Work life can often be an environment made of pressure. With the average day full of deadlines, a drive for advancement and iterating and improving on the go. Running a business? That my friend can so often be like diving head-first into a giant dish of pressure, where you are doing the above while delegating and managing. So, dear worker if you are getting to the end of the month, reflecting on the weeks that have gone and found yourself feeling like you are spinning your wheels more than you are driving forward it can be hard to keep motivated.
With this in mind, we have pulled together three areas to muse on, perfect for anyone who is looking to increase their productivity and get their workflow cranking. These three things come from former freelancers (come startup wranglers), productivity experts and a formerly burnt-out founder.
Get some help, get a virtual assistant
In his article "How to Train and Use a Virtual Assistant to Multiply Your Time", Richard Phu extolls the virtues of the virtual assistant. But he does not just leave it there. As we all know, any process or indeed team member is only as good as the thought, framework, and workflow that governs it. In his article, Richard covers everything from why you should focus down into the areas where you can achieve the most change and momentum, and then the why and how of hiring a V.A who will help.
Five tips for a productive workflow
I wrote this blog for the folks at GridAKL a while back, but I still stand by it. The piece covers five tips to help you move from feeling busy to being done. I drill down into some common big-picture issues people have that hamper productivity, such as an inability to say no to tasks. These things generally take a little more time to get working the way they should, which is why I also give you some practical stuff you can get going on now too. Think, a list of tools that can help you clarify and organise the tasks you are doing.
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Stop associating 'the grind' with good outcomes
There has been for some time an element of glamour surrounding 'the grind' aka the busy/pressure of startup culture. The same could be said for business people everywhere, and so it was somewhat shocking for Dustin Muskovitz to release a blog on work-life balance in 2015 saying that frankly, that approach was stupid. He went into this in more detail when speaking at Startup Grind in 2015; where he highlighted not taking breaks and lack of work-life balance to 'get the work out' may be the ultimate anti-productivity tip.