As a business owner, you're constantly looking for new ways to improve your productivity. Not only do you need to stay on top of your daily tasks, but you also have the added pressures of running a successful company. Finding time and energy to complete all that needs doing can be tricky--but organizing and managing both your workday and projects more efficiently can help maximize productivity.

In this blog post, Lance Dunn shared easy-to-implement strategies for improving productivity so that you can take full advantage of the time available in order to achieve better results!

Focusing On What Matters

Lance is a residential Real Estate Agent and also helps people with light commercial properties. In the presentation above, Lance shared a productivity book called The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan. *Gary Keller is the founder of the Keller Williams Real Estate company.

The book is about focusing on what matters. It helps you figure out what things you need to do, what things you need to concentrate your efforts on so that you can grow your business. The book boils down to one central question. 

What's the ONE THING I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

Once you know the answer, you focus your efforts there. Focus your efforts where they’ll have the highest and best impact. And then it helps you avoid throwing good resources after bad. When you're focusing on the things that mater, it helps you keep your sanity. 

The 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle)

It is the principle that 80% of outputs are the result of 20% of inputs.

Examples:

• 80% of retail sales are produced by 20% of store brands.
• Knowing this information, if you are in a retail store business, you would want to focus what the 80% of you retail sales are and focus on those sales to generate higher sales.

• 80% of sales come from 20% of clients.

• Find out who is the 20% of your clients and service them with the most amount of attention.

• 80% of complaints are filed by 20% of customers.
• “When I used to work in the corporate world there were always clients who just were complete time wasters and I always wish that the company would just fire those clients. And now, as an independent contractor, I have the ability to do that and it absolutely saves me so much time that I don't need to be spending.”

• 20% of people in your life consume 80% of your time.
• This could be good or bad depending on who those people are.

• 20% of your habits create 80% of your productivity.
• This is an important one. Figure out what those habits are, focus on them and boost your productivity.

• 20% of the hours in your workday yield 80% of your your productivity.
• It's very universal. “ In sports I've heard that 80% of scoring is done by 20% of the players.

What It Does 

• Identify what works
• Get rid of what doesn't work
• Buy back your time
• Buy back your resources
• Buy back or re-allocate your costs (Ex. Keep the savings, or reallocate it to what is actually working. For example, if 80% of your revenue comes from new business, figure out what it is that you're doing to generate that new business and focus there.

The Focusing Question

What's the one thing that I can do such that by doing and it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

How Do You Do It?

• Buy your time back: Build a Bunker

• One of the ways that real estate agents have to generate their business is by prospecting, cold calling, talking to clients, networking, things like that. The problem with that is, it's so easy to be distracted. If you're working at home and you know you need 10 contacts in the next two hours, build a bunker. If your wife is home that day, tell her you are working and cannot be interrupted.
• The stronger you can build your bunker, the more you're gonna be able to focus on what it is that you're trying to work to accomplish.

• Multitasking is a myth

• Realize that multitasking is a myth. Studies have shown that when you are trying to multitask, what you're really doing is task switching. And anytime you've switched tasks, especially on high focused tasks, you really lose a lot of traction. If you get distracted, it can take you up to 30 minutes to get back into the groove of where you were before the distraction actually occurred.

• Myth: Willpower is on will-call

• Sometimes, people wait for inspiration or whatever it is that is gonna motivate them to get to work. That doesn't always work. Studies have shown that you have the most amount of willpower in the morning and it wanes during the day. So figure out when you are the most productive. Focus all of your highly productive tasks in that time.

Pitfalls

The Paradox of Choice

• There's a book called Paradox of Choice and it basically states that the more choices that we have, the more diminished our satisfaction is with our choice. 

Sunk Cost Fallacy

• This is why you should abandon things that aren't working immediately like projects, clients, and tasks. Sometimes, we have the tendency to say, “I've been working on it for so long, I'm almost to the finish line. If I just get there,  it'll make sense.” But really what happens is if you continue down that path, you use up the time and resources that could be used elsewhere for something that's gonna be way more productive.

Favorite Quotes

If you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them. 

• Ther are some tasks you don’t want to get rid of, but need to. Instead, focus your efforts where you will get the most amount of impact.
• Outsource things. If you hate doing accounting or maintaining a website, find an expert who can do them for you.

You can have reasons or results, but you can't have both.

• You can have the reason why you didn’t reach your revenue goal for that year or the you can have the result by getting rid of those reasons.

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