• Home
  • About Pink Spaghetti
  • For Your Business
  • For Your Home
  • Franchise Opportunities
    • Owning a Franchise
    • Our Family
    • Join us
    • Our Franchisees
    • Frequently asked questions
    • Request a Franchise Prospectus
  • Pricing
    • Personal Assistant Pricing for Business
    • Personal Assistant Prices at Home
    • Bundles of Joy
  • News
    • Blog
  • Contact Us

Pink-Spaghetti

PA Services

Efficient, Affordable, Approachable.

Email help@pink-spaghetti.co.uk to find your nearest team!

  • For Your Business
  • For Your Home
  • Franchise Opportunities
  • Pricing
    • Prices For your Home
    • Pricing for your Business
    • Bundles of Joy
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
    • Offices throughout the UK

10 Minutes to Change Your Business Life

3 April 2018 by Vicky

Amy Milchard

Amy Milchard

Our blog this month has been written by Amy Milchard from Pink Spaghetti Sheffield & Surrounds.  It first appeared in the South Yorkshire edition of mmbmagazine.co.uk.

I have spent my career organising MD’s and business owners’ workloads to allow them to do what they do best. Now I cover both sides, I’m doing what I do to support business growth for others, while also mastering and developing my own business!

Luckily being super busy and super productive is perfectly possible if you master a few tricks to keep on top of what’s bubbling away, knowing what needs attention, what is a do right now and what is a keeping it ticking task. Most of all knowing I am doing things which will yield results is what keeps me focused.

It’s totally human and very easy to have an off day where you feel busy but unproductive. That happens to everyone! But if it’s how you feel all the time, you can step back and make a few small changes to your approach and start to hold the reins again. I’ve come up with a few of the most important principles in my experience in my ten minute hack to change your business life.

Manage Yourself!

To make any plan effective the first lesson is managing yourself. You can’t do it successfully unless you know, accept and like yourself! Don’t fight yourself because you won’t win. There are things you can improve, bad habits you can drop but what makes you intrinsically you is fortunately, exactly how you’re meant to be.  If you know you are not a morning person don’t plan those upbeat sales calls for the morning. Do check your receipts, social media notifications, book travel arrangements, read one useful article. Play to your strengths.

Know Your strengths

Are you an amazing networker? Do you get more business face to face? If so you need time to be out in the field. You do not need to be doing admin or figuring out how to do your end of year tax return, you can find an expert to do that for you.

Are you a whizz on social media or do you see more sales coming in through your website? If so, then online is where you need to spend your time. If not, someone who loves those tasks will almost certainly cost less given the time it takes you to do it!

Do you see where I am going with this? Often when we start out in business we are overwhelmed with paperwork, IT systems that we’ve been recommended, social media, sales, accounts, and we try to be a jack of all trades. Know what your strengths are and make sure you’re using them the majority of the time.

The Infamous To-Do List

Get some organisation and structure in your week. Whatever role you are in – or even in life, make sure you know what your main tasks are in the week ahead. Choose your tools but your diary should block out time for appointments and for completing tasks.

Be specific. State the specific tasks or pieces of work you will do in those blocks of time and stick to it. It keeps you accountable rather than presuming you’ll pick the right job when you get there! It’s way too easy to fall into the trap of working reactively. Sooner or later that leads to chaos and firefighting.

The guiding principle is assigning the right task to the right time slot so that you are as efficient as possible.

Prioritise

A good way to ensure you are prioritising tasks well is matching the task to the time you have. Start with a master to-do list, then update and reorganise it regularly into tasks by type, for example sub lists of calls, emails, projects (anything that you can’t finish in one go). Using the diary as I just explained, match the tasks to the length of the gaps they need. Watch how quickly they get ticked off!

Secondly be honest. There are tasks that will develop your business or convert to sales, and tasks that can wait. Make sure you know what the focus of your week is and that you are prioritising those tasks above others. Don’t get caught up spending too much time on tasks that will not yield results.

Trust that if you get to a point where you have business coming in, but back office tasks or domestic duties are taking up too much time, you can quickly outsource many of these tasks. Outsource your basics to allow you to work on your business not in it and enjoy your spare time! Ironing basket rivalling the Leaning Tower of Pisa? The price of having someone come in for an hour or two a week is cheaper than you might expect. Social Media accounts looking lost and lonely? Speak to someone who can help.

Turn OFF Your email

Yes you heard me right! How many times do you check your email a day, how many tasks do you let it interrupt or distract you from? It’s a really tough one but accessing your email 3 times a day rather than dipping in and out will yield amazing results. You’re probably not aware how much time it takes away from you working on your business. When you’re doing a task that’s important to you, you have the right to be as unavailable as you are when you’re in a meeting.

 

Over to you. Maybe choose just one tip and for the next month really stick to it to see how much difference it starts to make. I’d love to hear how it went!

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: focus, organisation, prioritise, productivity

Recent Posts

  • Christmas gift guide – tips from the Pink Spaghetti PAs
  • 7 reasons your small business needs to go paperless
  • Franchisee Case Study – Emily O’Neill
  • 4 cost benefits of working from home
  • Benefits of buying a Pink Spaghetti franchise over starting your own business

Archives

  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • August 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013

Sign up for Pink Spaghetti News and Updates

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

We will use this to send you emails about our services. This is in line with our privacy policy

email help@pink-spaghetti.co.uk or click here to find your nearest team

©2019 Pink Spaghetti Franchising Ltd. All Rights Reserved
Privacy Policy | Website Terms of Use | Cookie Policy | Terms of Business | Site Map

Pink Spaghetti Franchising Ltd. Company Number: 8077422.

37 Hodge Lane, Hartford, CW8 3AG

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.