Being Productive With Limited Time

Hey all. I hope you are having a great week and I'm excited to be back with you today for another episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast. Now today, I want to talk to you all about how to be productive with your limited time. I appreciate that we are all working from home at the moment. Things are pretty crazy and boundaries are probably getting blurred and we're probably working longer hours. So how do we make sure that we are super productive with our time? So that's the theme for today, and let's get on with the show. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob Da Costa. So the one thing that we all don't have enough of is time. Time is our most precious commodity and we need to make sure that we are using it in the most effective way. I know right now that it's pretty crazy. We're all working from home and our boundaries can get really blurred. And I think the consequence of that for me and for lots of people, is that we tend to work longer hours. But the question is, are we being really productive with our time or are we being busy fools? It's interesting. Many years ago I wrote a blog post called Being a Busy fool, which is still on my website, and it is by far my most popular blog post in terms of sort of Google search rankings. And clearly that says something that a lot of people are searching on this concept of being a busy fool and they want to find ways of being more productive with their time. So that's what I want to talk about today. And specifically, I want to share with you six kind of strategies or tips that I use myself, that I talk to my clients about, and they're really pragmatic things that you can start implementing in your working day to make sure that you are productive as possible. And of course, if you do have a team, please feel free to share this podcast ideally, and certainly share some of these tips with your team members to help them be as productive as possible. So, as I say, it's crazy right now we're working longer hours and that means that our boundaries can get really blurred. So the first tip I want to share with you is to get really clear boundaries in your working day. I think what happens is we sort of fall out of bed and we fall into our office, we start working, we probably spend a bit of time cleaning our emails or faffing around on social media, and then our day starts and then maybe we don't have a lunch break and we continue Working at our desk. And the day fizzles out towards the end of the day when you're absolutely exhausted and you probably need to go and cook dinner or your dinner's ready. So we need to get really clear boundaries. So I would say that you need to make sure that you have a sense of arriving at work and leaving work in the evening. Now, if you're fortunate enough to have an office at home like I do, then, you know, that can literally mean closing the door, opening the door, shutting down your computer, booting up your computer, and get into a real habit of that sense. I also think we should still be dressing for work. In other words, not ideally spending our day in our PJs, but at least putting on jeans and a T shirt so that we are going to work. And like I said, we have that sense of starting your day and ending your day. So that's the first tip, really. Close your door. Close your computer. Open your computer at the beginning of the day. It's sort of an obvious thing, right? But sometimes we just need to hear these things being said out loud to remind ourselves that actually, you know, we didn't really finish our day, just sort of fizzled out. And you don't really get a good sense of accomplishment if that's how you end or start your days. I really think it's a good idea to have a clear desk policy because. And a clear mind policy. If we have a clear desk policy, then that is part of our ending the day. Clearing our desk, shutting our computer down, so that when we start our day the next day, we start with a clear desk, like a clear mind, as opposed to just papers lying around everywhere. Your computer open, with loads of screens open, and you sort of try and pick up where you left off. That is not a good way of having clear boundaries. So I guess the second tip associated with this would be to try and have a clear desk policy. I know personally that I feel so much better when I arrive at my desk and it's nice and clean and I boot my computer up and there's no, there's not loads of apps already open and running. So I try to make sure that I have a clear desk policy. Tidy up. It's part of the end ritual of the day. And that kind of nicely moves me on to the second point, which I am a big fan of, and that is having a morning and evening ritual. Now, this is something I've borrowed from Michael Hyatt and his book Free to Focus, which I'm always plugging. I'M not an affiliate or I don't get any commission. I just think it's a good, useful book. So the concept of a morning and evening ritual really ties into the boundaries part. So basically all it says is that I'm going to start my day in exactly the same way every day, and I'm going to finish my day in exactly the same way every day. And that is the concept of a morning ritual. So for me, number one is, is to make a cup of coffee and I can't start my day without it. So I know that's the first thing and it's almost like the