In my last blog post, in this series about getting more stuff done, I talked about the importance of energy and how we can find more energy to promote productivity.

In this blog post, I share with you how to get more clarity in our lives, as well as some of the biggest time-wasting distractions that get in our way, and some tips on how to limit them.

How to get more clarity

To get more clarity in our lives, what we need to do is figure out what our goals are. What do you want your life to look like? What do you want your business to look like?

Have you sat down and thought about your goals and where you want to be? Because a lot of people haven’t done that. So they’re working really hard and putting in lots of hours, but they’re not really going anywhere because they haven’t got that clarity.

One of the foundations that I like to teach is called Vision to Plan, which is a process that I’ve been doing now for 15 years. Because things don’t happen overnight; we have to work the plan to build the life we want.

So, my question for you is, do you have that clarity? Do you know what you want your life to be? What’s important to you in life? Once you know what kind of life you want to lead, you can ask yourself, ‘What does my business need to look like to help me get there?’.

We need to have that big picture as the starting point for everything else in our businesses. Make sure you have that clarity.

Once we have that vision, we need to make sure we’re doing the right things to achieve it. Very often we’re so busy doing the work but we don’t know where we’re going. We need to make sure we know where we’re going, and that we’re only doing the things we need to do.

That means limiting the time-wasting distractions that we encounter daily. Here are a few of those distractions and tips for reducing them.

Emails

I know a lot of people stress over answering all their emails. The problem is, you have your own goals, and you want to be working on the right things to achieve those goals, but when you spend lots of time answering emails, you’re working towards someone else’s vision, not your own.

Of course, we do have to answer clients’ emails, but there’s a time and a place for doing that.

Do you have your emails open all day? It can be tempting because we like to know when someone has messaged us. The trouble is, it's so distracting! And we don't need to be answering emails immediately.

One of the things that I do when I have a big project or when I need to work on something important is I just close my emails down. Get into the habit of not dealing with emails in those productive times.

TV

Another big time-waster if you want to get things done is TV. Because whenever you’re watching TV, you’re not working towards your goals in life.

I saw an interesting statistic recently that said if you spend 4 hours a day watching TV, that equates to 13 years of a typical life.

What could you do with that time? What could you achieve? What could you accomplish?

Social Media

How much time do you spend on social media? If you’re in my Value Pricing Academy or Bookkeepers’ Pricing Academy, you’ll know in Marketing Mondays I talk a lot about how powerful social media is as a marketing platform.

But I see people on social media all throughout the day just having general chats with people. And it's addictive.

We have to make sure we use social media strategically. So, schedule in time to do social media tasks in the day. Use it to help you achieve your goals. Use it as a marketing tool.

Check out the full video on finding the time to get more stuff done here: https://youtu.be/QWE1adfMAtg

If you found this valuable and would like to learn more about value pricing, I run a free live online training session every month with a topic chosen by you. Attend live and you can ask me any questions you have. Click here to register and I will send you an invitation to the next session.

Wishing you every success on your pricing journey

Mark Wickersham

Chartered Accountant, Public Speaker and Author of Amazon No.1 Best Seller “Effective Pricing for Accountants”