How to stay productive during the busy Christmas period

Staying productive when you have a lot to do is easier said than done, but it is possible to swat away those feelings of overwhelm and approach your task list with a strategy that prioritises getting stuff done, rather than stressing about the sheer volume of work you still need to accomplish. 

Whether you’re worrying about fitting in all of your sales calls, don’t know where to start with seasonal marketing or are concerned you haven’t yet planned ahead of 2021, try these tactics to stay on track and remain productive…

When you have a huge to do list, it’s natural to feel anxious about how you’re going to get it all done, especially if you’re juggling the many end of year tasks too. One way to take back control, ensure you complete the important jobs and make the most of your day is to take your to do list and assign chunks of your day to specific tasks. This is known as time blocking. 

Social media, the news, TV; there are a lot of distractions which might be preventing you from fully focusing on the task at hand. If you find you struggle to focus for long periods, start off by removing distractions such as your phone out of easy reach. Then, using your time block, work for a short period on your assigned task. After that period, take a short break then sit back down to focus for another short period. 

Distractions don’t just give you an easy route to procrastination, they can ruin your productivity by interrupting your concentration and chain of thought, which may then take precious time to recover. 

Getting the stuff that you 100% have to get done ticked off first sets you up for success. Whether that’s something small like sending an invoice which is overdue or something a bit weightier such as completing a report, do it first. You’ll feel great knowing that the most important thing has been achieved, you set a productive and positive tone which will inform the whole rest of your day. 

As an entrepreneur, you’re used to juggling a dozen tasks and you may even be guilty of staying busy because you refuse to delegate. It’s a big lesson to learn but, accepting that someone else could do something just as well as you could, frees you up to be massively more productive. Look at your to do list and identify jobs which you don’t have to do yourself. Whether that’s billing or design or marketing or whatever. For those jobs could be done perfectly well by someone else, and don’t absolutely require you to handle, find someone to delegate to. That action not only means more jobs can be accomplished, it frees up your time to work on the big picture stuff that only you can do, helping you to be more productive in areas that will make a bigger difference to your business.