By Emily Morrow, Director of Editorial Content, SAP Customer Experience

Mindfulness at work is something we’re hearing a lot about these days. It’s supposed to make our lives better, but what is it?

We associate mindfulness with things like meditation, yoga, and deep breathing, and know that it’s supposed to make us less stressed and more productive. But nailing down a practical, tangible explanation of what it means to be mindful, live mindfully, or practice mindfulness on a day-to-day basis can be challenging.

Let’s take a few minutes to define this seemingly nebulous topic and learn how you can actually work it into your already busy life.

Mindfulness explained: What it is, what it isn’t, and how to get there

Lots of explanations go something like: Mindfulness is the practice of being in the present moment, and accepting it in a non-judgmental way.

This sounds nice, but doesn’t provide much clarity.

Let’s start with what mindfulness isn’t.

Mindfulness isn’t yoga, and it isn’t meditation. Those are both extremely useful methods to improving mindfulness, but are not the thing itself. While “mindfulness” feels a bit harder to nail down, most people understand what it means to be mindless.

When someone is acting mindlessly, they’re usually lacking purpose, direction, or attention. We all know what it feels like to mindlessly scroll through our social media feeds, or mindlessly binge a series on Netflix. We’re there, but maybe only halfway. Our minds are wandering, without purpose or focus, and we become disengaged. We’re running on auto-pilot.

Mindfulness means the opposite: Being present and engaged with what’s happening in the moment. It’s engaging with purpose and attention....Click here to continue reading

4 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Improve Their Time Management Skills

Managing time has become an all too real struggle for entrepreneurs these days. With so much to do in both their work and personal lives, it can be challenging to get things done in during a day. There are many ways for entrepreneurs to improve their time management skills to help them get more accomplished in less time. Here are four ideas for entrepreneurs to enhance their time management.

Make a Schedule and Stick to It

You can start to improve your time management skills by taking the time to organize your days and weeks in advance. While there will always be surprises that you'll have to deal with, you’re more likely to be able to tackle those surprises better because you have an idea about what tasks and responsibilities you have to deal with each day.

Prioritize

Learning how to prioritize is the second way to improve time management skills. If you want to execute your projects efficiently, then you have to decide which stages or components of the project are essential to your business. You have to be able to determine which activities and tasks will deliver the best returns for your business.

Set Boundaries

If you want to be able to work in peace, then you need to inform those you work with when you're not available. Your partners and employees can't read minds, so it is your job to set appropriate boundaries when necessary. Make sure that you communicate your limits in a polite, yet direct manner to ensure that you can have the time you need to work on essential tasks.

Account for Good Distractions

There will always be distractions that get the best of you, no matter how hard you try to avoid them. However, no one can work for hours on end, and to stay productive, we all need breaks. The best thing you can do is accept this reality and try to incorporate some distractions into your schedule. Try to block out some downtime every day. This might mean setting aside a few minutes to take a short walk, grab a cup of coffee, or find some other stress management activities that you can do.

Managing your time requires discipline, planning, and a healthy attitude. However, if you get it right, you will start to notice improved productivity and lower levels of stress.

Increase Your Productivity with These Daily Habits

Everybody wants to get more done and feel like they accomplished something at the end of the day. While there are millions of different tips for productivity out there, you can increase your productivity levels by changing a few daily habits. Here's how you can improve your productivity by changing the following daily habits.

Arrive Early, Stay Later

If you live in a congested city, you can save some time and beat traffic by starting your day earlier. When you're not wasting your time sitting in traffic, you can start working on your most essential tasks sooner. Your ability to save hours not sitting in traffic will drastically increase your productivity. Make it a habit to arrive early and stay a bit later, and you'll notice an increase in your productivity.

Plan the Night Before

Spending just 15 minutes before you go to bed creating and prioritizing your to-do list for the next day will give you a head start the following day. After you create your to-do list, spend a few minutes marking the tasks that are important to remind you that those tasks have to be done to push you forward in achieving your goals.

Have Lunch Outside the Office

While small, this habit can have a huge and powerful effect on how you work for the rest of the day. Using your lunch to get out of your work environment can refresh your creativity, significantly reduce your stress levels, and help you re-focus when it's time to get back to work. Consider taking a short walk to help clear your head and think about what you want to accomplish the rest of the day.

Minimize Distractions

Distractions are everywhere. If you work from a computer, you have the temptation of checking your social media and surfing the Internet, among other things. There are plenty of tools that can help you minimize these distractions. If you work in an office with a door, place a ‘do not disturb' sign up, so your coworkers know not to bother you.

