Becoming a productive entrepreneur: 4 principles to succeed!
In this article, you’ll discover tips for becoming a productive entrepreneur.
Some of the advice I will offer will be more relevant than others depending on your field of activity, your level of experience and your current skills.
But in this article, my goal is not just to give you some classic tips that you’ve already read or heard elsewhere.
I want to bring you a global vision that will not only improve your productivity as a business leader but also protect your health, your family and your well-being.
If these aspects are as important to you as the success of your business, I suggest you discover without further delay my advice to be a productive entrepreneur.
Here are my 4 tips on how to become a productive entrepreneur:
1 – Put your health first
2 – Organize your work by taking into account your chronotype, values and goals
3 – Invest in yourself
4 – Be original
1 – Put your health first
What is the point of giving everything to achieve your goals if you lose your most important resource, namely your health?
Working on your own is not easy and as an entrepreneur you are always on the front line and over time it can affect your ability to effectively manage stress.
As we know, poor stress management is negative for health. That’s why you need to pay close attention to four essential aspects of improving your well-being. These four factors are quality:
- of your diet
- of your sleep
- of your physical condition
- of the time you devote to yourself
What you eat, rest, sports and extra-professional activities are essential to protect your most important asset, that is, your physical and mental health.
Operational tip
To assess your current situation, I suggest the following exercise. Draw a circle and divide it into four quadrants by drawing a horizontal line and a vertical line.
Each dial represents one of the four previous factors. Imagine that this circle represents a wheel capable of turning perfectly if these 4 dials are well filled. If not, the wheel will spin less well or maybe it will not turn at all.
Now give yourself a score between 1 and 10 for your diet, sleep, fitness and time for yourself.
Be honest with yourself and write this number without criticizing yourself if your score is too low.
Now focus on your highest score and congratulate yourself!
Then go to the lowest score and now write 3 actions you can take to improve that score during the current week.
Then schedule these actions in your to-do list. If you don’t know how to do it, check out my article here on how to write an effective to-do list.
Finally, take action and compliment yourself again on the progress made. To reinforce this productive behavior, reward yourself with something that makes you really happy.
Do the same in all other situations where the score does not live up to your expectations. Over time, you will be able to protect your health, improve your well-being and have the energy to grow and prosper your business.
2 – Organize your work by taking into account your chronotype, values and goals
The chronotype is a kind of genetic predisposition according to which our physical and mental energies vary depending on the time of day.
As a result, our performance as an entrepreneur also varies during a working day.
This means that we are all different and that contrary to what you have already heard or read so far, getting up early is not effective advice for all.
If you are a business leader with a morning or at least intermediate chronotype, this is good advice. On the other hand, if you have a different chronotype, you will not perform at all in the morning and you will be more efficient in the afternoon and evening.
Once you have identified your chronotype, I advise you to define your most important values and your most important goals of the current year.
Then, you’ll schedule your tasks/actions in your to-do list if they allow you to respect your values and get closer to your goals.
How many tasks should you plan each day?
It all depends on your business but as a rule, I advise you to plan and execute your 3 most important tasks of the day first.
These are the tasks that will allow you to make further progress in achieving your goals.
If you don’t set up your most important actions of the day upstream, you may spend your time in less important or even unnecessary activities. And that’s something you want to avoid at all costs.
If you find yourself working all the time in the effort mode and you feel demotivated because your results are slow to come, several solutions are available to you.
This lack of motivational energy may depend on a lack of clarity about your deepest motivations.
Why do you want to achieve this goal?
What is the most important motivation?
This is one of the themes that is addressed in a coaching session.
It is also possible that you are facing a conflict of value, that is, that two energies are opposed because on the one hand acting allows you to satisfy a value but at the same time it does not respect another important value for you.
During a coaching session, one may have to clarify the priority of a person’s values.
Finally, you don’t move fast enough towards your goals because your strategy is not effective.
This may be related to personal beliefs, unproductive habits, or a lack of knowledge/skills to be filled.
Depending on each situation, we will have to do things differently.
