As we’re approaching the end of the year, most of us are thinking about how we want this next year of our lives to look — what are your goals, hopes, dreams and desires for 2017?
This is the perfect time to set an intention for next year. In my home we celebrate Diwali (even though we’re not Hindu). Diwali is the Festival of Lights and Hindu New Year. It’s a time to release any darkness from your heart and home and set your intentions for the New Year to be a year of good health, prosperity, peace and harmony.
Even if you’re not Hindu, I encourage you to light a candle tonight (or any night) and set your intentions for a beautiful new year.
Once you’ve set your intentions and desires for 2017, the next step is to become as effective and efficient as possible so that you can actually fulfill on your intentions and desires. Today I am going to share with you three easy ways to being a more effective and efficient travel agent so that you can achieve your goals in 2017.
“Time is special in a sense that it cannot be recaptured once it has passed. If it has passed it is gone, and our unknown remaining supply will only reduce further. So we better make good our time and make it as productive as it can be.” – Lodewijk van den Broek
But what is productive time?
Productivity, put simply, is effectiveness and efficiency combined.
Effective Time: Doing What You Want to Be Doing
Spending your days doing (for the most part) what you want to be doing, requires you to be clear on what your priorities are in the 4-5 major areas of your life. Then structuring your activities and tasks around fulfilling on those priorities.
It’s really easy to get caught up in day-to-day minutia and a never-ending to-do list of things we think need to get done.
When we take a step back and create a clear vision of what we ACTUALLY want our life to look at, and then structure everything around fulfilling on that vision — things get easier and more enjoyable, more gets done and it feels smooth and almost effortless.
Efficient Time: Doing Things the Easy Way
At first glance “doing things the easy way” seems like a DUH! But we humans love to over-complicate things (myself included).
Here are a few of my best tips for getting things done the easy way:
1. Do things only once.
When you touch the same thing – a task, project, email, voice mail, piece of paper, file, or whatever, more than once, in most cases you’re wasting time. Have a system set up for handling paper and files that makes it easy for you to process them quickly – so you only have to touch them once – same with your tasks, projects, voice mails, and email. Have a system that allows you to touch once (or twice if need be) and then move on.
2. Automate as much as possible.
One of the easiest things to automate is your “Reminders”. Programmed into my Google Calendar, I have reminders on when to change things like my furnace filters, water filter, electric toothbrush head, and so on. I never have to think about when to do those things. They pop up on my calendar automatically year after year.
In the Travel Expert Marketing Academy, we show you how to set up an effective marketing system and automate it as much as possible.
3. Delegate.
It sounds simple, but in my experience there’s an art to delegation. First, you need to be delegating repetitive tasks that are under control. If you hand someone a mess, chances are, they will hand you back a bigger mess along with a bill for their time spent making your mess bigger. Of course I’m generalizing here, that’s not always the case, but generally speaking it is. Create a list of tasks that you do on a regular basis that could be delegated (they don’t require your specific expertise). Then create an S.O.P. for the task.
S.O.P. = Standard Operating Procedure
Your S.O.P. should be some type of detailed and clear checklist or set of instructions. Then, find the right type of person to delegate the task to.
In the Travel Expert Marketing Academy, we talk about delegating quite a bit and we give you marketing SOP’s to follow, or to give to someone else to follow for you. Also, in the Academy we just released a new Advanced Module that shows you the two key principles in the book Smarter Better Faster. It’ll supercharge your effectiveness and efficiency and help you achieve your goals. If you’re not yet a member of the Academy, come join us!
Now I’d love to hear from you! In the comments below please share your best tip(s) for being highly productive.
Love & Success,
Heidi and Your Marketing Team