trigger point to say my day starting. So I make a cup of coffee. The second thing in my morning ritual is to go through my emails and try and delete as many emails as I can, flag those that need answering. And if there's any big things that come in, make sure I'm scheduling them in my day. So after cleaning my emails, I then sit down and I schedule my day. I use a tool called Marvin for scheduling, but you can use a sheet of paper, a diary, Filofax if you want, or whatever your preferred app is. But make sure you're scheduling your day and you know any of the emails come in may have some impact in that. Now, when you're scheduling your day, you need to overestimate how long tasks will take so that you win back time. And most importantly, you tick everything off your to do list for the day. Don't just make a massive long list that never gets any shorter. So after, after having a coffee, cleaning my emails and scheduling my day, I then just focus on the first task in my day. And that is my morning ritual, pure and simply. When I schedule my day, I schedule it to the nearest half an hour. And like I say, I overestimate because my goal every single day, which I mostly achieve, is to tick every single task off my list. I'm not one of those people that creates a to do list that ticks one task off, adds two tasks on. That is not the right way to do it. So if you've got new tasks coming in during the day, you're better off thinking when you need to schedule them. And if it absolutely has to be done today, what task in today's schedule are you going to defer to tomorrow or the next day or delete altogether? So that's my morning ritual then my evening ritual looks very similar to that. I'll check my emails again. I will try and get my inbox down to zero. I will Flag any emails up that I need to address and I will sit down and schedule tomorrow based on that. And then obviously in the morning, I'm going to do the same thing again. And then most importantly, I close all my apps and I shut my computer down. So that is quite simply my email ritual. Both of them I schedule half an hour for, and yours will be similar, but probably different. But the key thing here is that every day I sit at my desk, I know exactly how my day is going to start. And I feel like I have some control over my day because I've just invested half an hour strategically looking at my day, which of course is exactly the same way we need to approach our business as opposed to just sitting down and going, okay, what's the priority? What's the big thing that's shouting at me? What shall I do today? And it's really interesting that I can have two days that are exactly the same. I do exactly the same task, I achieve exactly the same outcomes. But the first day I've sat down and scheduled my day. And at the end of the day I feel accomplished, I feel like I've moved forward, I feel like I've done everything I needed to do. And the second version of that is I don't schedule my day. I just sit down and get on with things. And at the end of the day, I don't feel a sense of accomplishment. I have this nagging doubt that there's something I missed. And I'm not really sure whether I'm moving forward or not or just sort of firefighting, getting things done. So it's really important from a psychological perspective that you plan your day as well. So that's my second point, which is all about having morning and evening rituals. And the third thing is kind of digging a bit deeper into that so we can allocate our time across three pots. And I've spoken about this many times before, but it definitely fits in how to be productive with your limited time. And those three pots are strategy, revenue and admin. And it doesn't matter what you do, it doesn't matter whether you do your web designer, whether you run a PR company, a content marketing agency, SEO, all of this applies. And it also doesn't matter whether you're a one man band or a 30 man agency. All of this applies to both you and other people. So let me just quickly tell you what those three pots mean so that it's a refresher for you if you don't already know or you can start thinking this way. So first of all, let's start with revenue. And revenue is every single task that I'm doing that is earning me money this month or this quarter. So these are projects that you have on your on the go. This is client work that you have deadlines for and so on. So that's revenue, that's money today, which is a great definition for it. The second part is strategy, and this is money tomorrow. So this is everything you're going to do that's going to help you and your agency earn money in the future. So this will be business development, marketing, writing proposals, going to pitch when we're allowed to do it, networking, all that kind of stuff. So everything that's going to create opportunities for you in the future. So that's strategy, money tomorrow. And then the last task is admin. And these all the things that you need to do to keep your agency running. So this would be doing all of your hr, managing your team, recruitment, finance, invoicing, credit control, all of those really important things, implementing new systems and so on. All those really important things that keep your agency going, but is a cost to your agency. So that's a quick definition of those three pots. Now, when we're scheduling our time, we need to get a balance