The 7 Simplest Habits of Highly Effective Founders

Startup owners often have a lot on their plates. From fundraising to marketing and from making sales to ensuring customer satisfaction, there are multiple roles founders have to play.

It is your startup and you want to be productive and manage everything smoothly; I get it. But that doesn’t mean clocking long hours at work.

Yes, you can be productive and get things done, without suffering any burnout or stress. In this article, I am listing 7 tips can help you boost your productivity.

These tips will enhance your efficiency and focus to reach the goals you envisioned.

Without further ado, let’s dive in:

The fear of missing an important email and the urge to reply as early as possible can be intense.

However, every time you get your eyes on your inbox, you lose a grain of focus from your work.

So, don’t check your emails every few minutes. You don’t need to be online 24/7.

Set up filters to sort out important emails from regular market updates and turn off the notifications when you need to be in the ‘zone’.

Blocking some time to read and respond to emails can be a real productivity booster.

Sleep deprivation can increase the risk of having health problems. But that doesn’t mean you can sleep as much as you want. 6-7 hours of sleep is optimal in most cases. So, time your sleep and wake up early.

When you wake up early, you tend to have lesser interruptions. You will get leisure time to ponder over important decisions while the rest of the world is asleep.

And you also get ample time to prepare for the day’s heavy lifting. So, create a bedtime routine, and find ways to sleep faster and set your alarm to get up early.

Creating to-do lists is a must to boost productivity. And it is best to do so, the night before. When your mind still has the information fresh about what you did through the day.

Set time aside at the end of the day to go through your schedule and prepare for the next day.

Planning on the previous night helps you sleep unstressed about the upcoming day. It also ensures that you are productive right from the beginning of your day.

It sounds paradoxical but taking multiple mini-breaks can help improve productivity.

Time off from your computer helps you to relax, focus better and get new ideas.

15-minute stroll every 2 hours or some soothing music while taking a power nap can help you rejuvenate.

The idea is to take multiple small breaks to replenish your lost energy.

Staff meetings throughout the day, checking Facebook every few minutes and switching tabs every time new mail chimes in can eat up a lot of your time. And they can distract you from work, too.

Although people will keep coming for consultation regarding business, you can minimize distractions by logging out from your social media accounts and having some “urgent calls only” schedules.

Being a multitasker can be an amazing feeling, but multitasking doesn’t often equal to being productive.

When you’re multitasking, you’re letting your brain jump from one task to another. And it doesn’t help you achieve your goals any sooner.

Instead, you’re stuck fumbling with multiple problems at once. So, instead of dabbling into nine projects at once, set time aside for each. And give your 100% to one task at a time.

You might be Mr know-it-all, but you don’t have to do it all.

Delegate those tasks which don’t need your active involvement. You can either train an efficient team member to undertake such assignments or outsource them to a virtual assistant with the right skill set.

However, you should do proper due diligence before hiring a virtual assistant (VA). You can check some important tips for using VA here.

You can then, use the free time to focus on tasks most important for the growth of your startup. Also, when you have one less thing to worry about, you can think better.

You owe it to yourself to be more productive. If you limit your time checking emails, get-up early, plan your day before, take small breaks, minimize distractions, stop multitasking, and delegate unimportant tasks, there is no reason why you wouldn't be more productive.

Do you want to share any other productivity hack? Please leave it in the comment section. I'd love to know about it.