Our culture says that if you want to be successful, you have to work long hours. But is this the truth?
If you look at the people at the top of the business world, it certainly seems so. Top entrepreneurs tout the fact that they put in eighty to one-hundred-hour weeks as a matter of course. Some of that, though, is personal branding. When you explore the lives of CEOs and entrepreneurs, you soon find that they find plenty of opportunities for leisure, even during a regular working day.
Granted, a lot of people work long hours because they love what they do, but you don’t have to. If you want to spend more time outside of work, your goals should be to work smarter hours, not longer hours.
Things That Boost Your Productivity In Five Minutes Or Less
The first place to start is with the low-hanging fruit: things that you can do to increase the amount of work that you can get done in five minutes or less.
Here are some ideas:
- Wear headphones to signal to people that you’re busy
- Use noise-canceling headphones to prevent noises in the environment wrecking your flow
- Download apps that prevent distracting pop-ups
- Turn notifications off on your phone, or place the phone face down on your desk and put it on silent
- Set a timer for 20 to 30 minutes of uninterrupted work
- Put some greenery on your desk
- Take a break every hour for five minutes
- Declutter your desk
- Eat beans and whole grains for lunch to reduce sugar lows in the afternoon
- Regularly change your setting
- Create a to-do list and cross things off as you complete them
Long Hours Wreck Your Motivation
Implementing all of the above should improve your productivity levels, but they’re not the end of the story. Being productive is about more than switching off your phone and making your desk look pretty. It’s also about making sure that you’re motivated to succeed in the hours in which you do work.
According to Virtual Reception, a lot of small business owners find that they work long hours, not because they have loads of work, but because they don’t want to miss out on customer inquiries. All evening and weekend, they’re taking calls for clients and never get a proper chance to relax.
Fortunately, you don’t have to run your business this way. You can now hire virtual receptionists who handle customer inquiries out of hours, allowing you to get on and relax. Just tell them how you’d like them to answer the phone and the information they need to collect from clients, and they’ll get on with it.
Only Perform Tasks That You Alone Can Do. Delegate The Rest
A lot of entrepreneurs think that they have to take up the slack when demand for services picks up. This belief, however, is false. The role of the entrepreneur is to figure out what only they can do, and then just delegate the rest. Often, you’ll find that your employees are a lot more capable of making good decisions than you realize.
