Time in a Bottle
How many times have you thought, if only I had more time? As John Doerr points out in his best-selling book, Measure What Matters, every time you elect to do one thing, you are simultaneously choosing not to do something else. For kitchen and bath showroom owners there may not be anything more important than choosing where you spend your time. How can you make the best decisions? Take five minutes every morning and write down everything that you are thinking about, advises Donna McGeorge author of The 1-Day Refund: Take Back Time, Spend it Wisely. Documenting what you are thinking about adds clarity to your day and lets you focus on the ideas and tasks that are most important.
Take advantage of your internal clock. There are certain times of the day when you are mentally sharper and more alert. For most people, this is the start of the day. That’s when you should perform the most mentally taxing tasks. For others who may be more productive at night, that’s when you should focus on the toughest things on your to-do list.
Prepare a daily to-do list for the next day before you leave the showroom. Identify both high- and low-priority tasks. Doing so helps prevent waking up in the middle of the night because you forgot about a presentation or a performance review that you have not prepared.
Take advantage of the Pomodoro Technique which has proven that you can increase productivity if you break your work into 25-minute segments separated by five-minute breaks. The reason why the Pomodoro Technique works is because it enables you to limit distractions, improve concentration, increase productivity and reduce the potential for burnout.
Similar to the Pomodoro Technique, limit all meetings to no more than 25 minutes. When there is a hard stop in a limited amount of time, you tend to get to the point much faster and avoid extraneous gab that takes you off topic.
These simple techniques can help improve your productivity and performance and just may possibly give you a free weekend every now and then.