Productive Business Habits for Entrepreneurs

As entrepreneurs we’re often chasing the best new app, the newest tool, and the cool new way of doing things. But honestly, for me it’s about minor shifts to a regular practice that make the biggest difference.

A few months ago I introduced you to the Productive app which I use to track personal tasks such as watering plants, flossing and going to the gym.

Today I’m sharing how I’ve adapted the process to incorporate business tasks as well.

Eliminate any goal you’re not passionate about

Looking back over the app’s “Life Log” revealed that some things were interesting ideas but never really stuck, like walking to the park twice a week. Especially with the weather heating up, I don’t love the trails around our local park so instead of hitting “skip” on that goal I decided to delete it.

If, however, a habit is important to you but is still getting missed a majority of the time then it’s time to adjust the when, how often or the details.

For example, I regularly visit the gym in the afternoon so it didn’t make sense to keep that habit in the morning so it moved. Weekly tasks are more difficult for me to get in the right time slot so I adjusted a few more to the evening since stopping earlier in the day to complete those habits was distracting.

It’s all a work in progress so don’t beat yourself up for making adjustments.

Start adding business goals

If you find it’s hard to get consistent in your business then try adding business goals to the app or your own process. Here are some I’m testing out:

• Write content for upcoming program (daily)
• Review metrics and traffic stats (monthly)
• Create newsletter and blog post (weekly)
• Touch base with leads and colleagues (weekly)

And I keep adding tasks as I find things that need to be done consistently. Maybe for you it’s updating social media, following up on failed payments, answering customer service emails or checking in with your team.

In the end it doesn’t matter if you’re using Slack, Asana, Basecamp, Productive, another service or just paper, keep adapting your processes to incorporate the personal and business tasks that you need to complete.

Here are a few final tips:

1. Don’t try to do everything at once, add a new habit or task weekly but not daily,
2. Be specific with your task instead of “clean” try “pick up items in one room” or “clean off my computer desktop,”
3. Make slow adjustments because while it sounds great to start getting up at 4am, training for a marathon and writing a book this month it’s a sure way to burn out quickly,
4. Celebrate every single time you complete a task and share your wins.