September has new school year vibes for me (despite growing up in a country where the school year started in January!).

There’s something about emerging from the slower pace of the summer with renewed motivation, vigour and excitement for the final third of the year.

If you are someone who sets intentions, you may be thinking about how you can make better use of your time in the coming busy months, or perhaps you want to establish a habit of increased productivity?

I recently shared some tips in my weekly newsletter about how I approach my weekly planning in order to make the best use of my limited time, and I share some of those thoughts below.

Schedule your priorities

Every Sunday, I spend a bit of time planning my week. It’s not a big task, but it helps me feel focused when I sit down at my desk on Monday morning knowing what is coming up and what needs doing first.

When I’m not careful and protective of my time, I get to Friday and find that my days have been gobbled up by other people’s priorities. Unexpected phone calls, emails that demanded urgent attention, people pushing your boundaries.

One approach that can help with this is to schedule your priorities.

Ask yourself what you need to do to make sure the things you say you want to do, will get done. Maybe you want to write a blog post or go for a couple of runs. How sure are you that you will get those done unless you put the time in your diary and protect it?

If you schedule those priorities - and write down what you will do and when - you hugely increase your chances of success.

Track, look and learn

As small business owners, we have so many different balls to juggle at any given time. I used to find that I can be busy all day and not have much to show for it, until I started tracking my time.

I use Toggl Track - a free tool that lets you track your time easily and provides reports. This way you can see exactly how long you’ve spent “researching” on Instagram, or how long you actually spend on admin, or a particular client, or on your marketing.

This is a great exercise to face what may be causing problems in your business (for example you may come to the conclusion that it will be financially beneficial to outsource particular admin tasks, or you may see that you are not charging enough for particular services).

Reflection on how you’ve spent your time, how your marketing is performing or even how things feel in your gut can really help you recalibrate your path, spot opportunities and celebrate your wins. If you want some reflective end-of-week prompts to help you, I shared 4 questions you can ask yourself every Friday to track progress).

Sounds of productivity

All of this sounds like a lovely plan, right? But if you’re like me, sometimes it’s a challenge to sit down and focus when you have something that just needs doing. Here are a few ways in which I get stuff done.

1. Do the worst job first and get it out the way (aka eat that frog!)

2. The Pomodoro technique (a personal favourite). Set a timer, ignore everything else apart from the job at hand, take a short break and go again.

3. Listen to music designed to help you focus, like Coffivity or focus@will.

4. Turn off your phone notifications (muting WhatsApp group chats has made a huge difference for me).

5. Say no when you mean no. Don’t say maybe. Don’t say you’ll think about it. Say NO. If you need a bit of help in this area, listen to Keri Jarvis's excellent audio clip (you will need to provide your email address).

How I can help you get more productive with your marketing

If you need help working out where to focus with your marketing, or to find some ways in which you can be more efficient or productive with your marketing, then feel free to check out my power hours! Tell me what is causing you a headache, then I’ll think it over, come up with ideas to help you, and we hash it out during an hour-long call.