Be More Productive With One Easy Step

As a mompreneur, I can say for certain that one of my biggest problems is how to be more productive.

Does this sound familiar?

After dropping the girls off at school and setting up my 2 year old with a snack, I snag 20 minutes to try and get some work done. I have orders to fill, new charm beads to process and list, and emails to answer.

I answer two customer emails, then hop onto Facebook to make sure there are no questions there. I start to browse my newsfeed, checking in on friends and family.

Then I remember that I haven’t checked Twitter for a while, so I pop over there to make sure I don’t have tweets that I need to answer. While checking, I see a post on new postage rates for January, so I click the link and read about that (higher Priority Mail rates, oh joy!).

As I’m reading I realize that this could make a good blog post, so I bring up my WordPress dashboard and jot down a few notes about postage.

And then I feel a tug on my pants – the toddler’s done with his snack and is ready to play.

No orders filled, no beads listed.

This was how my days were going, and I was falling farther and farther behind.

I realized that I needed to come up with a way to be more productive. Checking social media and writing blog posts are important steps in my business marketing, but they can suck the time out of my day.

The One Simple Way To Be More Productive

You don’t need fancy equipment or a degree in SEO. Just a pen and paper.

Make a schedule!

That’s it! It’s so simple, yet it took me a long time to realize I had to do it.

My schedule is in a little notebook, which I actually keep by my bed. I sat down and thought about every day, what I absolutely had to do, and what I wanted to do but maybe couldn’t find the time.

I realized that to be more productive, I had to see my whole day at once. I scheduled everything – from school pick-ups to snacks and naps for my little guy. I scheduled my Zumba time, and even when I showered.

The result of being so anal precise was that I had a time to do everything, but I was also aware of when that time was up.

Do I follow it every day? No, because life happens. One of my girls gets sick, or I’m just wiped out – and the schedule gets a day off. But for most days, I do follow it. I know my schedule well enough now that I just look it over when I wake up in the morning, and I know what I need to do and when.

Here are some tips to be more productive with a schedule:

Use a pen and paper to write it down. Even if you type it up later, the act of writing it out will help imprint it into your brain.

Try to include everything. I know this sounds a little crazy, but writing down everything you do really lets you see the pockets of time you have during your day. It also helps you figure out how to streamline some things you do, so you can make room for other things.

Don’t freak out if you don’t follow it every day. Hey, we moms know that life doesn’t always go the way we want. Be prepared to scrap the schedule some days. It’s not a big deal, just try again tomorrow.

Be flexible. I had about three versions of my schedule before I was comfortable with it. Don’t be afraid to revise as many times as you need to. It has to work for it to be successful. If you schedule 20 minutes to make dinner, but it really takes you 40, then the schedule’s not working – change it!

Do you have any other tips to be more productive in your days? Do you have a schedule that you follow?