Ep 31 - Feeling Overwhelmed? 3 Easy Tips for Business Leaders to Save Hours

Note: This transcript was computer-generated.

Imagine a world where you can break free from overwhelm, strategically prioritize your time, and save those precious hours. We're talking about essentials, critical tasks, and desirable activities that can transform the way you work. Picture a scenario where your to do list isn't a source of stress, but rather a roadmap to success. Sounds too good to be true? If so, you don't want to miss this episode where I will be diving into a powerful framework inspired by the US Navy SEALS and the Department of Defense. Ready to go from overwhelmed to in control? Let's dive in. Are you that driven entrepreneur tirelessly working 24/7, believing that working harder holds the key to your dreams? Are you drowning in the day to day tasks, wishing you had more time to strategize and cast the vision for your business growth? Hi, and welcome to the CEO Amplify podcast. I'm Donna Dube, your guide on this entrepreneurial journey. As a fellow entrepreneur, I've walked in your worn out shoes, burning the midnight oil, convinced that sheer hard work was a secret to success.

Just 1 more email, 1 more task, one more push, until I found myself on a one way track to burnout. But here's the twist in the tale. I discovered that success isn't just about working harder. It's about working smarter. The elusive key lies in being intentional and purposeful with your time. It's about steering our ship with focus because no team, no system and no automation can outperform a lack of direction. In this podcast, I'm sharing with you all the strategies for business growth that it took me years to learn so that you don't have to. If you're ready to step out of the daily overwhelm so you can amplify your profits, then I'm ready to teach you. I believe that the only limit to your business growth is the one you set for yourself.

So if you're ready, go grab a notebook, warm up that cup of tea, and let's do this. Hello visionary minds. Today, I want to give you a quick sneak peek into what happens when you're a part of the Sustainable Business Blueprint workshop. During the 3 days together, we will get crystal clear on your numbers and understand exactly how much revenue you need and where it will come from, giving you you a clear roadmap to financial success. Once we've got a handle on where you are and where you want to go, we start crafting this roadmap a personalized 12 month profit plan. But here's the twist. It's not a one size fits all approach. This plan is tailored specifically to your business, your vision, and your goals. You'll gain a taste of the strategic clarity that can transform your business clarity brings action action brings transformation and transformation brings success Curious to know more? Hop on over to ceoamplify.ca/sustainable

to save your spot today, and let's lay out the path to your business success. Your future is waiting and I can't wait to be a part of your success story. Join us at ceoamplify.ca/sustainableWelcome back entrepreneurs. You know that feeling where you get so overwhelmed you just feel stuck? It's like everything's a priority and the to do list keeps growing. Fires are popping up everywhere you turn and your goals are getting farther and farther away. But the truth is as a busy CEO, when don't you feel overwhelmed? Especially this time of year when all the new things just keep piling up. "Who's got time to panic?" you tell yourself, panicking. Before you keep panicking stick with me. I have a framework that will help you get out of the overwhelm, prioritize your time and save hours. It's a strategy I'm borrowing from the US Navy SEALs and Department of Defense, the biggest experts on high stake situations When time is the most precious commodity, this framework is like striking gold. And the key here is to prioritize everything into one of 3 Categories, essential, critical, and desirable. Essential.

Think of this as anything you can't do without. It's of the utmost importance. Critical. Whatever is both important and urgent falls into this category. You'll need to complete critical items soon, but they're not absolutely necessary. And the 3rd category, desirable, is anything that is nice to have but not necessary. Alright, let's look at each of these a little more in-depth. So essential. When we talk about essentials, we're referring to the tasks that really are the lifeblood of your business. These are your non negotiables the fundamental activities that keep everything running smoothly. Take, for instance, customer service in an e-commerce business.

