Do you often get to the end of the day and can’t pinpoint what exactly you got done that day?
It can be frustrating when you have been busy all day, yet no progress seems to have been made. You still have so much to do, with deadlines slowly approaching and some already passed.
Nothing seems to be getting done!
You could spend the day busily putting out fires, doing favors for people, and handling tasks that came up abruptly. But your work still needs to get done.
So why is it that you never seem to be productive as a marketer?
And more importantly, how can you shift this around and start making progress?
Plan and Prioritize for Increased Productivity for Marketing Teams
The most critical thing to do to become more productive is to plan ahead and prioritize. Plan what you will be doing beforehand, and prioritize what’s most important.
Now think of your day; how do you decide what to do for the day? Do you often find yourself spending large chunks of time on tasks that came out of nowhere?
Do you also find yourself doing many things at once, starting one thing, stopping in the middle, and starting something else?
This happens to the best of us.
When you have a lot that needs to be done, it can get overwhelming. And that’s where planning comes in. Preparation helps you get things in order and save on time!
These three tips can help you plan your work life better, increase productivity, and prioritize what’s important to hit those marketing goals.
1. Pick Your Weekly Big Three
You probably have an idea of all the things you’d like to get done: create a monthly editorial calendar, update social media content, reach out to potential partners, create a progress report, and the list goes on.
You have a whole list of tasks that must be done; too long a list maybe. And that’s where we start.
With that long list, pick out three major tasks that you will do in the week (we borrowed this magical number from Michael Hyatt’s 3 X 3 goal achievement strategy).
Why pick just three?
If you don’t limit your major tasks to just a few manageable ones, you may end up with a long list of activities that takes you back to square one: scrambling to do a bit of everything.
So write down your three major activities, or type them out somewhere where you can easily come back to for reference.
2. List Your Daily Big Three
From your three weekly objectives, you can then come up with smaller tasks for each day.
Every night before you go to bed, or in the morning before you start working, think through what you need to get done that day.
It’s important to do this step before you start working. You already know that emergencies can come up — tasks that may distract you from your goal of the day.
With a plan for the day, you make it easier for yourself to stay on task. Know what amount of extra work you can and can’t take on for that day.
For instance, let’s say you were responsible for planning a virtual roundtable event in a few weeks. Your plan for week one could be to reach out to possible participants.
You can further divide this weekly task into daily tasks. One day could be spent researching and compiling a list of potential interviewees, and the next day could be for creating and sending out the email.
Once you decide what to add to your list, as you did for weekly tasks, record them somewhere.
Pro Tip: Record your list of tasks in a way that you can tick them off once done. Checking off tasks is so rewarding! You can see your productivity increase and see where your time went when you mark a task complete.
So now that you have a list of things to do, how do you get them done?
3. Calendar blocking - Block Time on Your Calendar
Every work day, pick a time in your day, a couple of hours maybe, and block off that time.
- Mark your calendar as busy for anyone who may otherwise try to add a meeting or call in that time slot.
- Put away or silence anything that may bring in more tasks, turning off notifications and phone ringers that would allow other things to distract you.
- Prioritize those few hours and dedicate them to working on the items you listed before. And no matter what, that time you picked needs to be for your Big Three To-Do list.
- Have checkpoints within the week to see how far you are and assess if you need to shift anything around. Maybe you got more done and have space for some additional tasks, or maybe you underestimated the time it would take and need to allocate more time to certain tasks.
Measure your progress as you go, and keep tweaking the lists as needed.
That’s it!
This is the simple yet crucial way to get more things done.
Try this approach out this coming week. For just one week, use the tips we shared with you and watch productivity for your SaaS marketing teams increase.
