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5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Setting Deadlines

Setting and meeting your deadlines is a huge part of whether or not you are productive or not. Setting deadlines and achieving them is an art that you can learn with some patience and practice. However, common mistakes can quickly derail your productivity and leave you struggling to meet your deadlines. Here are five common mistakes you want to try to avoid when setting deadlines.

Not Writing the Deadline Down
It's no big secret, that what we don't see, we often forget. It is vital if you want to meet your deadlines, to write them down on a calendar or somewhere you can see them on a daily basis. If you have a lot of deadlines to meet, it will work well for you to have a big calendar where you can write down the deadline on the day it is due. It is essential if you want this to work that you have to review your calendar daily.

Failing to Research the Options
If you have a deadline, you need to research all of your options before you finalize it. For example, if you have a big work presentation, make sure you do your research before you tell your boss when you can make the presentation. You might think that it will take you no more than a week, but after researching the topic, you may realize that it will take you more than two weeks to be thoroughly prepared.

Setting Unrealistic Deadlines
While you may have a ton of motivation, if you set deadlines that are unrealistic, you’ll do nothing but stress yourself out. When you have plenty of time to complete a task, there will be no need to rush. You will never be able to accomplish any tasks successfully if you are always rushing to finish it.

Having Too Many Deadlines
If you find yourself too stressed out, it may be because you have too many deadlines looming. You may have to take a look at each of your deadlines and either choose a different deadline or see if you can delegate the task. It is just not feasible, long-term, to be an overachiever because it is just too stressful. Learn to keep your goals balanced and create realistic deadlines for them.

Lacking the Steps to Reach Your Deadline
Divide your project into smaller chunks and mark a new deadline for each smaller task until the final project is completed. Dividing projects into smaller, bite-sized pieces is a much more feasible way to keep your momentum going.

Setting deadlines is an essential aspect of life. Without them, we tend to procrastinate. Take these tips into consideration so you can start to meet your deadlines and increase your productivity.

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4 Reasons Why You Need to Utilize Time-Boxing to Improve Your Productivity

If you find it difficult to manage your time and get your tasks done during the day, you may need to start utilizing a time management technique known as time-boxing. Time-boxing requires you to allot chunks of time to each of your tasks. Once your allotted time for a task is up, then you need to move onto the next task. Here are four reasons why you need to utilize time-boxing if you want to become more productive.

To Prioritize Your Tasks More Effectively
If you have trouble prioritizing your tasks, then time-boxing is a technique you'll want to utilize. Time-boxing forces you to decide how you will spend your time. Since your tasks are contained and can't be done at the same time you have to choose which tasks have to be completed today versus tomorrow, or even in a week.

To Increase Your Focus
Part of being more productive is finding your focus. Time-boxing is a great way to increase your focus. When you permit yourself to work without interruption, great things can happen. Time-boxing allows you to settle into your work, approach a problem, hone your skills, practice your creative thinking, and get more done.

Know-How Much Time You’ve Spent on Something
Have you ever wondered how much time it took you to respond to your emails, write a blog post for your company, or to shop for your mom's birthday present? When you time-box your tasks, you not only create a finite set of tasks to accomplish within a specified period, but you also create a record of how you spent your time. This information can be beneficial if you need to enter detailed information into timesheets at work, or if you want to better manage your time in general.

Never Set a Deadline
Deadlines drive the very nature of time-boxing. You set a specific timeframe for completing a task or project as you go. If you have trouble setting deadlines for larger projects and tasks, you might want to start out small by time-boxing your daily tasks. This will give you more and more practice reaching your deadlines on a regular basis, eventually allowing you to translate this towards completing your more significant projects and tasks.

Learning how to utilize time-boxing to complete your tasks can help you significantly increase your productivity.

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3 Simple Ways to Use a Calendar to Increase Your Productivity

There has been plenty of discussion about how a calendar can fit into one's productivity system. The general rule is that you add scheduled appointments to your calendar, and your tasks should be placed into the task management system that you use. However, what often isn't discussed is precisely what appointments you should be putting in your calendar to maximize your time best and ensure you're staying productive. Here are the three types of appointments you should add to your schedule to create an effective productivity system.