Responding to customer inquiries, handling returns, and ensuring customer satisfaction, Those are essential tasks and if neglected could lead to very unhappy customers, negative reviews and a dent in your brand operations, which you do not want. So how do you identify what falls into the essential category? One effective approach that I found is to evaluate tasks based on their impact on your business core functions Life a task directly contributes to your product, program or your service delivery, your customer satisfaction, your financial stability, it's likely an essential task To illustrate this further, let's think of essential tasks as the engine of your car Without a functioning engine, the cart won't move. And similarly, without addressing essential tasks, your business Won't progress forward. Day, let's look now into the Critical category. Remember, these are tasks that are both important and time sensitive, but they might not bring your operations to a halt if they're delayed briefly They are tasks that if they're left unattended for too long Can certainly escalate into bigger problems So let's consider a scenario where you've noticed a and drop in your website traffic While not immediately life threatening to your business, it's critical enough that you want to investigate And rectify and fix the problem promptly Delaying this could result in lost opportunities, decreased visibility, and potential revenue loss So identifying critical tasks involves assessing the urgency of the task And the potential impact on your business short term goals It's about understanding the consequences of delay Making informed decisions on where to allocate your resources So if we continue our analogy with the car Critical tasks are like routine maintenance for your car While not as urgent as fixing a malfunctioning engine Neglecting them can certainly lead to long term issues and decreased efficiency. CEO then the 3rd category we mentioned was desirable These are tasks that add value but aren't immediately necessary for the survival of your business. They're like the icing on the cake. They're enhancing your overall all operations, but not necessary for its basic functionality. So if we look Look at the task of revamping your company's website to incorporate the latest design trends While that might be An attractive and user friendly website is certainly valuable It might not be an immediate priority when compared to the essential and the critical tasks However, having an, you know, website that's nice and fresh and looking Professionals certainly contributes to long term growth, the perception of your brand, and your customer experience.

So again, if we draw a parallel to our car example, desirable tasks are akin to upgrading Your car's entertainment system. While it's nice to have for an enhanced driving experience, It's not as crucial as ensuring the engine runs smoothly or addressing those urgent maintenance needs. Okay. So now that we've explored these 3 categories in-depth, and you have a good sense of what critical, essential, and desirable tasks are. Let's talk about some practical strategies on how to implement this because you know I'm all for 1 for listening and taking in information, but I don't want you to stop there. I want you to put this into action. So how will you actionize these 3 Categories of tasks. One highly effective method is to use the Eisenhower matrix, which is a decision making tool that categorizes tasks into 4 quadrants and the 4 quadrants are based on 2 criteria importance and urgency So if you want take a piece of paper day a box, so you've got 4 boxes in quadrant one, you're going to label this urgent and These are where your essential tasks are going to go These are tasks where immediate action is required So some examples critical client issues Profit launch deadlines These are things that are essential They're urgent and they're important Alright.

Quadrant 2 Non Urgent but Important These are going to be your critical tasks Things like requires planning and prioritization So your strategic planning, your quarterly planning, your annual planning, developing your skills and your team skills, Relationship building. K? Nonurgent, but important. The critical task. Quadrant 3, Urgent but not important. And I'm gonna call these ones questionable. So you want to consider whether you want to delegate these tasks or even minimize the amount of time spent on them Some examples you want to look at, how many interruptions are you getting in your day? How many meetings do you have in your day? How many emails are you responding to that's taking your time? These are questionable things. Yes, urgent in the sense that they need to be done, but not important, not revenue generating. And then quadrant 4, not urgent and not important This is what we're going to call desirable Where those desirable tasks will fit in They are role lower priority and we can even consider eliminating them or at least minimizing them Some examples here are those time wasting activities that we find ourselves doing as leaders of the business.

Excessive social media browsing. Anyone guilty of that? I'll Just take a 10 or 15 minute break and next thing you know time has passed and you've just been spending the time looking at everyone else's perfect life on social media. Alright, by categorizing your task into this Eisenhower matrix, You can gain a real clear visual representation of where your time as leader of the business is best spent I want to give you an example of this. Imagine you run a small consulting firm and At At the moment, you're faced with the challenge of balancing client deliverables, managing your team, Business development So we're going to look at it and see what are the essential tasks out of this list Client deliverables and ensuring the satisfaction of existing clients are paramount Because without this, the core of our business is compromised. So those are essential tasks. 1st step are critical tasks. Maybe an upcoming business pitch to a potential high value client While this isn't immediately essential for our survival, Securing this new client could significantly impact our business growth. So we wanna put that in the critical category.

