Christo: In today‘s episode, I want to share some tips around productivity and how we can
increase our productivity and a bit of a good old trap that we tend to fall into when it
comes to productivity, which is time. Now obviously, a lot of the marketing strategies we
use to help people, help businesses grow, well the fact is, they work, I believe there is
no shortage of knowledge around how to grow a business and how to successfully
improve the business, improve the bottom-line and improve the growth and the revenue
and all these figures. However, often the biggest enemy, the biggest challenge is time,
finding time to implement and finding time or making time in the week to make those
things done. Now, one of the common traps is the good old to-do list. The to-do list will
never ever go away, it will never-ever leave your side. So something to be aware of is
that, when it comes to a to-do list, these are the tips that I shared around productivity
which resulted in being featured on the channel 9 TV, the national TV throughout
Australia.
News:
Our next guest is setting goals for the new year could actually be counter-productive?
Business expert Christo Hall joining us now to explain. Christo, good to see you mate.
Now nice of a strategy to attempt to organise for the year ahead. But you say there are
some compelling resolutions. As you‘re doing this making a list of resolutions that it
could just do opposite for the year. Why is that?
Christo: Absolutely, can be counter-productive, absolutely…
Now, to-do list. First of all, a to-do list, a lot of the tasks that go on a to-do list, they don‘t
account for time. So you might have a big task, longer tasks and smaller tasks. We tend
to just miss mostly go for the shorter, quick tasks.
And number two, they don‘t account for productivity. So if you just have a mixed to-do
list, it‘s not going to account for what‘s going to be the most important things for you to
generate growth. It‘s going to be mixed up with all the lower priority things as well so we
definitely need to force time, make time to work on new proactive things so we‘re not
just doing the reactive things and wasting away our time.
Thirdly, they also contribute to stress. At so, stress can impact your operation,
obviously, when you‘ve got all these to-do list, these unfinished tasks floating around
forever and ever. They‘re going to be in your mind as like unfinished things that you
have to do in your mind which is going to impact obviously if you‘re overwhelmed in the
day and could even result in insomnia at night.
It can also lead to procrastination by looking over the tasks over and over and over
again. Another common thing that you‘ll see is you keep looking over the same tasks
over and over again so they cloud your mind. Those as looking at things, always the
goal should be to look at a task once or as few times as possible. So you look at the
task, you see it there, you either schedule a timing to do it if it‘s a big task or you do it on
the spot. Typically, I like to do say if it‘s about under 3 minutes, you do it immediately,
try and just touch it once or delegate it to someone else so you don‘t keep looking over
the same tasks over and over again.
Also, what will happen too, is it can squash your creativity. When it comes to being
creative, you need to have that presence, you need to have the space, the presence of
mind to be creative. When we‘re overloaded with too much to do, when we‘re feeling
overwhelmed, it‘s very hard to come up with creative, genius ideas. We‘re always
looking to come up with amazing, creative ideas for people that we‘re helping and even
in our own marketing campaigns for ourselves. When you‘re overwhelmed, as it is with
the team and also with myself of course, if you‘re overwhelmed, it‘s hard to come up
with these creative ideas. At least just block out the time where you have absolute
presence to allow the creativity to flow. A sort of fantastic quote which actually comes
from the book, The War of Art, not The Art of War, The War of Art which is a book
around how do you, kind of the internal battle what people have to continuously create
creative ideas and how we block ourselves from that and it said it was from a famous
author, there‘s a few famous authors who have been quoted for this phrase, so I‘m not
exactly sure on which one it is exactly. However, he said that, “I only write when the
creative, genius ideas flow. However, that just luckily that happens to be at 9am every
single day. Because it creates time to work on that and clear everything else out and
then the creativity will flow. For always just under the pressure of a to-do list, getting all
these things done, there‘s no kind of priority in there and it‘s hard to be creative. What
we want to do on the other hand with all of these things is, as I mentioned, you either
schedule a time to do it if it‘s a big task, you do it on the spot immediately to get rid of it
or you delegate the task or if it‘s something that keeps popping up on your to-do list
that‘s a common thing that we see just scrap it, maybe you can get rid of it or create
yourself a list, a to-do list which is called maybe later, it‘s the maybe later list that you
might get to do in some point in life. I have all these great ideas, all the time that it
almost pretty much just distracts me from what I‘m focusing on. So those great ideas,
those million dollar ideas, they are all in the maybe later list that I‘ll get to or I know
they‘re written down so I can leave it alone. I might never get to them and that‘s okay
but I‘ve moved them out of my day-today focus so I‘m not continually being distracted
by them.
Another common mistake we see people is making to-do list all over the place so if
you‘ve got to-do list on scraps of paper, on envelopes, on receipts, napkins and
everything around you, try and get one consolidated space where you have specific list
for a specific area. So you might have a home list. If you‘re buying a new toothbrush
that shouldn‘t be mixed up with, you know, writing your next best-selling novel. It needs
to be on a separate list. Have your productive, productivity, important business growth
list as a separate list and then you might have a bucket list and then you might have the
someday later, maybe later list which you created as well. So you don‘t want to be
having mixed list all over the place. The great programs that you can use is Wunderlist
is a great program that we use for ticking things off. If you‘re compiling information in
one separate digital notebooks, then Evernote is a fantastic program to use in that
setting as well. So and sometimes, you‘re creating too long list. Try and keep your list
achievable and then what we‘d like to do is you schedule your day so it‘s more like a
plan today rather than just random to-do task that we‘re ticking off because usually
people will always go for the quicker, easier or urgent tasks which aren‘t necessarily the
most important. Important might result in business growth. Urgent might mean going to
the shops to buy lunch or something‘s that‘s buying some milk for your cup of tea. You
need to basically think about the right areas, what‘s most important, create time for that.
A good tip that I like to do actually is keep the first hour of the day clear for working on
the highest priority tasks, that area is planned. What you‘re going to work on that move
result in business growth and your awareness for the business. So you‘re doing
proactive new things that are going to grow the business, not just being reactive. In that
first hour before you even open your email inbox because the email inbox can be a big
trap. You‘ve got all these unprioritized tasks with all different lengths and times and
importance. So make sure you do the business growth activities first then go on to doing
those tasks which is going to be a bit varying lengths. So I trust this has been very
beneficial to you today and please do share any of your own productivity tips or any
programs that you love to use in the comments here. Share this video of course with
anyone else who would benefit. I will look forward to seeing you in the future Basic
Bananas TV episode and also on the podcast. We‘ve got a lot of fantastic things
planned for the “Pick of the Bunch” Basic Bananas podcast radio. The whole schedule
for next year is being pre-written. It‘s going to be scheduled episodes working you
through all different specific marketing campaigns. It‘s going to be super cool. So make
sure you download the or subscribe, open the podcast app on your phone, subscribe to
– just type in Basic Bananas, you‘ll find “Pick of the Bunch” by Basic Bananas. Hit on the
show and you can hit subscribe and you‘ll get the brand new episodes loaded to your
phone every single week that you can listen to in your own time. We got a lot of gold
plan for that and of course on BBTV here as well. I look forward to seeing you on future
episodes and interacting with you on the comments. Bye for now.