4 ways to be productive as your own boss

Setting out on your own as a business owner is a milestone moment and one that millions of people dream of as they work their 9-5 job for someone else. While our business-in-a-box mobile app business opportunity gives you a complete solution with all of the resources, tools and support you need to build a mobile app business, having to manage your time and get stuff done can be a big transition if you’re a first time entrepreneur.

When you’re ready to get stuck in, try these four tips to be productive as your own boss.

1.Find a system that works for you

Some people need calendars and to-do lists to get organised, others prefer paperless apps and project management tools. Finding a system that works for you may take a little trial and error but, once you hit on it, you’ll find that work flows much more easily, there’s less stress, less last minute panics and no missed deadlines.

Finding a system that works for you applies equally to your method of working as it does to organising your to-do lists and tasks. Consider when you work best and schedule your most important, most thought-intensive work for then. Do you fare better when you tick off a few easy jobs to make your day less cluttered and create time to focus on the harder stuff or do you prefer to get the big jobs done first?

Experiment with checking emails at set times of the day rather than having your inbox pinging and disturbing you all day long and you may well find that you get much more accomplished in a solid block.

2.Be strict with your time

When scheduling meetings, ask yourself if a full hour is really necessary. Can you plough through in 30 minutes instead? To be productive you need to ensure your time is being used as well as possible and that means being ruthless about what you do and don’t allow to eat into your day. Do you really need to travel to that meeting or, could you have the same conversation via video conference for example? If you can, you’ve cut out the unnecessary travel time and given yourself more room in your day to tick something else off your list.

3.Schedule breaks

This one sounds counter-intuitive but your brain can only focus for so long. So while you might feel that you should keep going to get more things done, you’d actually get them done quicker if you stopped and allowed yourself a short break before then focusing again for a set period of time.

4.Don’t over commit

If you schedule in as much as possible and over commit your time, you won’t get half as much done as you would with more careful management. Although a packed diary can make you feel that you are getting a lot done and being super productive, if those things don’t actually serve you or help you grow your business, that time isn’t productive, it’s actually wasted.