Let’s face it — with everything we need to do on a daily basis, we’re busy. Okay, we’re MORE than busy — we’re overloaded, overwhelmed and probably just a bit overtired. The last thing we want to try to do in that state is figure out what to do with our time. That’s why work routines are so important.
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
It’s the morning after a long night of getting up with take your pick: the baby, the fussy preschooler or annoying teenager and you are dead tired. You sit down at your desk and all you can do is stare blankly at the screen. This is where you need to have an autopilot routine ready to go so you can at least accomplish something!
5 Work Routines to Get You Through
Note: being overwhelmed and overtired is the one exception to the “fake-work” project rule. Normally, these trivial types of tasks go to the bottom of your list. If possible, use these tasks to get yourself going before moving onto your priority tasks!
#1: Email Sort and Purge — Make it your goal to get to the bottom of your inbox, starting with sorting your messages into different categories (From, Subject, Date, Flags, Attachments) in order to find the ones you can quickly get rid of and then go through the process of reviewing and responding to the rest.
#2: Calendar Create — Sit down and brainstorm 50 new ideas for your blog, newsletter, and follow-up email autoresponders. If you feel up to the challenge, try to write a line or two to remind yourself of the direction you had in mind, but if not, the topic or title will suffice for today.
#3: Paper Processing — Too tired to tackle creative work? Plow through that paperwork! Get the invoices ready to be sent, review your accounts receivables and send out reminders, file your expense reports, or gather paperwork for your year end! Whatever has to be filled out, filed or finished, today is the day to do it!
#4: Social Scheduling — Find 25 inspiring quotes to add to your social media calendar. You can either schedule them using tools like Hootsuite.com or SMQueue.com or if you are feeling up to the task, convert them into inspiring images for sharing via Facebook, Google+ or Instagram.
#5: Sales Send Outs — When was the last time you picked up the telephone, wrote a handwritten Thank you card or sent a prospect a link to a current news headline? Just because you can’t manage coherent thought doesn’t mean you can’t get things moving on the sales side.
