can actually be influenced by those around him because birds of the same feather flock together.
On the aspect of time management, i have personally realized that working with a team is a great way to achieve your result in no time. For instance, being a website developer, i used to handle a project up to three weeks even in a month. But when i started sharing such projects with my partners i couldn’t believe the amazing results i was getting because i get more jobs done in a short while even far better done with input from different expertise.
Thank you Malik,
The use of teams to strategically get things done is one other way of buying time. When you consider the fact that each team member you add has 24hours just as yourself, you begin to realize that you just got an extra time for yourself.
Thank you for this additional insight Malik. Very nice one!
this website is really rich. seriously, i’ve been seeing your unusual entrepreneur interviews once in a while but i’ve never really read any of the other content. for a young person you have a lot of good tips and information to give out.
Than you Jovie.
Appreciate the kind words. It’s good you decided to read other unusual articles 🙂