From Overwhelm to Efficiency: How I Transformed My Business (and My Life)

From Overwhelm to Efficiency: How I Transformed My Business (and My Life) by Prioritising High Impact Tasks

In the early years of my business, I was working seven days a week, feeling like I was drowning under the weight of everything I had to do as a business owner and mum to two boys. I never seemed to do anything but work, but even so, my business wasn't growing the way I wanted it to. After a particularly rough patch, I knew something had to change: either I closed the business or make some big changes. I really, really didn't want to close down, so I took  a step back and got really clear on how I was spending my time. When I took a close look, I realised much of what I was doing was just busywork. That's when everything changed.

The Turning Point: Identifying High Impact Tasks

The first part of changing how I was working was identifying the tasks that truly moved my business forward. High impact tasks are the things you do that align with your long term goals and drive your business toward success. But how do you identify these kinds of tasks?

1. Revisit Your Goals: Go back to your 3 to 5 year vision and your 12 month plan. What are the key milestones you need to achieve this month to get you to those 12 month goals?
2. Time Track: Write down everything you do in a week. This will help you see where you’re really spending your time.
3. Evaluate Impact: For each task that's on your to do list, ask yourself: Does this move me closer to my goals? If the answer is no, you need to find a way to get it off your plate.

How to Prioritise Tasks

Once I got clear on what my high impact tasks were, the next challenge was to prioritise them. Here are some of the tools that worked for me:

• The Eisenhower Matrix: This simple tool helps you categorise tasks into four quadrants: Urgent and Important, Important but Not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important, and Neither Urgent nor Important. Your aim is to work only on tasks in the first two quadrants.
• Time Blocking: Allocate specific blocks of time in your calendar for high impact activities. The key is to treat those blocks of time as non negotiable appointments with yourself.
• Daily Top Three: At the end of each day, write down the top three tasks for tomorrow that will have the biggest impact on your goals. Do these first before anything else.

How to Focus on the Most Important Tasks

Even with the best intentions, it's easy to get pulled back into busywork. Here’s how I learned to stay focused:

• Regular Reviews: Weekly planning and reviews helped me stay focused on my goals and adjust my priorities as needed.
• Accountability: I shared my goals and progress with a mentor and my team, which kept me accountable.
• Delegation: By creating systems and hiring a team, I was able to delegate low impact tasks. This freed up my time for high impact activities.

How I Went From Overwhelmed to Organised

When I realised that my job as the business owner was to focus on the high impact tasks that drove the business forward, it changed my thinking completely. I hired an assistant to take the day to day admin tasks off me. As most of these were tasks that I didn’t really like doing anyway, my energy levels lifted. The best part? She not only loved dealing with all that stuff, she was better than me at it, and it all got done (instead of shoved aside like I’d been doing).

I stopped automatically jumping in to help the team when they were busy, and instead I started to focus on how we could reduce their “busy-ness” and streamline the tasks that they were doing. We got super efficient in our delivery.

As a result, I went from working 7 days a week to working less than 20 hours a week. My business skyrocketed to seven figures. I was working less, getting more done, and actually growing the business. I even managed to go on some 5 week, long distance holidays to with my family without feeling like I should have been working while we were away.

Take the First Step

If you're feeling overwhelmed and stuck in busywork, it's time to make a change. Start by getting clear on your high impact tasks and prioritising them, and see what it does for your business and your life.