And then desirable. Well, we've wanted for a while a new project management tool to role enhance our team collaboration and management of the team Now you can see while this is valuable, it's not as urgent as your client deliverables or the upcoming pitch. So by applying the essential, critical, and desirable framework along with the Eisenhower matrix, you can strategically allocate your time and resources, ensuring that you not only survive but thrive in the midst of overwhelming demands. Alright, I want to just take this 1 step further and talk a little bit about some time management techniques that I have been able to put in place in my business and also help my clients with that I think you'll find helpful as well. Because as a leader, recognizing what requires your personal attention versus what can be delegated, empowers your team, and fosters a culture of trust and collaboration. So we have to keep that in mind all the life. What is most important for me as leader to be doing? Alright, a couple of time management tips Time blocking Allocating specific blocks of time to different categories of tasks. So as an example, you write reserve part of your morning for essential tasks.

That's not checking your email first thing in the morning. You might take some time in the afternoon for those critical tasks, and Then allocate a small portion of your day for the desirable tasks You see how strategizing that great big to do list and then allocating your time appropriately can really make a difference in in your business growth Day, tip number 2 for time management is applying the Pomodoro Technique and if you haven't heard of this before it's really about breaking your work into intervals Traditionally you would work for 25 minutes straight And then separate that by like a 5 minute break, get up, take a walk, have a drink, have a bathroom break, say hello to your family, Make a quick call, whatever that is for you. But you want to have focused time when you're intensely working on a certain task. And I find this works really well for those essential tasks and those critical tasks So you focus intensely on one essential task for 1 pomodoro routine or 1 25 minute focus block. And then take a little break, And then you're gonna shift and do something different. Shift to a critical task next. And that really allows your mind and your focus to be on one thing for a dedicated sense of life. Gets rid of those interruptions, gets rid of bouncing back and forth from task to task.

Really focus time to get some solid work done. And then the last time management tip I have for you today is batching. So grouping similar tasks together And addressing them during 1 dedicated timeslot So as an example, block off time when you're going to respond to essential emails all at once Growth through them, get them done Look at the email, decide what needs to be done, and do it And then from there, you can move on to the critical tasks. This really helps minimize context switching, which is where we're bouncing back and forth from one thing to another. We go in our email. Oh, we read the email then we're back over. Oh, now our team is on Slack. We read the Slack Message, we reply.

Now back to that email, we have to read the email again. Oh, ding. There's something else on Facebook. Let's go look at that. And before you know it, we're is bouncing around from task to task, and we haven't focused and done anything solid. So I want you to batch profit. Now is my time for doing emails. I'm going to roll through all my emails.

Now is my time for recording podcasts. As I'm gonna record 2 or 3 episodes right now and get it done. Now is my time for creating new content. I'm gonna make those new lessons and record a CEO. Whatever that looks life, but batch like things together makes it so much easier on your mind. By incorporating these techniques into your daily routine, you can optimize your time, enhance your focus, and mitigate that overwhelming feeling when Things just seem like they're too much No matter how urgent the situation the key to saving time and keeping those feelings of overwhelm under control is to prioritize By prioritizing and executing efficiently essential, critical, and desirable tasks, You'll save yourself hours, and we all know how precious time is. The journey from overwhelm to productivity They really starts with our mindset, a conscious effort to prioritize effectively. And by categorizing tasks into essential, critical, and desirable, and implementing strategies like the Eisenhower matrix and time management techniques, You can reclaim control over your time and steer your business towards success Remember, feeling overwhelmed is a common experience as a busy business leader But it's how you navigate through it that sets the stage for your success. So embrace the power of prioritization, save those precious hours, and watch as your business flourishes in the face of challenges.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay productive and inspired. Thank you for joining me on this episode of CEO Amplify. I appreciate you being part of our thriving community of ambitious business owners. If you enjoy today's episode, Kindly ask you to share this podcast with a friend and take a hot minute to rate and leave a review. It would mean the world to me. Your feedback helps you reach more people and continue providing valuable content. Thanks so much for your support. Keep shining, and we'll catch you on the next episode.