Your Guide to Remaining Productive Even on Non-Productive Tasks

There are two things that are productive in business: serving clients and attracting clients. Everything else is not productive. Many of these tasks don't fall into the category of "counterproductive", but they are not doing anything to grow your business. These non-productive tasks are things like: bookkeeping, filing, reading emails (unless it's an email needed to service a client), shopping for supplies, etc. While these tasks are often necessary, they aren't productive. They aren't going to make you any more money in the long run. So why do freelancers waste their time on such tasks?

Well, most small businesses doesn't start off productive. As a matter of fact, most business owners spend countless hours doing things that don't grow their business. They can run a one or two man show giving up their time to do things themselves instead of paying others. More often than not, they aren't able to afford to pay anyone else to do these things. New business owners are much more "stingy" (for lack of a better term) with their money, and they should be. After all, according to the Small Business Administration, over 50% of small businesses fail within the first five years. The time from launch to maturity of a startup is critical. There must be money available to continually reinvest in the business. If this is spent passing off non-productive tasks, the average small business owner/freelancer can easily find themselves in a bind.

It's simple enough to find someone else to do the work for you, but it's more challenging (and arguably more rewarding) when you find a way to do it yourself. I know what your next question is -- there are only 24 hours in a day. How can I make time for these activities when I should really be growing my business? That's a great question.

The best thing for you to do is to review how you spend your day. That means it's time to start tracking your time. How much time do you actually spend working? Are you spending too much time reading blogs (other than this one), browsing social networking sites, etc.? Once you know how your time is spent, you are then able to figure out where to "trim the fat". If you spend over an hour per day on social networking sites, that is probably too much. Try cutting it down to 30 minutes to see if that will allow you more time to work on those non-productive tasks.

Do you have any other ideas for staying productive while running a small shop?

Posted in: non-productive,remaining productive,staying productive