SHOW TRANSCRIPTION

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.