Opening a startup is no child’s play. You’ve got to be up on your toes and work constantly under pressure for several hours of the day to make sure that the results are profitable.
Founding, running and working for a startup is extremely hard and can be much stressful. Because you have to be highly focussed, efficient and goal driven. You just simply cannot afford to be a little carefree as it might hamper your overall performance. Also, by being more productive, you can be efficient at your job and thereby reduce the stress that comes up when you are running or working at a startup.
The main objective for every startup is growth. And to attain this, they work for 12–16 hours work shift to complete their long to-do lists with of course short period of time and very little disposal.
Although the work environment is comparatively relaxed and less formal than the huge multinational companies, the people running a startup have work excessively to make their startup a success.
Given below are some productivity hacks that every startup should know to boost their productivity and make their startup a success.
1. Set Monthly Goals rather than Yearly Goals
There are a lot of startup entrepreneurs who set yearly or annual goals and then work accordingly to achieve them.
Basically, a year time is too much for a startup to experiment. And generally, the yearly goals are often overlooked. People think that the deadline to achieve the goal is too far and hence they keep postponing the work.
On the more, as a startup, you need to have proper feedbacks of the work that you do at regular intervals. These feedbacks are solid interpretations and results of the work done by you.
When you set yearly goals, you do not get quick feedback. Therefore, to get valuable feedback on your work performance, try setting monthly goals instead of yearly goals. Reason being that as the time frame is less for monthly goals, this initiates you to keep intact with your goals. There is no delay when it comes to working to achieve your goals.
Moreover, your productivity and efficiency will increase. You will get quicker feedbacks on your performance so that you get to learn from your mistakes and do not make the same mistake again.
2. Take Scheduled Breaks
“All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.” This is a perfect saying that is applicable to almost everyone.
Breaks boost creativity and passion. It has been noticed that people who take regular breaks at work are more productive than the ones who work continuously.
Generally, when you work without taking any breaks, you lose focus, forget things, the quality of your work deteriorates and the overall performance of your startup suffers because of that. As a startup, you should ensure to avoid such conditions.
Breaks are important because they help you to refresh your attention span and sustain your concentration.
Breaks are essentially vital from the health point of view. By getting up and moving for around 5 minutes for every hour will lower your Body Mass Index.
This will help you to stay away from all the health issues.
3. Avoid Unnecessary Meetings
A lot of startups think that conducting a meeting for any kind of discussion is important and necessary.
However, in reality, the majority of the meetings are useless and the time spent on these meetings is generally unproductive.
Hence, you should know how to identify the unnecessary meetings and should avoid them.
For a startup, time is money and you just cannot afford to waste your highly precious time on unnecessary meetings that result in nothing but wastage of time and resources.
There are a lot of companies that call for team meetings without having a proper objective or goal. This results in wasted time for both the company and the employees that could have been used in some kind of productive work.
Avoid holding a meeting for a task if the same task can be done through a telephone or an email.
4. Do the Most Important Work in The Morning
As a startup, you simply have to do a lot of work all by yourself. There are some tasks that require urgent attention as they hold much importance. On the other hand, there are some tasks that not that much important but needs to be done.
So, you should divide your work or the tasks according to the priority.
Schedule the most important to be done in the morning. The reason for this is that the concentration level is the highest in the morning and the people are highly productive during that time and it is wise to complete all your important work in the morning.
After you’ve completed your most important work of the day, your stress level will go down and you will get more motivated to do the rest of the work for the day.
5. Prepare your Weekly Schedule on Weekends
Generally, the weekends are the time to relax and prepare yourself for the week ahead. Also, it is very important to maintain a balance between your personal and professional life.
As a startup, you need to keep in mind that you have to work a little extra than the already established businesses to make your startup successful and profitable.
I am not saying to work continuously on weekends, but you can surely devote a few hours to plan out what you should do in the upcoming week.
Nevertheless, this will not only help you to save your time but will also increase your productivity at work as now you will have a clear cut vision of the what you have to do in the next week.
6. Minimize Distractions
Distractions are one of the major reasons why a lot of startups fail. The distractions here are not only confined to mobile phones and internet access. Although they are a major source of distractions, there are other factors also that distract you.
Sometimes what happens is that in the course of doing some kind of research online, people get off the track and start reading articles, blogs, or newsletters.
As a matter of fact, these articles, blogs, and newsletters increase your industry knowledge and can also help you to create more ideas for your startup but then they distract you from doing the more important tasks at hand. Keep your self-focused and recognize the distractions and keep yourself away from them.
Final Thoughts
The most successful startups are the ones that are more productive, knows the value of time and also put in an efficient and consistent effort.
If you are a startup and are looking forward to making your business a success, apply the above-mentioned productivity hacks into action and see the results for yourself.
About the Author: Dinesh Thakur is the Co-Founder of Ads Triangle which is a Google Partner and Bing Accredited Agency. He has over 7 years of experience in Pay Per Click Marketing.
Dinesh has helped hundred of businesses to grow their revenue through PPC. He has expertise skills in Google AdWords and is passionate about Pay Per Click Marketing.
Laser focused on ROI w/ Adwords for our clients.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on August 3, 2017.