Always Keep Your Goals in Sight

After you’ve set your goals, keep them in sight at all times. You want to write your goals down and keep them in a place where you will end up seeing them throughout your day. Being able to see your goals throughout the day will give you the motivation to get tasks done that move you closer to accomplishing them.

Changing these five habits will move you toward being a more productive person. Keep track of your results and watch as the small daily victories start to transform your life.

Improve Your Productivity With These Essential Time Management Hacks

It seems that the one thing that technology can’t help us create is more time. There are only 24 hours in a day, so if you want to increase your productivity, you need to have a better sense regarding time management. When it comes to managing your time it is essential to understand that time management isn't about trying to squeeze as many tasks as possible into a day but instead finding a way to work smarter. If you're looking to improve your productivity here are some essential time management hacks to help you along the way.

Get Enough Sleep

Often, our rest and sleep are sacrificed to gain more time in the day. Being well-rested, well-fed, and having a healthy body removes the distractions that will rob us of our time. When you can get enough sleep every night, your focus is sharper, your attention span is longer, and your quality of work is higher, which lends itself to an increase in productivity.

Plan Ahead

When you can take the time to outline the events of the coming day, you provide your mind with the time to work through the tasks while you are sleeping. This allows you to start your day with many of the subtle details already worked out. Before you go to bed each night, take a few minutes to evaluate what you achieved. Spend a few minutes clearing your workspace, and create a list of the tasks that you need to complete the following day.

Create Work Bundles

Various tasks that you have to perform require different skills and different ways of executing them. To save yourself time with re-orienting yourself between jobs, create work bundles. Grouping similar tasks together that require related skill sets will allow you to more easily flow from one segment or tasks to the next without a break.

Create Routines

There are some tasks that you work on that require little to no thought. You can create a routine for these kinds of functions that will allow you to accomplish them without becoming distracted from the real tasks at hand. Establishing routines is similar to your overall planning and execution, but with the sole intention of automation.

Work on the Hard Tasks First

We tend to tackle the easy tasks on our lists first because they don't take much time to complete, which will leave you with more time to work on more involved things. However, to increase your productivity, you should tackle the more difficult tasks first with your fresh energy, which will make the lighter tasks flow quickly.

When it comes to time management, there is always time for improvement. Try to take into account the above tips, and you will find yourself getting more done in less time.

Boost Your Productivity with These Essential Time Management Skills

If you're looking to become more productive with your time, then you have to understand that you need to make constant and never-ending improvements to the way that you work. Fortunately, there are many time management skills that you can improve that will help you become more productive. Here are several essential time management skills that can help you boost your productivity.

Goal Setting

Time management isn’t a standalone skill. While you can't manage time, you can control how you use your time. When it comes to your productivity, the way you use your time should be directly driven by effective goal-setting. The most fundamental skill when it comes to time management is your ability to use the time you have in a manner that serves your goals.

Prioritization

When it comes to prioritizing work tasks, most people attempt to prioritize the items that are on their to-do list. However, many of the things that appear on their lists are ones that shouldn't be on there. When it comes to time management, your prioritization efforts should start with eliminating tasks that you shouldn't be performing. When you've done this, then you can begin to focus on finishing the most valuable work with the time and resources that are available.

Self-Motivation

There will always be days that you don't want to do anything. On days like this, you have to be able to motivate yourself into action. When you can improve your self-awareness, you give yourself the information that you need to get yourself motivated to work. While you may have all the other time management skills necessary to remain productive, if you cannot motivate yourself, you'll find yourself bowing to stress and pressure.

Focus

Being able to shut everything out and focus on the task at hand is one of those time management skills that you don’t realize the importance of it until you struggle with it. The best way to achieve focus is to stop multitasking and identify the most crucial task and block the rest out.

Delegation

As an entrepreneur, you need to ensure that all the necessary work gets completed. However, that doesn't mean that you have to be the one to do it. One of the most vital time management skills that you can master is knowing when you're not the right person to perform the task. If you have a task that is more suited to someone else's skill set, then you should consider delegating those tasks.

If you want to get the best results from your work, then you need to improve your time management skills. As you start to improve your time management skills, you begin to enjoy a boost in your productivity and get more work done in less time.

5 Habits That Will Kill Your Time Management Efforts

Engaging and maintaining your productivity is a difficult thing to do for most people, especially when the Internet is just a mouse click away, and unfortunately, your bad habits are killing your productivity. Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. All it takes to get your productivity back on track is a little awareness and some quick action on your part. Here are six habits that will kill your time management efforts and decrease your productivity.

