Naturally in summer you want to relax, enjoy the sun, outdoors, and spend time with the family.

After all you’ve survived the last 6 months of winter and smashed Q1 goals.

For some businesses, this may be your downtime or slow season. This is the case for The CEO Partner. Most of our clients are taking time off to be with kids, preparing for fall launches, or working on internal process improvement projects.

For others this may be the busy season in your business. 

Either way work continues.

The best way to  supercharge your productivity is by learning to manage your Time Drains.

What is a “Time Drain”?  

Time Drains are things that eat away at your time and keep you from checking the box on your priority task list. 

Keep in mind, time drains aren’t necessarily time wasters. 

They are the sneaky things that you can control and create better habits around. They won’t harm your productivity if you can effectively manage them. 

Let’s see who you can make the most of your productivity with plenty of time for fun this Summer!

Here are 5 ways to get you started.

Tips to stop draining time on EMAIL

Are you a compulsive email checker? 

Do you quickly check your inbox throughout the day… several times?

Email is the biggest time drain. 

In business today email is important and you want to be responsive when someone is trying to get in touch with you. But having your email constantly open… is a time drain. 

There are several ways you can better manage your email and reduce the time you spend on it. 

One is to establish a time during the day for handling emails. Some emails only need a quick reply from you, but others are more involved. Create a scheduled time for reading and responding to these important emails. 

If there’s a particularly urgent email, add responding to it to your daily action plan. Decide on its priority level and add it to your things to do. 

Another method for controlling email time is to set a time limit.  Check your email for twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the afternoon. When looking at your inbox, quickly choose the messages that are most urgent and require an immediate response. You only have twenty minutes, so you need to prioritize and make decisions quickly. 

Bonus tip:  Create email templates and ‘canned responses’ for similar emails or email responses you commonly send. 

How to stop losing time with SOCIAL MEDIA

You get online for one specific piece of information and before you know it you’re looking at cute baby photos and responding to DM’s.

Does that happen to you?

Social media is a particularly dangerous time drain. 

Log out of your social media accounts and only log in when you’re ready to focus on it for a specific length of time.

Use a social media scheduler to schedule your posts to all platforms.  Set time aside daily to comment and engage with your audience.

Turn off notifications from social media apps on your phone, and use any downtime, such as waiting in line at a store, to respond to messages via your mobile device.

If social media is part of what you need to do each day, add social media time to your daily schedule and stay on task when using it.

3 Ways to not lose time in MEETINGS

Meetings are not 100% unavoidable. Believe me I’ve tried.

However, you can keep meeting lengths to a minimum. Only discuss issues that can’t be easily discussed over email or slack. 

Organize meetings so that they are as short as possible and have a clear starting and ending time. 

Create a detailed agenda and timing for the meetings so that they stay focused on important business. And make sure people know what they need to do before attending the meeting. 

Create a weekly calendar where you have meetings on certain days, so that you have some focus work time blocks throughout your week.  I like to have meetings on Monday and Wednesday.

The #1 decision to make with ADMIN TASKS

The small tasks all seem like time drains, but they need to be done. 

These are tasks that are routine and mundane, and that anyone can do. 

Essential these tasks take away from the revenue generating, problem solving, creative or critical thinking work. They may take away from tasks that require your special skills; in other words, tasks only you can do. 

There are four ways to get rid of these mundane admin tasks: 

Eliminate: Ask yourself whether the task really needs to be done. Does it actually deliver any tangible result or is it just something you do out of habit? If it’s the latter, cross it off your to-do list permanently. 

Delegate: Find someone else on your team who can do the work for you. Find someone who is less busy or who has fewer specialized tasks and reassign the work to them. 

Outsource: Find help outside of your team for routine tasks. You can outsource many types of online tasks to a virtual assistant. 

Automate: Look for online tools, software programs and organizational tools that can help you handle repetitive work. 

Here’s why PLAYTIME will give you more time.

Sometimes we simply require time to play!

You’ll be surprised at how productive you return to work after you’ve had a few hours of play time.

Playtime gives you some time to take your mind off of the work. It’s okay to spend some of your time playing, but not all of it.

One idea is to indulge in your favorite fun activities during your break. When you lose focus or come to the end of a set working time, dive into some mindless entertainment to give yourself a break. Just make sure that you can easily pull yourself away from it and get back to work when you need to.

Set a timer for the end of your break.

Another idea is to set aside a certain time of day to indulge to your heart’s content. Naturally, the end of the day is perfect. After lunch is another good time to take an extended fun break. 

Don’t be afraid to play!