Operational tip
In order to assess your current situation, I suggest that you do so.
Identify and prioritize what is most important to you in your life and set annual goals that are consistent with your values.
Identify times of the day when you experience greater physical and mental energy. Then plan and execute your most important actions of the day at these times.
These are the actions that will contribute the most to the realization of your projects.
At the end of the day, assess whether the actions taken have really brought you closer to your goals. If not, try other actions. If this is the case, spend more time on more effective actions.
If you find yourself procrastinating, try to understand why.
Are you a perfectionist?
Are you facing a fear?
Are you facing a lack of clarity about your motivations?
Are you having a conflict of values?
Then try to identify the problem and immediately test an easy-to-implement solution.
If the reasons are different, repeat the advice previously outlined in the first tip of this article and do your best.
3 – Invest in yourself
The development of your business is directly proportional to your own professional and personal development.
If you don’t spend some of your time, energy and money growing both mentally and in terms of your knowledge and skills, your business will not grow fully.
Your ability to challenge yourself and the choice to become more competent are essential to the success of your business.
What are you doing to strengthen your mind and abilities?
Are you constantly investing different resources to push your own limits or is that not something you’re used to?
How do you plan to grow your company if you don’t take care of the engine of that company, so yourself?
You can answer these questions objectively and try to do something to improve yourself.
But you can also start finding or inventing multiple excuses for not listening to this advice.
It’s up to you!
Your choice will make the difference between the success and defeat of your firm.
One of the most common excuses I often hear is I don’t have time, I’m too busy or worse I’ll do it tomorrow!
You know that with these excuses you will never do anything and yet you continue to live under the illusion that something will change tomorrow or next year or who knows when.
It all depends on you, you are the only one who can make the best choice for you and your company, for you and your current or future employees, for you and for your family, for you and for the people whose lives you will have a positive impact on.
Take the time you need and make the right choice, invest in yourself.
Operational tip
Write down on a sheet of paper what you need to do to:
- Strengthen your mind
- Develop new knowledge and skills directly related to your business
Prioritize these actions in order of importance. Don’t decide in accordance to what you think, believe or because of the influence of other people. On the other hand, prioritize your actions according to your goals.
Then, do something every day to develop yourself both psychologically and technically in your field of activity.
Don’t procrastinate or make excuses and instead take action quickly. Learn from your mistakes and congratulate yourself on your progress.
4 – Be original
Be original and not yet another copy. The world needs variety!
The best way to be original is to be yourself.
Don’t just do what’s expected in your field or look at your competitors.
Put your personality in your company by including your qualities as well as your flaws.
Doing this requires accepting you as you are because it is your uniqueness.
Don’t be falsely perfect but on the other hand be imperfectly true!
Your customers are tired of seeing the same standardized behaviors all the time.
Surprise them by offering them the best version of yourself while accepting what you enjoy less about yourself. On the other hand, be aware of these elements to turn your weaknesses into assets.
Finally remember that you can always improve yourself because again, it all depends on you!
Operational tip
Ask yourself the following questions:
What aspects of myself do I like the most and what can I do to strengthen them further?
What aspects of myself do I like least and what can I do to turn them into assets or improve them?
How can my uniqueness allow me to be original and innovative in my field of activity?
What are the fears that prevent me from taking action?
Answering these questions will allow you to start to become more original in order to be more fulfilled and maximize your chances of success.
Then take action and schedule your tasks in your to-do list. I advise you to take small actions every day in order to develop a new habit.
Conclusion on how to become a productive entrepreneur
This article on how to become a productive entrepreneur is over.
If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.
If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.
If you want to learn how to manage your time, I invite you to find out more about our online time management course.
If you enjoyed it, share it with your business friends, by email and on social media. If you want to improve your productivity as entrepreneur, you can take advantage of time management coaching and email us now via our contact form.
Read this article in other languages
Français : Devenir un entrepreneur productif : 4 principes pour réussir
Italiano: Diventare un imprenditore produttivo: 4 principi per avere successo