This Little Trick Will Double Your Productivity ASAP
Hack your motivation.
Photo: Smith House Photo
If you are an entrepreneur, you likely spend your time feeling like a cocktail of inspired and deflated, generative and stuck, or focused and scattered. Sound about right? You may be familiar with the reality that being busy is different than being productive, yes? You want to work smarter, not harder.
So, whether you work for yourself at home in your sweatpants or are part of a high-profile startup hustle (or both!), here is a great way to maximize your productivity and clarity. Time batching. It’s an über-simple technique that can change the way you work. It can help you get more done by helping prevent you from spending twenty minutes deciding what to focus on!
Here are four easy steps to set yourself up for success.
“Time batching is an uber simple technique that can change the way you work.”
1. Time Batch
Sit down with your week’s commitments, deadlines, tasks, and errands. Use small pieces of paper, and write only one task per paper. Write down everything you can think of. No task is too small. Include everything that you want and need to have happen in your workweek. Once you’ve gathered them, sort them into these three popular categories of work themes (or, make up your own!):
Marketing & Managerial Mondays: This would include writing emails, scheduling meetings, all marketing and PR tasks, event planning, anything sales related, purchasing plane tickets, submitting applications to events and jobs, strategizing business development, continuing education, making phone calls, managing mailing lists, scheduling social media for the week, printing for the week, preping for clients and meetings.
Word & Website Wednesdays: Write blog posts and all content for the week, update classes and events on website, write and send newsletter, draft/complete all writing commitments, graphic design for all materials, track last week’s web analytics, reading and research for clients and obligations, create content on all upcoming projects, branding tweaks, anything that involves writing!
Financial & Follow-Up Fridays: Follow-up on all relationships, emails, projects, and events, tie up any loose ends before the weekend, send out thank-you cards, send invoices, accounting and book-keeping, track PayPal and bank accounts, log all tax-related expenses, pay quarterly estimated taxes, tally mileage from the week for deductions, manage investments and debt, pay credit card, deposit all checks.
2. Track It
Now that you have three thematic piles of work tasks, automate and log them. Apps are a great way to keep track of your to-do lists, and have them with you and synced throughout all devices. Create the three main lists (M, W, F) and then fill in all tasks from your paper piles. Once you’ve logged everything, look at each item and set deadlines for those that have them. Also, some things are one-offs, while others happen weekly. Set the appropriate repeat settings for weekly tasks.
3. Schedule Time Blocks
Schedule blocks of time to get your batches in. Most successful productivity experts agree that unless it’s on your calendar, it’s basically imaginary and it’s not happening! Ideally, find at least two to three-hour chunks when you can focus on one list. Some choose to batch every day, some prefer a few non-batch workdays. Your other days without time batching can be more organic, perhaps you take the day off, or you let your schedule be more fluid and muse-honoring.
4. Work It
When you sit down to start your batch session, review your list and pick the three most urgent and important tasks. Don’t get distracted by urgent things, important is the key word here. Begin with those. If you have a super-session and power through all three tasks, you can always revisit your list, or go do a handstand and call your mom. Regardless, the feeling of completing your focused three-task list will encourage continued focus wizardry on your next session.
Truth: A massive part of working with time batching is remembering something that is “off-topic” when you are in “batch mode” and adding it to the necessary list, instead of completely switching gears to blog your magical new matcha donut recipe when you should be updating spreadsheets. (Just make sure to post your matcha donut recipe, because that sounds delish.)
An original version of this article appeared Darling magazine, written by Abbi Miller.
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This story was originally published on April 22, 2018, and has since been updated.
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The 4 Ways To Use Snapchat For Your Brand
We promise that teenagers aren't the ONLY ones who use it.
Snapchat has been reserved for the millennial audience, and for a long time, it has made many businesses who's demo falls out of the 18-24-year-old range very skeptical about approaching one of the most popular social media channels known to man.
However, instead of shying away from Snapchat because you don't know where to start, or because you don't have a large following on there, you should be proactive in creating out-of-the-box content that not only will get your brand more followers but also get those followers to engage with you more.
If you don't know where to start or are looking to step up your Snapchat game, below are the three ways you can start using the platform to your advantage.
BEHIND THE SCENES ACCESS
If you create content for your blog or website, and your followers wait to see everything when you put your posts live, chances are they are interested in seeing what a day in the life is when you're creating content, especially if you are an influencer. Snapchat is made to give your audience a more candid and personable view of you and your brand, so when creating content, feel free to bring them along with you when at photo shoots, fun meetings, or events. Make sure to cross promote on your socials to let your followers know that they can have a behind-the-scenes view on your Snapchat as well. Not only will you see that your following will grow, but becoming much more personable brand will also grow followers' brand loyalty towards you.
GIVE FOLLOWERS ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE DEALS
Now that you have your followers on Instagram, reward them! If you are selling product or tickets for a special event, drop special discounts that can last as long as the Snapchat is live (24 hours). These can be exclusive to only your Snapchat followers, so always make sure to cross-promote from your other channels and drive them to follow you for access to those deals.
DROP SURPRISE GEOFILTERS
Snapchat now encourages you to create on-demand geofilters for any occasion, be it a birthday party, a concert, or any other special event. However, as a brand, you don't have to be limited to event geofilters. If you know the top cities and areas that you are most popular (be it a workplace, college campus, or shopping centers, etc.), feel free to drop geofilters that your audience can use as an option. They already use tons of filters to make their own content more dynamic, so why not give them a filter that is much more dedicated to them that they can use?
CREATE INTERACTIVE GEOFILTERS
Another element that you can add to surprise filters is making them interactive. Make sure to design your filters in a way that can engage people to use them, by adding a fill-in-the-blank element to it, or also creating graphics in the filter that the audience can interact with when creating a Snapchat.
Another great way to generate more engagement from your interactive geofilters is by holding scavenger hunts that will encourage your followers to travel to destinations close just to find those filters. They can win a prize by using the filter and screenshotting it to ensure that traveled to the location to win a prize. Not only is it fun, but it's a great way to tie in an IRL element to a digital activation.
How have you used Snapchat for your brand? Do you like these ideas, or do you think that your brand will start moving towards the popular app? If you like these or have any other ideas, please let us know below!
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