VISION. You will have a clear idea of where you want to go and how to get there. Often we know the end result, but do not see what it takes to get there. This is critical for your success. You cannot do what you cannot see first. Coaching will ask you questions to make sure your vision is strong.

MOTIVATION. You will know what you really want and understand your unique values and motives to keep you moving forward. Stop procrastinating, delaying and putting off because of fears, perfectionism and doubts.

FOCUS. You will be able to operate with clear priorities, doing what is most important things which will allow you to excel In the midst of ‘urgent’ demands and busy chaotic schedules and lives.

CLARITY. Each coaching session deepens your learning about how you work and think. Coaching also prepares you for action and supports you in getting crystal clear on the steps to take. By work with a coach, you will get a helicopter perspective so that you can return to your business and navigate quickly because you have taken time to assess where you are going. You will be able to see what is right in front of you and developed a plan to forge ahead.

ENERGY. You will find yourself working at your optimum potential. Why? When you are operating in line with your values, life just simply comes together in an easy way. Coaching will give you with the encouragement, momentum, and natural dynamics to operate more efficiently and effectively. You cannot get more hours in the day, but if you have more energy, you will get more done and feel great!

SPEED. You will be more effective. Through planning and strategizing, you will be able to eliminate ineffective methods and enhance those methods that are most natural to supporting you in reaching your goals quicker.

PRODUCTIVITY. You will simply get more done. Coaching will keep your goals clear and in line with your vision. Next, it ensures that what you are doing is important to furthering the bottom line, not just want is urgent, easy or obvious. Then, the regular accountability provides a structure that will keep you moving forward, so you can really get it all done.

RESULTS. Through regular coaching and consistent follow-up, you will increase your bottom-line results. Profits. Clients. Personal Passions. Weight Lose. Whatever your objective is, coaching is a strategic partnership to support you in getting what you want as quickly as possible. If you are ready and motivated, you can actually double what you accomplish in a period of time.

SUCCESS. You will be more successful. Through keeping focused on what you want, the goals and the plan, coaching helps you keep the big picture in mind while you implement the small steps. While focusing on the goals, coaching monitors the balance in your whole life, so you are not distracted with life pulls but have all the elements of your life complimenting your actions. Before you know it, your goal is complete!

Christy Geiger, Executive Business Coach & Trainer, Minneapolis, MN

1) Your ability to be self aware and adjust as needed.
2) Your level of orderliness.
3) Your skill level to think through and plan.
4) Your discipline to be repetitious and effective.
5) Your willingness to collaborate and receive support.

The following assessment will help you evaluate how you are doing with productivity and begin to explore how you might increase your results.

Click here to download a Productivity Assessment

Christy Geiger, Executive Business Coach & Trainer, Minneapolis, MN

To order this book, click here.

Christy Geiger, Executive Business Coach & Trainer,  Minneapolis, MN

Here are 5 strategies to EMPOWER your productivity through Organization. This is organization of the mind.

1. Brain dump. What is on your mind? What needs to be done and how much time will it take? What can be delegated and what do you have to do?

2. Mind map. Push yourself to think beyond your brain dump, what else is there? You can write several columns with these headings or make circles with these in the middle and then list or make “lines” off your circles with what else might need to be considered: Look at work (marketing, business development, clients, staff, administration, finance, etc.), family, home/car, volunteer activities, meetings/events, friends/fun, money, health, and any others that have significant action items.

3. Park it. Use the concept of a “parking lot” to put things that are concepts or ideas, not urgent or important, and can be done later. Keep this as a post-it, task list or sheet of paper, as new things pop into your mind, you can jot them down to manage later. (These are non-task items)

4. Plan & Schedule. Mark the items that are very important or urgent and then plot out the next day or two of when you will do what and leave the rest of the list. Specify when you will do what so you can work through your list in a disciplined fashion. Plan blocks of time to manage phone calls, interruptions and other things that might get you off your schedule.

5. Book mark. Use a future to do list or a planning tool like Outlook to assign the other tasks that will be handled in a few days, next week, or in the future. This way you can get them out of your brain and know that you will not forget them. Our minds are like computers. The more windows and things open, the slower it runs. Likewise, the more things you try and hold in your mind, the slower you run.

Get everything out. Put it in the proper place (parking lot idea list, on a day schedule or bookmarked in a task list) and get going on the task at hand. Stay focused and do not divert. You will be amazed at how you make progress and how good you feel!

• look at fear
• understand how it holds us back 
• teach us how to overcome it so that we can do what we need to do to be effective and valuable  

Maybe…

• …you are an effective and thriving professional but you fear outgrowing your position if you do what it takes to be at your full potential. 
• …you are considering a change and you fear losing the security of your current position. 
• …you desire simplicity, but fear letting go and not having as much stuff or that you will need it if you get rid of it.  
• …you know you need to advance your education but fear letting go of some current expenses and commitments to have enough time and money to go back to school.
• … you are feeling the fire to stand up for yourself but you fear being criticized or looking stupid if you open your mouth.  

2) Use ONE calendar. Sometimes people will have several calendars. One for family and one for work; one electronic and one paper. Keep ONE calendar for everything. Use different colors or type styles to differentiate categories.

3) Make a to-do list at the end of each day. Your mind naturally begins to work on the list as you sleep. When you awake, you are ready to work, are very productive and organized. Estimate how much time each thing will take you and only put on your next day’s to do list what is reasonable to get done.

