Personal Productivity - 5 Quick Tips

1. Communicate effectively: One of the most important skills for any business person is effective communication. When you are communicating with staff or clients, verbally or in writing, there are two vital Cs of communication that you should keep in mind; Clarity and Conciseness.

Be clear and use simple English to get to the message across. Stick to the purpose of your message. Do not get into elaborate long-winded explanations of what you need. Just by speaking clearly, concisely and checking that the person you are communicating with has understood what you have said, you can save precious time and increase everyones' personal productivity.

2. Schedule specific goals: When you are planning out the tasks for the day, get specific – for example, instead of "I’ll make sales calls in the morning” make it “I”ll call ten prospects before lunch today”. Instead of "Work on new site” make it "Complete and post five pages of content on the new site"

By becoming specific, you will stay on track and accomplish your tasks. On the other hand if “working on the new site” was the objective, you could do it for five minutes and cross it off your list, but would you have accomplished anything?

3. Take action: When you are confronted with a task, take action on it immediately - pay the bill, call the client, delegate the work, or remove it from your list. Any time you postpone taking action, you are inviting trouble. If out of the ten tasks for the day, you postpone three for no good reason – you are already starting out with a backlog the next day. Of course, there will be issues that you cannot resolve immediately and will need time for. But for those of a simple nature, waste no time.

4. Prioritize tasks: Write down a list of tasks to be done, ranking them on a scale of importance and begin working on them. By writing down your objectives, duties and activities, you make them more manageable and do-able. Prioritizing tasks will help you minimize stressful situations. Develop a routine that suits you - select a time of the day or week to get certain routine tasks accomplished such as answering email, replying to calls, completing paper work; and then stick to it.

5. Delegate tasks: This is one of the most important ways you can enhance your personal productivity. If your business is in the early growth stages, you will quickly feel overwhelmed with the amount of work involved. Learn to delegate responsibilities; don’t think you can do all the jobs yourself. If you have staff employed to help you, delegate some of the routine administrative tasks that do not need your constant supervision. If you are going it alone, take the help of a family member or hire a college student for a stipend to lessen your burden. In the early days, marketing and selling require a lot of attention. So focus on what is important to get your business going.

While there are tons of techniques that can improve personal productivity, these five tips are simple tools that can improve your efficiency and bring you positive results.