Productivity Redefined: The Key to Efficient Entrepreneurship

If you’ve been in the entrepreneurship space for any length of time then you know how much comes at you on the topic of productivity.

There are so many articles and influencers and businesses that are all about teaching you their perfect methods of productivity. Chelsey Newmyer has a different approach. She is all about personalized productivity!

She knows that everyone is different and therefore productivity looks different for everyone. She had enough of the generic one size fits all advice that didn’t really fit anyone at all. She created her business to help other entrepreneurs to be efficient rather than busy.

This conversation is filled with Chelsey’s practical advice to get you on your path to personalized productivity.

In This Episode:

• Personalized Productivity
• Why it’s important to work on the right things at the right time
• Time Blocking and how most people get it wrong
• How self-care works with your productivity

Personalized Productivity

Chelsey was always into productivity. In college, on her path to becoming an engineer she had a packed schedule – which she was a pro at managing. She realized that being an engineer was not the path for her, but after college she moved into working in the nonprofit space. She found that so many people praised her for how productive, efficient, and organized she is.

The final straw that drove Chelsey to start her business was reading a book from some high level corporate executive whose advice was to nap during the day and then mutli-task during meetings, and have your assistant prepare everything they possibly could. Which is great advice…if you are some high level executive who is not running the meetings and doesn't have an assistant and can’t justify a midday nap to your boss!

This began Chelsey's dive into personalizing productivity.

Productivity for me is making sure you are working on the right things at the right time to achieve your goals.

Personalized productivity is about understanding how you best work and creating your routines around what is necessary for you. There is no one size fits all-wake up at 5am type of advice here.

Chelsey even talks me through my own challenges of finding time for deep focus work.

Right Tasks at the right time

The best way to be productive is to work on the right tasks at the right time. It’s easy to say, but difficult to conceptualize. I love Chelsey’s advice here.

“When we look at it through the lens, do the right things at the right time to reach your goals. The right time [element] goes back to energy management… But the right thing goes to what is your goal. If your goal is to make 10K this month then changing your website colors probably isn’t going to help with that. But reaching out to 5 leads will.”

How do you find those right tasks? Chelsey got very practical here and told us exactly what she does to go from goal to tasks to completion.

1. Start with a brain dump – get everything out of your head so that you can get a birds eye view of your goal.
2. Batch like tasks together – create categories and separate your tasks into them (i.e creative work, administrative tasks, technical tasks, etc…)
3. Keep breaking down those tasks until they are in 15-30 minute incremental tasks.

Time Blocking

Time blocking is when you block off time of your calendar to dedicate to a specific task. You would typically block in time for all your tasks in a given day.

Chelsey says she is a fan of time blocking, but most people get it wrong! They get too specific and never give themselves a moment to breathe.

Chelsey blocks off her time then gives herself 1-2 to-do for that time period. She might look for days that she can batch her meetings together and she will also block in breaks. She also decides ahead of time what tasks she will work on ahead breaks between meetings so that none of her time is wasted scrolling on her phone.

Her week looks different from week to week, and that’s okay. When it comes to productivity, we have seasons of hyper efficiency then having to dial it back. Life is cyclical and that can be beautiful. We need to extend ourselves that grace to know that not every moment is going to be hyper-productive in the way you see on social media, on tv, and in articles.

Self Care and Productivity

I think we all logically know that taking care of ourselves correlates to how productive we are. However, we sometimes can get stuck in that mode of work and work harder – make it happen then we will rest. It’s an easy pitfall to get stuck in for sure, especially as an entrepreneur.

When the to-do list fills up the first thing to go is often our own rest, movement, or time away from our screens. Chelsey reminds us that self-care is productive. Self-care tasks such as rest, meditation, movement, or time off brings us back to our work refreshed and ready to tackle new things.

Without caring for ourselves we will get overwhelmed and burned out which is going to decrease your overall productivity.