Ryan Dohrn shares three work-from-home fixes: use your phone's Reminders app instead of paper lists, set a 25-minute timer for focused work, and close your email inbox while working. Brief email checks kill productivity by pulling you back in for hours.
Hey friends, Ryan Dohrn here, your sales coach, answering your questions. Send them to me at ryan@ryandohrn.com. All right, next question, Bonnie from Phoenix. Hey Bonnie. Ryan, any time management advice for working from home? I feel like I end the day and got absolutely nothing done. Bonnie, great question. Happens to all of us. One of the things that I do is I use this little device here to keep up with everything. A lot of you, what you do is you write out a handwritten to-do list. Well, unfortunately, that to-do list, unlike your phone, doesn't go with you to the beach, to the bus, you know, to the bathroom, to your bed, and the other bees that are out there. I mean, it goes with you everywhere. So this little device is what I use to keep up with all of my tasks. Built into the iPhone iOS is a little app called Reminders. There's a bunch of them that are in the App Store or Google Play or wherever you get Your various apps. This is where I keep up with everything. Now, from a time management perspective, what I do is I take this little phone, and if I'm going to be working on something, what I do is I go over to my timer, and then I'm going to set myself a timer. So I'm going to say, well, I have— I'm going to dedicate 25 minutes to starting this process. And I take this time clock and I set it right next to me, right next to my computer. And then as this little clock is ticking, it reminds me of the various things I need to do and stay on task. Now, one of the things that— one of the greatest crashes, if you will, to time management is being distracted by your inbox. So typically, a 2-minute distraction from just a simple answering an email can take you 30 minutes to reengage. So when you start on a task, I would encourage you to close your email because maybe you just can't handle that distraction. So make sure you set some time limits for yourself. Put your to-do list inside of your phone, and then do your best to shut off your email so you can stay really, really focused. All right, Bonnie, enjoy the weather out there in Phoenix. Friends, if I could answer your questions, send them over to me, ryan@ryandohrn.com. Remember, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. So we're either crazy or we found a career that will feed our families for a lifetime. All right, friends, we'll see you next time.
