Are You Productive? Or Just Busy?

Sometimes I get caught in this trap: I spend time doing “stuff”, but after a while I realize that I haven’t actually accomplished much of anything. Sparkplugging’s WAHM 2.0 made this point of confusing being busy with being productive:

Too many people are mistaking busyness for productivity and as a result, they aren’t seeing results even though they feel like they are working hard. While some busy activities are important (IE filing), they shouldn’t pre-empt more important activities that actually make money.

I think a good point is made here. Sometimes we get caught up in doing things that take up time, but don’t really accomplish anything in terms of growing income from a home business. So, how do we figure out what will be productive and what just makes us busy? WAHM 2.0 offers this helpful guide to prioritizing your home business activities:

1. Figure out what is making money, and do those things first. Do your marketing techniques work? Focus more on the marketing techniques that translate into income. If you make a product, fulfill your orders before you doing anything else for the day.

2. Stay connected. After you get the money-making home business activities out of the way for the day, you can then focus on the connections that bring you contacts. Save the social media and email for after your direct money-making activities are accomplished. Then focus on the indirect money-makers associated with networking.

3. Clean up your home office. Organization is important. But it’s more important to make sure you are bringing in some money. WAHM 2.0 suggests that you hire someone to do the filing, forms, etc. if you have the means for it.

Time really is money. Look at how you spend your time, and determine whether you are really accomplishing anything, or if you are just keeping busy.