Productivity in business is one of the measures of success.

If you’re never being productive, then you’re never going to succeed – it’s that simple.

That’s why it is so important for you to ensure productivity every day that you run your business. Don’t get me wrong, we all have “slow days” and days when we can’t seem to finish a task… So it’s not as simple as it sounds.

There are times when the work continues to flow, but you can’t seem to get anything done in time… When this happens you feel more pressured, stressed and less productive… Which doesn’t help anyone.

 

Here are some ways to boost productivity you can try:

A Priority List

List down the things you have to do based on their importance and urgency.

Doing this enables you to prioritize tasks, so you can start with the most important task and work your way down to the least important.

This will allow you to will have a smoother work process that will lessen the overwhelming feeling of too much to do yet so little time.

Remember that failing to prioritize and schedule your work can gravely affect your productivity.

 

Limit the Time You Spend on a Task

If you give yourself an unlimited number of hours to work on a task, you’ll probably end up procrastinating and not doing the task assigned to you.

Setting a time limit on a task makes you focus on that task more, and urge you to finish it quickly.

You can then move onto another task and another, thus making you more productive. However, make sure that you use a timer.

According to research done by This vs That, only 17% of people can accurately estimate time. There are timers available online to help you track the time you spend on a task.

Alternatively, you can get a physical ‘egg timer’ from most supermarkets, and set it to the time you want to allocate.

 

No Multitasking

Whenever you multitask, you feel busy and we tend to see being “busy” as being productive. But that is not the actual case.

When you multitask, you end up doing things ‘half-baked’ and usually don’t finish them on time.

At the end of the day, you’ll feel tired from doing so much, but still feel unaccomplished (since you weren’t really able to finish all that much.)

 

Delegate Tasks

You don’t have to do everything yourself.

If you think you can no longer handle everything, find someone else capable enough to do it. Delegate tasks that an individual can do better than you (or even things you just plain don’t want to do.)

This could be copywriting, accounting, payroll or other tasks that require a special set of skills and qualifications that you don’t have… or tidying the workplace at the end of the day, sweeping sites, or doing bids and quotes, that can quite frankly, be a bit boring, or an unnecessary use of your time.

That’s why you have a team. So you can all work together to get the job done.

 

Enhance the Skills of Your Employees

Boosting productivity is also about enhancing the skills of everyone in your team.

You need to spend time training and equipping your employees with the right skills and abilities they need to complete their jobs.

A lot of builders and trades businesses ignore this aspect because training employees take time, but they often don’t realize how important this is.

Remember, the more trained and skilled your employees are, the higher the productivity of your business.

Because they are able to do more.

 

Take Breaks

Working yourself too many causes exhaustion physically and mentally.

When you’re tired, you aren’t able to do much of anything.

It’s important to take regular breaks to calm yourself down and clear your head.

Sometimes, you’ll figure out a solution to a problem when you’re not stressing over that particular issue.

However, make sure that the breaks you take are scheduled.

Otherwise, “taking a break” might be just another phrase for procrastinating.

The rate of your productivity indicates how your business is doing.

Given this, make sure that you are aware of your own (as well as your team’s) productivity by monitoring and continuously improving it.

There are plenty of apps that can help you in tracking time and tasks to improve your productivity.

And remember… Work smarter, not harder.