What Kills Productivity? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, yet some seem to get way more done than others. Let’s take a look at a few of the more common productivity killers. These can be killing your productivity in either your personal or business life.
Killer #1: Too much on your plate is one of the top productivity killers. We take on tasks even when we already have a full plate. Often times we do this because we are confident and overly optimistic. We believe we can get everything done. Or maybe we just haven’t learned to say no to those things we really don’t want to do.
Killer #2: Which leads to the next killer: You don’t know how to say no. By spreading yourself too thin, your quality of work, your health and your sanity often suffer. Taking on too much, filling your plate with every request made of you, can be overwhelming and cause you to not get done half of what you normally could.
Killer #3: Not getting enough sleep can kill your productivity. I’m not telling you to get 10 hours of sleep. Everyone’s body is different. But research says most people need 7 to 8 hours to be fully rested.
Killer #4: Not getting enough exercise can kill your productivity as well. Physical activity keeps your mind healthy as well as your body. Just a simple walk around the block can clear your mind so you are ready to start on a task when you return.
Killer #5: Not enough time for yourself. Not only do you need enough sleep, you need time to yourself. This means taking short breaks throughout the day and regular vacation time. This helps your body renew itself.
Killer #6: Not eating a healthy diet. Junk food, sweets, fats and processed foods all make your body weak, overweight and sick while slowing your immune system.
Killer #7: You’re not motivated by what you’re doing. Are you bored with what you are doing? It is hard to get motivated in the morning because you don’t enjoy what the day has to offer? Figure out what you love to do to; being passionate and excited leads to being more productive.
Killer #8: Your personal relationships aren’t in balance. Frustration, fighting and friction among your family or friends can take a toll on your energy. Find ways to reduce this stress.
Killer #9: Your finances are causing you stress. Financial stress is a big distraction to a lot of people. It takes our mind and time away from doing things we want to be doing.
Killer #10: You rely on your own willpower to get you started. If your willpower is running on low, you won’t get to the tasks done.
Killer #11: There’s no one to hold you accountable. If you aren’t held responsible for your actions, you can easily not get things done.
Killer #12: You don’t know what to do next. You don’t know what your next step should be.
Killer #13: Interruptions are a constant in our fast-paced life. Email, people, phone calls are all interruptions that can affect your productivity.
Killer #14: You haven’t set clear goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely, emotional, and rewarding.
Killer #15: Not planning regularly. Your priorities change and your plan of action should be changing with it.
Not all these things are a problem for everyone. You will have to determine which are affecting your productivity and learn ways to deal with them. You might need to change your eating and sleeping patterns or your financial situation. Whatever is causing you to be less productive can be changed.
All your content creation should have a purpose and that purpose should not only benefit your readers, but benefit your business as well.
Some purposes might be:
Here are some things to plan and keep in mind, so your content gets out there to your audience.
The best way to make the most of your monthly content is to find ways to reuse it and repurpose it. However, when creating your repurposing strategy make sure that you’re still focusing on your goals. Each repurposed or reused piece of content still needs to serve a purpose and support a goal.
It’s not enough to simply know how to use Pinterest. You also need to learn how to conduct market research. It’s an imperative, if you want to understand your audience. If you don’t know who you want to influence, it’s hard to know how to proceed. Take the time to research your market so that you know who they are, what they like, and what they like to do on Pinterest.
Your market is the group of people who are interested in the products or services that you want to promote. The products and services that you want to promote should be solutions to your niche market. If you can provide solutions to a group of people that really work you are bound to become influential.
Each board should have its own topic or subject. That’s how you keep them organized and relevant to different segments of your audience. Every board should be relevant to your overall audience. Just like you have different categories on your blog, or pages on your website, so you should also have different boards on Pinterest.
Start with four or five different boards covering the different categories that you have determined are important to your audience. Most people will not follow every board. They will choose a specific board to follow. Once you create a board, ensure that you keep it updated on a regular basis. Starting with more than four or five boards will be too much work because you want to keep boards updated so choose your categories and topics carefully.
Depending on what type of business you have it can sometimes be hard to come up with creative ideas. In order to be super creative use mind maps and other brainstorming ideas to come up with ways to present your information graphically. The more original pins you can create the better. If your pins are created by you then it will show as you being the originator so when it’s shared people have the opportunity to find you.
Your creativity will really matter when it comes to creating boards. Pinterest, as you know, is a very visual medium. You’ll have to think outside the box to create images that represent the message you want to send to your audience. If you want people to pin your blog posts, ensure that you’ve added a creative visual element to encourage pinning.
Pinterest is social media, and the idea of social media is to be, guess what? Social. Therefore, interaction is key getting people to re-pin your Pinterest content and to follow you. When you think about social media realize that it’s a conversation you’re having with your audience on a regular basis. You wouldn’t just ignore comments made to your face, don’t ignore them made on Pinterest.
Don’t just communicate on your own boards either. Engage with others on their boards, and mention people by name when relevant. It’s a great way to keep the conversation going, and bring other people in. Sharing, commenting, and being social is what social media is all about so ensure that you are engaging, in more ways than one.
Being seen as information nucleus of information that’s interesting to your audience should be one of your goals when seeking to influence others. To succeed, you need to study what they need to know and want to know. That may mean creating new boards, but it might also mean curating other boards of interest for your audience.
You can not only curate other people’s information, but your own too. People are very visual and this lets you curate the information in a beautiful way. If you are super organized, and only allow the best quality information to be on your boards, you are creating an image for yourself too. The image of an someone who can influence others.
It’s kind of like the saying that “Nothing is complete until the paperwork is done.” Well, paperwork always involves numbers. As such, nothing can be deemed successful (or a failure) without studying the metrics. Look at how many followers you get for different actions. How many people re-pin something you’ve pinned. Can you figure out why they re-pin one thing over another? How many people pin a blog post with no images compared to an infographic? How many click-throughs you receive and any other factor that can help you determine the effectiveness of your boards is an important metric to understand.
Pinterest has its own analytics tools today that are quite good at giving you the information you need. That combined with Google Analytics and there isn’t much you can’t determine by looking at the numbers. If you want to be a real influencer and an authority in your niche, it’s important to know what is working and what is not working.
Getting started with a goal in mind, and developing your Pinterest presence over time will reap many more benefits than going in without a clue as to the direction you want to go. Having goals and understanding your topic and your audience will go far in helping you pin your way to influence. One way to become more influential is to build your following. 
Joe is a business owner and writes all his own content. On a productive day, Joe can write four or five blog posts in an hour. The trick that works for him is to focus on writing his content in batches.
You can make writing a speedier process by outlining the content first. You don’t have to get too detailed with your outline, unless you want to. What’s most important is to identify the key points you want to make in your piece. That generally includes your subtitles and bullet points.
It’s tempting to sit down in front of the television at night and work on tomorrow’s blog post. However, it’ll take you five times longer to write that blog post than if you wrote it without distractions.
Are you a night owl? A morning person? Chances are there is a time of day that you feel more focused and productive. And there’s a time of day when all you want to do is take a nap.
Do you find yourself rewriting the same sentence several times because you’re trying to make it grammatically correct? Do you use spellcheck more often than the “enter” key on your keyboard? If this sounds like you then you may benefit from trying this tactic.
Your social media plan is like the rails that your social media train runs on. Without the rails, the train could still move quickly – But it would just run everywhere, and quite possibly be dangerous. The same goes for social media.
Breakdown of How to Spend Your Time