across all three. Because if you think about the agency that's just focused on delivering great client work and has no time to work on strategy, that is the future of their agency, then what do they look like? They look like an agency that is going to be really busy right now and then everything's going to fall off a cliff because they don't have a lot of opportunities in their pipeline because they haven't focused enough attention on that. Similarly, if you've got an agency that's really focused on strategy, then they may well have a really full pipeline for the future, but they're going to have massive cash flow issues in the short term because they don't have a lot of client work on their books. And lastly, if you get. If you're so busy with those two areas and you don't focus on admin, then again, you're going to have cash flow issues because you're not invoicing, you're not doing credit control, your business is going to fall off a cliff and it's going to be a mess and it's going to be really difficult and costly to sort out that mess. So the key here is that we have to get the balance of our time across revenue, strategy and admin. Right? And there's an exercise that you can do to track your time over a couple of weeks to work out how you do that. And I'll put a link to this free tool that I have for time tracking that you can use. But otherwise, you just simply need to think of it this way. Roughly speaking, we should aim to be spending, let's say, 60% of our time in revenue, 30% of our time in strategy, and 10% of our time in admin. That is really, roughly speaking. So 60% delivering client work, 30% working on the future of our agencies. That's about a day and a half a week, and then only 10% working on admin, which is a half a day a week, assuming you work five days a week. So what's your split and how are you making sure that you get that balance right? So there's this concept of a contextual diary, and I'll put a link to an ebook that I have that explains this in more detail, all about managing your time. But there's a concept of a contextual diary where you can overlay strategy, revenue and admin into your diary. So you can sort of say, well, Monday mornings and Friday afternoons I'm going to focus on strategy, because typically I don't have client work. Then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is client time and then Friday morning is admin. And obviously you have to be flexible with that. But the concept of a contextual diary ensures that you are spending enough time in those three areas. So that's the third tip, which is allocating your time across strategy, revenue and admin and making sure that you get a balance right so that you're focusing on delivering great client work today, having enough new business in the pipeline for the future, and that you are focused on running your agency efficiently so that you don't kind of creak at the edges and fall down. The fourth area I want to talk about is the concept of a notional hourly rate. Now, if you know me, you know I never want you to be selling hours to clients, but that's not what I'm talking about here. You should definitely do value pricing and value selling to clients, which is a different topic. And I've done podcasts about that before and also written about it. But the concept of a notional hour rate is really simple and this is a really good way for you to consider whether you should be doing a task or not. So let's say that notionally an hour of your time is worth £150. Then the question you want to be asking yourself with all the tasks that you do is Is this task worth £150 or more, or is it less than £150? And if the answer is no, actually it's less than £150, you have to ask yourself, why are you doing it? And you should probably be delegating this to somebody else. So I use this as a really kind of quick check for myself when I'm doing something to say, should I be doing this, or should somebody else be doing this, or should I not be doing it at all? So if you can delegate, like, I have a VA that works with me and I try to delegate as much as I possibly can to her. I have an accountant and some other people. But you might have a team, you might have some freelancers that you can use and just think to yourself, should I be doing this or should I be delegating? Because if you're doing work that's worth £50 an hour instead of 150, then that probably means it's stopping you doing some work that's worth £150 or more, and that often, often looks like strategy work. So just ask yourself, use this concept for notional hourly rate, and ask yourself whether you are working at that or higher or below it. That's tip number four. Then tip number five, which kind of follows on really nicely from this, is the concept of the 4DS, which is not my concept, but I really like it. And the 4ds stand for ditch it, delegate it, defer it, or do it. So with every task, especially one that's less than £150, that notional hourly rate, you should be saying, right, can I ditch this task? Is it something that I really need to do? Or is someone just copying me in for information? And it's not something I need to do? And if the answer is yes, then obviously you ditch it. And if the answer is no, you then say, okay, can I delegate this to somebody else? And you mustn't kid yourself here. Don't tell yourself, well, I could, but I haven't got time