4) “Eat That Frog” first. This is a Brian Tracy concept to do the hardest thing you have to do all day, first, before you do anything else. Doing this will provide you with the feeling of success in having a ‘burden’ off your back and give you momentum to accomplish the remaining tasks.

5) Have a clear goal and read it daily. When you have a goal you know what to focus on and work toward. If you do not have this at the front of your mind, it is easy to get caught up with the urgent things of the day or trapped in reacting to e-mail, phone calls, interruptions and other people’s emergencies.

6) Have a “power hour”. Designate one hour each day to close the door, shut down e-mail, turn off the ringer on the phone and guard yourself from interruptions. Have a pre-picked project that you will work on during this time only. Make sure to go to the bathroom, get a drink, and do whatever else you need to in order to ensure you do not leave once this hour starts. Give yourself 30 minutes after this hour to return calls, e-mails and care for people with whom you need to follow-up that you missed during the POWER HOUR.

7) Touch it once.  Sort through, e-mail, mail, papers, etc. and make a decision. File it, toss it or put it in a place for action. Sorting bins are helpful for this. Label your bins, folders, e-mails, etc. with things like: read, file, do this week, urgent, bills, etc. Paper, soft copy (computer), and e-mail folders should all have matching labels.

Have daily habits. After you develop a routine of things that are simple but important, your body will naturally do them. This is important because we can get distracted by our regular routines and use them as vices to interrupt, procrastinate and prolong important things that really need to get done. If you start your day right, you will be ready to do those urgent and important tasks, increasing your everyday productivity.

9) Prep. Have you ever been amazed on cooking shows how they make a complicated dish in 10 minutes? OK, part is edited TV time, but they also have everything preped for quick assembly. Why not do the same? Prepare your information packets and new client folders, turn common documents into templates, set up e-mail distribution lists for teams, etc.

10) Maximize car systems. Listen to a book on CD/tape to maximize your windshield time and learn. Have a bin to put important things in rather than having them all over the car. Have a trash bag to catch the liter. Always have a bottle of water in the car with you; dehydration causes fatigue, memory loss and low concentration. Make sure your contacts are portable (palm, planner, business card file book, etc.) so you keep people and numbers at your fingertips (call if running late or caught in traffic, if you remember something while out and a quick call can take care of it). Enjoy relaxing, breathing and taking in the day while driving (rather than cleaning, talking on the phone, etc.)

Be the master of your domain. When you implement a few simple productivity strategies and develop them as time saving habits, you will quickly enjoy the benefit of more time and energy and overall increased productivity.

1) Assess how you are spending your time. Here are a few common time eaters to watch out for:

• You have a long list of things to do and focus on all the little thing so you can mark off more things in an hour.
• You are straightening, cleaning or micro-working.
• You are spending hours on e-mail.
• You can’t find things and spend a lot of time looking and discovering things you have not seen in a long time.
• You spend social/idle time on the phone.
• TV, newspaper, errands & shopping (things that don’t contribute to bottom line)
• Maintenance items that absorb time
• Internet, computer games, chat rooms, etc

2) Identify your weakness. Look at what is holding you back from doing the really important things on your list. Some common reasons our “BIG” projects are not accomplished are:

• Lack of planning
• Lack of time
• Overwhelmed with the project
• Lack motivation
• Distractions/Interruptions
• Other priorities
• Emergencies
• Tired & frustrated
• Lack of resources
• Lack of clarity of vision
• Excuses (life)

3) Create a routines and strategies for how you operate.

• Simple and effective Daily Habits.
• 10 min. daily pick-up time.
• Keep a clean desk.
• Check e-mail 3x a day; limit time to 30 min. for each checking.
• Touch it once and put it in its place (file it, toss it, etc.)
• Pick one big project you need to do each day and complete it before doing anything else
• Keep a weekly plan of activities with the top 5 things you will do each day
• Keep regular tools as your fingertips (healthy snacks, water, books, Palm, etc.)
• Develop management systems – templates for things you do often.
• Block one hour a day for quiet time to focus exclusively
• Pick one news source & read as reward for task completed.
• Have a system to organize contacts, calendar and tasks (Outlook is a great tool)

Bottom-line.When you have systems in place and are neat and organized you can get more done. When you do what is important first, it will free your energy to have the big project done and also give plenty of time for all the little things. When you assess, identify and strategize you will easily maximize your productivity!

If you take your list, budget how much time important tasks will take, you can then plan them into your day better. If you have a 10 minute task, you can plan that for a 15 minute downtime period. If you don’t do this, people usually take 10 minutes just to figure out what they are going to do and then they only have 5 minutes left to do something, which is not enough time, so then nothing gets done (or they start a project and are stressed and then late for the next appointment.)

It also helps you to plan your day to see that you need 2 hours of blocked time to eat your frog (the #1 most important to do). This way you can plan your day to get that big thing off your plate. I guarantee when you get the weight of a large project off your back first thing in the morning, you will be super charged and excited for the rest of your day. Then knowing what you will do, how long it will take you and “budgeting” when you will do it, creates a clear focus and drive for you to accomplish many more things in your day.

Action:
* Take your prioritized list of to dos and write behind each how much time each will take (pad more time then less time)
* Look at your schedule for the day and plan when you will do which tasks. If you have a large tasks, see how you can break it down into parts that fit into your day.
* Write specifically what you will do on the calendar. (i.e. budget 1 hour to write newsletter. Have a 15 minute opening in the AM; plan to write the intro to the newsletter.)