Running a business can keep you busy. Whether it is your full-time gig or a side hustle, it is important to keep organized and take steps to stay as productive as possible during working hours. This helps you save time, earn more, and have a more enjoyable entrepreneurship experience. I am always working on optimizing different parts of my online business, and found these five productivity hacks and tools help me earn as much as possible in as little time as possible.
Batch Production
Writing an article or recording a podcast takes me a certain amount of time that I can’t really change, but each time I sit down to create, I have a few setup tasks that always eat up my time. Getting in the groove, clearing distracting notifications and emails, plugging in and testing my microphone, and other tasks only take a minute or two, but over time the add up to more than a few minutes.
Batching your work into blocks can help you avoid the setup time, and you can create new efficiencies as well. I now record podcast episodes in a big block on Thursdays and do writing in the morning and web development in the afternoon to save time on setup. I also found this work style improves my productivity overall.
Outsourcing
Certain social media, image editing, and other tasks are both boring and a huge time suck from my schedule. Not only do they take a lot of time that does not directly earn me any money, but I also just don’t like doing them. I am not the biggest expert in graphics, so it takes a lot of time and I don’t end up with the best product either.
I found that outsourcing these types of tasks to other freelancers or even my own Philippines or India based virtual assistant saves me enough time that I earn more in total, even though I have some new outsourcing costs. This saves me time, increasing my overall productivity.
If you have monotonous, slow tasks that you can send to someone else, you may be surprised how much outsourcing improves your working hours.
IFTTT
You should never do a job or pay someone else to do a job that a computer can do just as well. Thanks to IFTTT, computers can do countless administrative tasks for you automatically for free.
I use IFTTT to automatically push new blog posts to social media, create a spreadsheet listing out client payments, text me when it is going to rain tomorrow, email me when a new job board posting matches my criteria, and much more.
IFTTT is free to use, and offers extended capabilities with the iOS and Android apps. You’ll save money and boost your productivity. What’s there not to love?
MeetEdgar
I already mentioned that I find some social media tasks are a bit monotonous and I outsource them. I have my virtual assistant take care of social media posts that need manual attention. For anything else, I just use Edgar.
Edgar is a web based application that you can use to build libraries of social media postings and automatically send them to your connected social accounts on a schedule. You can even turn on a feature to recycle some postings, like featured blog posts or interviews that you want to prominently display in your social channels.
Edgar costs $49 per month. Learn more or sign up at MeetEdgar.com.
A Reliable Scratchpad
Some online content creators swear by Evernote. Others are excited by Google’s new competing app, Google Keep. Others still love to use a pen and paper, and swear by Moleskin or other notebooks. I personally just like the built-in sticky notes applications on Mac or PC.
I have accounts at Evernote, Google Keep, and others, and see the immense value in them. There is no best tool for note taking and reminders. The key here is to find one that works well for you and stick with it.
How Do You Maximize Productivity?
Business owners of all types are always looking for methods to improve and enhance their business and productivity. What tricks, tips, and tools do you use to save time and earn more? Share with others in the comments.