or they won't do it as well as me. Those are not good reasons not to delegate. Those are reasons why you should delegate so that people learn and they get trained. So the second point here is, the second D is, can I delegate it? And if the answer is yes, then spend the time delegating effectively. And if the answer is no, then you need to move on to the third D, which is, can I defer it? In other words, can I do this at a later date? Or does it really have to be now. And if the answer is yes, I can defer it, then schedule it in your diary. If the answer is no, I can't defer it, then that leaves you onto the fourth D, which is okay, I have to do it. So then you can schedule it for today, but you need to really quickly run through the four Ds with all of your tasks. Now I've added in a fifth element or a fifth dimension to the 4ds, which is automate it. Because there's so many great apps and technology and useful productivity tools, that means sometimes we can actually get more efficient by automation. Automation such as email marketing systems, which can automate so many aspects of email marketing and so on. So that's the four Ds plus automate. So you have your notional hourly rate. Then you quickly run the 4Ds against that task. And then the last thing I want to talk about, tip number six, which will really keep you on the straight and narrow and make sure that you are moving forwards and not going rounds in circles, is the importance of having a plan. And I appreciate that it's pretty difficult to plan at the moment, but we should still be spending some of our strategy time planning for the future. And I recommend that you have a one year plan. You break that one year plan down into quarterly plans, you break your quarterly plan down into monthly plans, and then you break your monthly plans into weekly plans which you put into your diary. And if you have a management meeting, which I really suggest you do, then you use your monthly plan as the basis for the conversations in that management meeting to ensure that you are all thinking strategically and that you're not diving into an operational discussion in a monthly management meeting, which shouldn't be about client X needs this, but should be about how are we moving our agency forward. So I'm not going to go into details now, but contact me if you want some templates around this. But again, have a plan for the year, break that yearly plan into quarters, make sure that the quarterly plan is really clear about what you're doing, the objective, make sure it's smart and who's owning it. And then take that quarterly plan and say, okay, from the quarterly plan, which aspects of this are we doing this month? And then have a monthly plan. And a monthly plan is fundamentally a to do list for your business. And then take the monthly plan, turn it into a weekly plan and diarize those activities. So really important that even if you're a one man band like I am, you still want to be doing this because it's really good practice and you will get a sense that your agency is moving forward rather than just going around in circles and kind of bashing your head against a brick wall and lurching from one crisis to another based on he who shouts loudest. That will not give you a sense of satisfaction. That will not help you feel like your agency is moving forward in any way. So having a plan is absolutely crucial. Okay, so there we go. So that's my six tips that I wanted to talk to you about, just as a quick recap. They are making sure that you get really clear boundaries about when you're at work and when you're not working. This is particularly true whilst a lot of us are working from home and having that clear desk policy so that you start and finish your day in the same way. And that moves us on to tip two, which is having a morning and evening ritual. So you start and end your day in exactly the same way every day, which full stops your day. The third area is talking about how you can break your time into strategy, revenue, admin, and making sure that you are getting the balance of your time across those three areas right for you. Then I talked about the concept of a notional hourly rate. This idea of are you doing tasks at or higher than the hourly rate or are you doing it lower? Then I Talked about the four Ds of ditch it, delegate it, defer it, do it and I added in, automate it. And then lastly I've talked about the importance of having a plan for the year, a quarter a month, and then diarizing the weekly plan. So I hope that makes sense. I kind of rabbeted through lot of content in a short period of time, but I wanted to give you some really practical ideas on how to make sure that you are being as productive as possible with your time. As some of you will know, I've been doing some research with my clients at the moment and the thing that they tell me over and over again is that time is their most valued commodity and it's the thing they don't have enough of. So these productivity tips should help you get efficient with your time and use it in in the most smart, sensible way. So hope you found that useful as ever. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast, please share it with your colleagues and if you enjoy it, I would love you to leave me a review because it really helps the search rankings find me and I will look forward to seeing you next week.