In Life…

Turn off the TV. Even if we only spend one or two hours a day watching television, consider what else we could do with 7-14 extra hours per week in our own life instead of watching other people’s lives. What if we spent that time reading, hanging out with family, learning a new hobby, exercising or working on our business?

In Social Media…

Reorganize Facebook. Unfriend, unlike or hide status updates from friends and businesses that don’t interest you.  If that seems too drastic, select the option to receive “only important” updates for anyone who isn’t a close friend. By cutting back on the amount of updates, games and photos in the newsfeed, we can spend more time nurturing, maintaining and building relationships with the people and businesses that matter most to us. Last month, I spent approximately one hour reorganizing Facebook this way and the results have been incredible. I spend considerably less time on Facebook but get much better results and relationships from the time I do spend on it because I am connecting and building relationships with the people and businesses I really care about.

Twitter Columns. If it seems extreme to unfollow people, use a tool such as Tweetdeck or HootSuite to organize people into particular columns to make Twitter more manageable. For example, you may have a column for event professionals, a column for celebrities and a column for health (or whatever your interests are). Or, you could have a column for “Must Read” and a column for “Read If I Have Time”. Columns also help with the conversation flow among particular groups of people you follow. Having organization for Twitter allows us to spend less time reading unimportant updates and more time focusing on the people we really want to hear from and interact with (much like reorganizing Facebook).

In Your Career…

Set 2-3 time slots per day to read and respond to emails. As event planners, email is a huge part of what we do but when you have to work on diagrams, design plans, inspiration boards or event schedules, close your email and focus on the task at hand. Multitasking seems like we are accomplishing more but the reality is that it takes 2-3 times longer to accomplish a task because we have to keep refocusing our attention and thoughts. Our brain never has the chance to reach maximum potential and creativity because we keep distracting it.

Schedule meeting days and office days. If you own your business or if you can generally set your schedule, choose certain days to be in the office all day to work on events and office tasks. Then schedule meeting days with multiple meetings in one day, ideally at the same location. Some event planners set every other day as an office day to stay ahead on client work and email. This way of scheduling increases our productivity because we spend less time getting ready, less time traveling around for meetings and less time refocusing between work and meetings.

Create Your “Right Now” task list. At the end of the day, especially on Fridays, create your “Right Now” list of the 2-3 must-do tasks for the next work day. It’s easy to forget the important things that need done or to get overwhelmed by a huge to-do list. With a “Right Now” list, we can start our day by immediately focusing on the most important tasks BEFORE getting distracted with email or social media.

Which one of these ideas can you try today?