General Appointments
These are the regular appointments that you may schedule throughout your week. These would be appointments for the doctor or business lunches. They are relatively general regarding defining an appointment, so they need to be treated as such. These kinds of appointments can be moved if needed, given enough notice is provided, and both parties can make it happen, though you should try to avoid moving them in most cases.

Self-Appointments
These are the appointments that you make with yourself. They can be in the form of blocks of time that you schedule so that you can work on projects and tasks without interruption. You can transfer these kinds of appointments, but it is more beneficial if you can try to create a framework so that they stay as static as possible.

You want to pick a time during the day when you can work in 90-minute intervals on a regular basis so you can create a habit and improve your productivity. Break up the time with breaks where nothing is set in stone. You might even want to take larger blocks and break them down into smaller chunks using The Pomodoro Technique so that you can move from task to task. You want to keep these time blocks nimble enough that you can move them to other hours of the day if needed.

Team Appointments
Team appointments are for when you need to bring a team together. The best way to get these scheduled is once you’ve already locked in the other two types of appointments on your calendar. While doing this can make it more difficult to plan these kinds of meetings, you can use tools like Doodle, Google Calendar or Tungle.me to pick optimal times where most of the team can be present.

When you can keep in mind the three types of appointments that you have at your disposal, your calendar will become a tremendous tool that will allow you to create time and space for yourself and improve your productivity.

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How Do I Focus

If you have ever worked for yourself or worked alone, you will at some time notice you lack focus.  The kids, the TV, Internet, and some times just the complete silence take you out of your prime zone. Maybe you are like me and you researchinate. (Procrastination masquerading as research.) But a the end of the day you get nothing done.

Well, I was feeling this way a few months ago.  That I can't focus feeling. You know the one where you stare at the screen for hours at a time and all you see is a blur.  I had a really big proposal to do, so it was important that I get focused.

I came across something called binaural beats.  "A binaural beat is an auditory illusion perceived when two different pure-tone sounds, are presented to a listener (Wikipedia)." In other words, the difference between to tones. The belief is that different frequencies excite different areas of the brain.  One frequency can affect focus, sleep, and even, dare I say it, sexually.

Being the skeptic, I looked up some binaural beats on YouTube, not anticipating anything would happen.  Boy was I wrong. Whether, this was psychosomatic or the science was real, I don't know. All I know, I had the best afternoon of concentrated work. My productivity has improved dramatically.

So the next time you want to get in the zone.  Find some binaural beat music.

 

Check out my Personal Beats Meditation - Here 

 

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How I Create a Music Bed (SoundTracks) for My Videos

A few days a go I was asked how do I create the soundtracks for my videos.  You know the music that you can hear underneath most of my videos.  Well, there are several ways. I am an accomplished musician with a ton of studio and music equipment at my disposal. So sometimes, I pull out my keyboard and I compose a tune to go along with my videos. But for most of my videos, I use an app called GarageBand.

GarageBand is an inexpensive app that in most cases comes with a new purchase of the Mac. In this video - I walk through how I put together my music bed and then how I place that in my videos.  As an added bonus, I also show some of the editing I do on my videos to make them pop.

https://youtu.be/1wkefXj2ng0

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Time to Clean

On my Mac - I have a small program that allows me to clean up extra added weight to my computer.  These are useless files and items cached in my browsers that make my computer slow. Extra language files and essentially a bunch of stuff that gets gathered while installing apps.

Every so often my computer will drop this reminder on my desktop.  It is a simple reminder but it has deep symbolism to business and to life.

Time to clean jrichardbyrd.com

Clean up the extraneous so that you can recover free space. Over the last few days I have been thinking about the margins in my life.

Now when I talk margin -- I am talking about a concept I learned from Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives, by Richard Swenson, M.D.  Dr. Swenson describes it like this:

[blockquote text="Margin is the space between our load and our limits. It is the amount allowed beyond that which is needed. It is something held in reserve for contingencies or unanticipated situations. Margin is the gap between rest and exhaustion, the space between breathing freely and suffocating. Margin is the opposite of overload. If we are overloaded we have no margin. Most people are not quite sure when they pass from margin to overload. Threshold points are not easily measurable and are also different for different people in different circumstances.

We don’t want to be under-achievers (heaven forbid!), so we fill our schedules uncritically. Options are as attractive as they are numerous, and we overbook. If we were equipped with a flashing light to indicate “100 percent full,” we could better gauge our capacities. But we don’t have such an indicator light, and we don’t know when we have overextended until we feel the pain.

