Powerful Ways to Get More Done In Your Business

Today I want to share with you two key strategies you can implement to get more done in your business and in your life. These are simple strategies I use to take some of the stress of running a business away.

There’s always so much discussion about detailed ‘how to’s’ when it comes to balancing your life, and business. And while these certainly hold some merit, I have found that doing simple things, every day make much more of a difference.

So here’s what I do….

Take Time Out

Taking time out in order to get more done kind of sounds counter productive right? This is certainly not the case.

Have a think for a minute about how much time you spend doing things – going a million miles an hour, working hard, feeling rushed in that constant state of ‘go, go, go’.

I know I’m guilty of this too. My toddler even said to me one day as I was rushing around the house ‘Mummy, are we running late?’ That was a huge wake up call. We were in such a constant state of rushing, so much so my three year old even noticed.

When I sat down and really thought about it I realised that while I was always ‘busy’ I wasn’t always productive. I wasn’t really always giving 100% because I rarely had 100% to give.

And that was because I never took time out to recharge.

I started off small, taking just an hour out to go and have a coffee on my own. I’d organise for someone to watch my son for an hour and I would head down to my favourite local cafe. I’d take either a notebook or a magazine, whatever I felt like that day.

For the first few times I didn’t actually stay for the whole hour, I felt too guilty. But after I saw the positive impact it had on my mindset I knew how important it was to keep going.

I’ve gradually increased the timeout I have to myself. At the start of the year, I even went away for a night with a gorgeous friend. It was amazing. We spent our time working on our Shining Life Workbooks, drinking wine and walking by the beach. Bliss. We even have another weekend away scheduled soon!

If you don’t already, start taking some time out for yourself. Give yourself a chance to recharge so you aren’t constantly running around working at a 70% capacity (that’s with coffee.. probably around 50% without). All it takes is half an hour to start.

Automation and Scheduling

Automation is honestly my business best friend. Want to know a secret? I haven’t touched Pinterest in over a month and it still accounts for around 50% of all of my blog traffic. I have over 600,000 impressions per month and I don’t do anything.

I’m not trying to say I never did anything and still got these results – I spent some time setting up my automation through BoardBooster but now I literally only ever open it up to add a new group board when I join one.

Pinterest isn’t the only social media I automate.

I use Buffer to automate my tweets – it has this fantastic extension for your browser that allows you to ‘buffer’ a retweet – which I love doing. I did use Hootsuite for a while but I do find Buffer to be so much easier to use.

As for Facebook I use a combination of Buffer, Facebook’s internal scheduling tool and organic posting each day. There’s a lot of debate over whether or not Facebook will restrict your reach due to using a third party scheduling tool but I can honestly say I haven’t noticed a consistent difference. The algorithms are so difficult to follow that I’d rather focusing on what’s easiest for me to use and what allows me to post when I want. As long as I’m posting organically as well, my reach seems to stay quite ‘stable’. (As stable as it can for Facebook anyway).

I use Later to schedule out my posts for Instagram. I usually spend just one day a week scheduling everything out so I don’t have to stress about finding what to post and when to post it.

The ability to automate and schedule means I have one less thing I need to think about during the day. I usually schedule a few days in advance. This means I know that no matter how swamped I get, there’s always posts going up on a regular basis.

The key is to make sure you do continue to converse with anyone who responds to you. You don’t just want to be a ‘broadcaster’ who is always talking about themselves. You want to make sure you engage with your audience and continue to give them value.

I honestly believe that if you implement these two strategies, you will be able to get more done in your business, you’ll be more consistent, less stressed and far more productive than you’ve ever been.