Productivity is one of the pillars of running a good business and can be the crucial difference between success and failure. Ensuring that your small business is running productively and efficiently can be difficult, particularly when you’re first starting as you’re trying to establish the working space, the business and client relationships as well as your services. So, how can you get the various cogs of your business to turn in productivity unison?

Saying No

When building a small business, building up client work and relationships is a big part of your SME’s growth. However, sometimes you can get caught up in projects, ideas and opportunities that aren’t as beneficial to your business as you’d like them to be. It’s important to know the difference between a project that can better your business and one that is ultimately a waste of precious time, resources and productivity. By being selective, you can ensure that your business continues to grow and thrive as well as getting involved in great opportunities that also improve your business.

Task and Time Management

Having effective time and task management is crucial to ensure productivity. Spending vast amounts of time on one task happens to everyone, sometimes the task isn’t as beneficial as you think it is and before you know it, you’ve put in time and effort and it’s being wasted, it's also important to know not only when to move onto the next task but also the order of priority that your tasks sit in. Completing tasks is great, but if you’ve completed three lesser priority tasks while avoiding one high priority task, this may be a problem.

There are multiple apps and management systems like Asana, Toggl, Trello, Workflow etc. that streamline time and task management, order your tasks under different priorities and are designed to increase productivity. These programs or systems are often implemented company-wide in many small businesses and used as a work process. Even a simple notebook is perfect for those productive task to-do lists.

Information

Information is crucial, without the correct information it can be nearly impossible to do our jobs. We can find ourselves having to put tasks or jobs on hold due to the lack of required information. Which is why to increase productivity, your team should have all of the information that they require. This speeds up completion times of all tasks as by being able to use and utilise all the information required, your team come across fewer blockers when working through tasks and can cut down on delays that your team may be experiencing.

Looking for notebooks to get those productive to-do list started? At My Own Stationery, we offer hardback, twin wire and refill notebooks which are fully customisable with our bespoke custom builder. You can use our templates or create your own! For more info, get in touch.