As a result, many people commit to a 120 percent life and wonder why the burden feels so heavy. It is rare to see a life prescheduled to only 80 percent, leaving a margin for responding to the unexpected that God sends our way." text_color="" width="" line_height="undefined" background_color="" border_color="" show_quote_icon="no" quote_icon_color=""]

For me, I realized that I had not intentionally created margin in my life.  Nor had I created margin in my business. This means at any given time, I can work 9 weeks straight with no breaks and at times working 20 hours a day. I promise you this is not why I went into business for myself.

Well, this brings me back to the topic of this post.  In order to build some margin, I first have to free up disk space.  I started first by cleaning: my space, my environment, my files, my friends list, my social networks, who I hang out with, etc. Essentially, cleaning out any extraneous information, projects, or people that are weighing me down.

And, it started with the word NO!

For some other ways to create margin -- please check out this presentation summary by Michael Hyatt 

 

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I Declare Today a Me Day

I declare today a ME Day. I am sure you are asking yourself, "what in the world is a ME Day?" Well, let's start here. Most small business owners spend a lot of time taking care of others. I mean you have clients/customers and you have to bring in the money. You have to service your customer base. They are the most important to your bottom line. Right? Well I call a foul on that. Your success is just that, yours. You cannot fully give your best to your clients unless you have your ducks in a row.

If you are like me -- we spend so much time working for our clients that when we look around our own business is a mess. The website is out of date. We haven't adequately balanced our books. Most importantly we have not strategized and looked to our future. I understand -- been there myself. So I came up with something to help me along - and I hope it helps you as well. Here is what I do. I declare a ME DAY!!!!

While I try to schedule some Me time during my days -- I declare a day usually once a month to do nothing but work on my business. I schedule it on a work day and I make myself the client. If I have to, I sometimes pay myself my hourly rate for the day. Sounds crazy, but I want to eliminate any internal struggles I have with closing for a day to work on myself.

A Me day usually looks like this -
1. Website cleanup- I go through each website -- page by page and make changes or corrections. I check links. I use a free service (http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/). On a recent look, I found that my youtube url had been changed. On another occasion I found that a contact form didn't work. Potentially losing a ton of business.

2. Social Networks - I go through all of my social networks - making sure all of the branding is in place. Are they all using the right profile photo. Is my password folder up to date -- I use a plugin called (lastPass.com) to save all of my passwords. On some occasions these password get out of whack -this helps a lot to keep things in order.

3. Update Contacts and Emails - Over the years I have gotten much better at managing emails (check out http://PeggyDuncan.com, if you are serious about email overload) - But I have a lot of email accounts - so I have to run triage on them. I also input contacts using different devices and while they are all supposed to sync, many times I will get duplicates and need to cleanup my contacts.

4. Purchases/Funnel Procedures - I take a walk through my sales funnels, email lists, and e-commerce platforms. The goal is to make sure the process has no clogs in the pipes. I will sometimes purchase a product from myself. I want to know what my clients are experiencing.

5. Business and Financial Planning, and Calendaring -- My business Life blood is cash flow. I have to know when revenues are coming in versus expenses going out in order to survive. In many cases that requires precise planning on product launches, staffing, and projects. I sit with a huge calendar, a cup of coffee, spreadsheets, and a calculator. Plan Plan Plan.

6. Staff/Vendor Meetings -- I meet with my staff and my vendors -- This is where I ask what can I do to make life easier for them. Where am I in the middle, where am I out of my lane? These meetings have proven invaluable, especially as we have relaunched our brand. With my vendors, we discuss my calendar and where we can create business synergies, improve communication, and fine tune projects. I specifically do not talk about present projects during this time, because it will more than likely send one of us into "fireman mode", ie. putting out a fire. I only want to look at the future during these conversations.

There you have it -- this is My ME Day -- and I urge you to try it and then let me know below how it turned out for you. Also if you use something different, please post it below as well.

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Wealth Inequality – Perception vs Reality

Here is a video that discusses the inequality of wealth distribution in America. While the information in it is correct - it all depends on your perspective. There are two more unique things I want my readers to pay attention to in the videos -

1. The distance in the perceived, the ideal,  and reality. In the video it shows all three. In your business/ministry/ or life all three exist  --

2. It is a great use of story. We often talk from a branding and marketing point for view on how to tell a compelling story -- here is a great use of that.

