How did Focusing on Less Make me 10x More Productive as an Entrepreneur
Maximizing Productivity: A Refined Step-by-Step Guide to Streamline Your Tasks and Prioritize What’s Most Important
Welcome to my newsletter. As a seasoned digital nomad, I offer practical advice on how to enhance your quality of life. My aim is to provide you with genuine, actionable strategies that erase the noise and clichés to help you make noticeable progress. Whether you're a student, entrepreneur, or seasoned nomad, my insights will help you gain a deeper understanding of yourself, and take meaningful steps toward the success you deserve.
Minimalism takes over again
Minimalism changes your life and has been a hot topic in the last couple of years. It’s hard to grasp the real benefits of it if you have not tried it for yourself. Everyone seems to think they’re a superhero and can become successful at everything in life. I still think this.
Among the many things I’m active in:
Piano
YouTube
University
Writing a newsletter
I still recall this lesson from creator and doctor Ali Abdaal.
Ali Abdaal has spoken about the idea of being “just a little good” at things like piano in some of his videos. His lesson here is that unless you are going to be a professional piano player, you may not need to go the extra mile to learning everything about piano.
In his experience learning piano, he will learn songs and practice with repetition to master them in the time he dedicated to piano. Over time, he may pick up an understanding of music theory.
The key is to focus on the process of learning and improving little by little, rather than striving for perfection for the things that don’t require your full attention.
For me, this time is an hour each day. In this hour I am dead focused — You can grow exponentially over time with that little block dedicated to your skill.
When that hour of the piano is done, I’ve paid my dues. I don’t think about it for the rest of the day.
It is important to be multi-faceted and have depth to your skill set.
Jumping into any endeavor requires a lot of freedom. I want to put as much of my time and effort into my business as possible. I do this by not only focusing on less but by taking action to allow myself to focus on the most important things.
Let me show you what I mean:
“Less is more. Only the essential is necessary. Simplify. Simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Automation
What a world we live in full of systems to do the boring stuff for me.
I love automation, especially when it comes to communication. It makes it much easier for a business owner to maintain relationships with customers while having full creative control.
There are features in certain CRM tools where you can capture leads into your database and get notified to contact them right away.
You can also go a step further by having an automated caller answer a phone call by a lead and/or text them to schedule a meeting.
There is new automations every day with tools like zapier and websites using triggers to control actions and collect data.
When a customer takes action, say, from an advertisement, they are an easy prospect with which we want to engage with as soon as possible. Automations make this process light, and they also make us seem sophisticated as automation are still a foreign topic to the common mind.
Automations that allow me to focus on less:
Email marketing: Using email marketing tools such as Mailchimp, businesses can automate email campaigns to reach out to their customers and promote their products or services.
Social media scheduling: By using tools like Hootsuite or Buffer, businesses can schedule social media posts in advance, which saves time and ensures that their social media presence stays active and consistent.
Accounting and invoicing: Automating accounting and invoicing tasks can save businesses time and reduce errors. Software such as QuickBooks or FreshBooks can automate these tasks.
Customer support: With chatbots or AI-powered tools like Intercom, businesses can automate customer support by providing answers to frequently asked questions and resolving simple issues.
Data entry: Businesses can use tools like Zapier or IFTTT to automate data entry tasks, such as transferring information between different apps and platforms.
Outsourcing
“Outsourcing is a powerful tool for freeing up time and mental energy… The goal of outsourcing is to create more value, not just to save money. By delegating non-core tasks, you can focus on what you do best and create more value for your customers or clients” — Naval Ravikant, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Allowing others to do things you don’t need or want to do.
This is a perk that comes with success. Most people aren’t able to delegate tasks right away, and they have to put in the work for the boring things to get to this level, this makes it enjoyable. The truth is, you’re always going to have to do things you don’t enjoy, but you can always remove delegate something.
If the tasks are necessary, you can outsource them
Yes, you can do this in the beginning stages of business as well.
One common strategy employed by businesses to reduce costs and expand their talent pool is outsourcing to countries with lower economic costs. By hiring workers from these countries, businesses can often attain the same level of work quality at a lower expense than hiring locally.
An example of this practice is when a company situated in the United States outsources tasks for assistance or customer service support to a call center or a VA based in countries like the Philippines or India, where the expenses of living and labor costs are comparatively lower.
It’s not all about business
Outsourcing things in my personal life has been great.
Things I outsource:
Video editing
Responding to emails/DMs
Making my meals — Going out to eat
Random tasks
Another great quote from Naval:
“The most successful people I know are the ones who do the least of what they don’t want to do”
Outsourcing accounting and bookkeeping tasks to a professional can help businesses manage their finances more efficiently and ensure compliance with tax regulations. Furthermore, outsourcing administrative tasks such as data entry, customer support, or appointment scheduling to a virtual assistant or a freelance administrative assistant can free up time for business owners to focus on more important tasks.
Try it out, and see what you can drop.
The importance scale
I vary my tasks
The Most Successful People focus on the least
Priorities
My ToDo List app is a mirror of my mind.
List everything in order of importance, and don’t get any other tasks done until you’ve gotten the most important one done.
CEO’s
Some of the biggest CEO’s make the least decisions a day. They make sure it’s that way.
You too can focus on what’s most important and put the rest for later.
With a combination of automation, outsourcing, and the importance scale, you can become a machine and watch your output skyrocket. Remember though, you have to put in work to get the little stuff done.
Stephen King said it himself:
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” — Stephen King
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