How to work smarter not harder
Are you looking for tips on how to work smarter, not harder?
Getting more value out of the time you are investing is pretty much the secret to a successful business. Working smarter, not harder means leveraging your time, effort, and money in the most efficient way possible. Sometimes all that’s needed is a little mindset shift.
This often looks like outsourcing help, recognising weaknesses and strengths, cutting losses and prioritising needs. For the thousands of self-help books and business mentoring available out there, we’ve dialed it down to a couple of hot tips to really maximise your time while reaping the rewards.
7 tips to work less and be more productive
Below are 7 tips to help you work less while being more productive. This includes conducting regular audits aimed at improving efficiencies in your business, outsourcing work to professionals, delegating work, taking time off and setting strategic goals.
Conduct regular audits
Seeking out holes and gaps in your business is one of the most obvious ways to work smarter. Is there a way that you can be more efficient?
It may seem like a stupid question to ask of yourself and your business, but sometimes keeping it simple (stupid) is actually the most objective way to approach finetuning your business for maximum efficiency.
Is there software that could be doing the job? Are there common problems that occur along the process? Are the right people working? Take stock regularly and you may just find problems that end up solving themselves.
2. Outsource work to professionals
You may be tempted to think that you can do it all - work on your business strategy, marketing goals, write all the content for your website, manage all your social media accounts and liaise with all your clients. You may even do all your own bookkeeping, submit your own tax returns and manage all your staff HR matters.
But what’s the tradeoff of being so actively involved in every aspect of your business? If you’re doing all the work, instead of managing all the work - you’re likely to be less productive and you may also burn out.
Consider outsourcing some work to professionals who have the skills, knowledge and capacity to help you grow your business while you take care of the most strategic business matters.
Outsourcing your social media management is an effective way for companies to broaden their audiences, grow their reputations and drive sales - all while integrating with an overall marketing strategy.
At Green Socials, we offer digital marketing for eco-friendly businesses. We’re a social media agency in Sydney, Australia, with clients based around the world. If your business is doing something great for the planet, is eco-friendly, green, sustainable and purpose-driven, then we’d love to work with you.
Find out more about our social media management services. That includes building a content strategy, developing Canva templates for your brand, offering social media consulting services, and managing all of your social media platforms.
3. Ask for help and delegate tasks
It’s easy as a business owner to feel the urge to do every single little thing when it comes to you nurturing your business baby, but this comes at a cost of draining your time and effort. Is there someone else better suited to perform certain tasks that would be more efficient?
Delegation doesn’t mean letting go of control, it simply means freeing up time for you to focus on your strengths while maximising the strengths of others.
4. Have a no-contact day
That’s right, a full workday where emails, calls and office pop-ins are barred to allow a full days work of production and laser focus. Trust us on this one.
5. Focus on the right things and set goals
Any business owner or freelancer is always going to have so many things to do and so many emails to reply to, but it’s a matter of prioritising the tasks that are actually going to propel your business further.
When we are stressed and overwhelmed by our never-ending to-do list, we often focus on the lesser important, time-filling, easy win tasks and further away from the vital tasks that are going to bring the greatest benefit.
Each day, write a list of 10 goals to achieve, focusing on two goals that are going to cause the greatest impact first with the remaining tasks simply being extra brownie points that make business sweeter.
6. Autopilot where possible
We are intelligent beings, but mentally we only have so much capacity for making decisions. The more trivial decisions we have to make, the less capacity we have to make more significant decisions for our business.
Did you know that Obama wore the same suit for eight years? That’s because choosing between a grey or navy suit was not as important a decision as, say, healthcare for an entire nation.
Automation is your new best friend, and there are so so many software applications these days that will help you do this.
7. Take a break and recharge
One more time for the people in the back. Take a break! While there are some instances where staying back a couple of hours to finish a job might just have to do it, if this is becoming a regular occurrence, you are setting yourself up for some serious burnout.
When you’re feeling exhausted, take the day to rest and come back refocused and refreshed. The long term sustainability of your business will thank you for it.
Working more productively and efficiently towards to grow your Australian eco business
The art of successfully managing any business is not how much time you spend on individual tasks, but how good you are at managing people and processes.
No one can do it all. It’s important to set goals and be strategic about how to achieve them. One of the most successful ways of being more productive and getting more done, is to outsource work to professionals. Take a look at your Australian eco business and identify areas where you could outsource tasks - such as your social media management.
If you’re keen to grow your audience on social media, to drive traffic to your website, to produce SEO-optimised blog content, connect with influencers and increase user-generated content - then consider our social media management packages. After all, online marketing should be a priority for any eco-friendly business. And digital marketing for small business Australia is achievable using a tailored social media marketing service.
At Green Socials, we’re a full-service social media marketing agency for purpose-led brands across Australian, New Zealand and globally. We’d love to hear more about how we can help your eco-conscious brand to grow and thrive.