Now take a look and see if you see these examples.

[youtube id="QPKKQnijnsM"]

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How to Refresh Your Social Networks in 5 Days – Day One

Any time of the year is a good time to look through and check over your social networks. For me, the beginning of the year is a logical time to rebrand and freshen up my social networks. What I'm looking for, is to see whether my profile picture, my bio, and or any of the information are correct. Is the branding message correct or have there been technological advances that require me to make changes in my strategy.

Your social networks, much like mine, have probably changed over the course of the year, and therefore need some refreshing. So I take this time to make sure, that all of my branding throughout my social networks are in line.

In this series, I will discuss and share with you the strategy that I use not just for myself, but for all of my clients.

Day One

Assessments

My first step every year and rebranding my social networks, is to first assess the networks. This requires going through and making sure that the network is a part of my customer demographics.

  1. Are my prime demographic still using this network? Has there been a major change in the networks technology? Has there been a major shift in how the network is being used by my demographic?
  2. Does the social network have the approved profile picture? Does this network have the approved bio or description? Is the profile fully completed? Is all the contact information correct? Are there any extras that can be added to this network that will make it better?
  3. This one is not a question but, more of a process. I change all of the passwords to all the social networks during this process as well.

Bonus: Is there a good quality call to action?

These are just some of the things that you should ask yourself when rebranding your social networks. Depending on which network you have, there may be other questions that you need to ask. But this is the process I start with whom ever I am in the rebranding process for my social networks.

I've also included, my social network rebranding worksheet, please feel free to download it . Just click the share button below -

[sociallocker] socialrebrandingassessment [/sociallocker]

As always if there are any additions that I missed, please feel free to add them in the comments below.

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Prioritize and Systemize: Or Why That Little “Unread” Number will Drive You Crazy

How often do you check your email? Every hour? Every few minutes? Or is it every time that little “unread” number pops up?
If you suffer from email overload, that little number can make you crazy – and plenty unproductive as well. But a little discipline and a good plan can help you tame your email and regain some of your sanity to boot.

Better Email Settings for a More Productive Work Day
First, do you really need to check your email every five minutes? That’s the default setting for a lot of email clients, but that kind of instant receipt is almost always unnecessary. A better idea is to set your email client to only grab email on demand, meaning if you don’t ask for your emails to be downloaded it won’t happen.

If you can’t (or won’t) rely on manual downloading of emails, at least turn off the “unread” notification. That way you won’t be tempted to rush off to read every email that comes in, even when you’re up to your eyeballs in a project.
Ideally, you want to limit checking of emails to three times per day: in the morning, in the afternoon, and at the end of the day. But here’s the thing – you have to “process” those emails at the same time. You can’t let them sit around to answer later, or that defeats the whole purpose.

mail-icon-117-messagesA Systematic Approach to Email Processing
What do you do when you open your email client? If you’re like most people, you browse the subjects, open the most interesting ones first, make a decision about what needs to happen with it, then move on to the next.
This is a serious waste of time because you end up opening, reading, and making decisions about the same emails again and again, every time you look at your inbox. There’s a better way.

David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done” recommends a triage approach to email that leaves your inbox empty every time you look at it. Here’s how it works.

For every email you open, immediately decide if it requires action or not. If not, either file it (if it contains information you might need later) or trash it. If the email requires action – whether it’s a to-do item for a project or simply needs an answer – you have three choices: do it now, do it later, or get someone else to do it.

If it’s going to take just a couple of minutes (i.e. you just need to write a two line response), then do it and trash the email. If it will take longer than that, add it to your to-do list for later, then trash the email. If you want someone else to do it, forward it to them.

No matter which choice you made, the email does not stay in your inbox. It’s either filed, done, or added to a to-do list (yours or someone else’s).

Do that for each email you receive, every time you open your inbox, and you’ll never again have to face the clutter of an overflowing inbox.

Will it take some time and discipline to build that habit? You bet, but the result – no more stressing over emails, and no more wasted time searching for an email you’ve read before but failed to act on – is well worth the time it will take to re-train your brain about email.