Multitasking

Of all the bad habits, one of the worst and most common is multitasking. Multitasking tricks you into producing incomplete, subpar work daily. When you fall into the habit of multitasking, you aren't doing multiple tasks at the same time, but rather you are giving partial focus to a single task while giving the majority of your attention to switching jobs.

Not Having a Work Routine

You’re setting yourself up for disaster if you are in the habit of working whenever you feel like it. It is essential you establish a work routine if you want to get your mind into a productive gear. Without a work routine, you will always go into your work mode cold, which can make getting into the zone much harder.

Being a Perfectionist

Another common productivity killer is perfectionism, which can manifest itself in many ways, including being thrown off balance when thing don't go your way or having unrealistically high work standards. When you set unrealistic standards for work, you will tend to work your tasks to death. This can lead to falling behind, which then causes a mountain of tasks to buildup.

Having a Giant To-Do List

When you are creating your to-do list, it can be easy to get overzealous and fill it with a dozen or more tasks, that you most likely won't be able to complete. If you can only finish half of your to-do list at the end of the day, it can lead to you feeling overwhelmed. Unfortunately, when you start to feel overwhelmed, you can quickly lose your momentum.

Being Indecisive

Indecision can quickly bring a productive work session to a halt. When you don’t know what to decide on, you end up sifting through the information you have and mentally rehearsing the pros and cons until you end up making a decision. Indecisiveness can eat up a lot of energy and willpower in the process and derail your work.

These are just a few of the bad habits that could be responsible for killing your time management efforts. If you find that your productivity is lacking, take a look at your daily habits to see if any of them could be sabotaging your time management efforts and productivity.

5 Ways For Entrepreneurs to Do Less and Accomplish More

Entrepreneurs are both blessed and cursed. On the one hand, they have more control of when, where, and what kind of work they do. On the other hand, most self-employed business people tend to end up working crazy hours. Fortunately, there are some simple ways for you to start to do less while accomplishing more.

Employ the 80/20 Rule

If you want to get more done in less time, then you need to create your daily work schedule around the Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Creating a daily work schedule using the 80/20 rule will allow you to spend 80 percent of your day working on the most critical tasks, and 20 percent of your time on the menial, but necessary tasks.

Disconnect

If you want to keep your mind fresh and your energy levels up, then you need to take a break from your work frequently. Don’t continue to work under the assumption that you have to work harder to accomplish your goals. Taking frequent breaks throughout the day and disconnecting from your email and phone calls, and stepping away on the weekends, will allow your brain to refresh and your body to recover.

Be Willing to Say “No”

Those who are highly successful have to contend with many demands on their time. It is essential that you know what it is you want to achieve and be willing to say no to other projects. Working less and achieving more is necessary for a balanced life. If you can’t achieve that balance, then you’ll quickly find yourself overwhelmed and on the verge of burning out. Prioritize your tasks and be willing to pass on other work and projects.

Have a Plan

While most entrepreneurs have a long-term plan on how they’re going to reach their goals, they fail to plan and prioritize their days. When you are scattered throughout the day, you aren’t able to maximize your time. If you want to get more done, then you need to set some time aside every evening to plan out and prioritize the tasks you need to accomplish the next day that will move you forward toward achieving your goals.

Outsource Where You Can

This doesn't just apply to work tasks that someone else would be better suited to complete. Think about the 20 percent of menial, but necessary jobs that you have to complete every day and determine if you can outsource them to a freelance or contract worker.

While it is impossible to restart your career overnight, taking these five time management strategies can significantly improve your productivity.

5 Practices for Entrepreneurs to Increase Their Productivity

Regardless of how successful you already are, like most entrepreneurs and business leaders you probably would like to become more productive. However, the work involved with managing a company can create a ton of stress, which inevitably leads to a decrease in your productivity levels. Here are five proven practices that you can use to increase your productivity dramatically.

Use Your Calendar

Most people only use their calendar to remember special events and birthdays, but this dramatically undermines the power that your calendar can serve in increasing your productivity. A simple strategy that can increase your productivity is to schedule the major tasks you have to accomplish during the day. Don't just create a to-do list with the functions you need to accomplish, but time block your most important tasks and projects that you need to get done.

Plan Your Day in Advance

Planning your day in advance can help you get a good night’s sleep because you won’t end up staying up all night trying to remember everything you have to get done the next day. It also helps you to wake up excited about attacking your day because you already know what you need to do instead of wasting time trying to make a plan.

Perfect Your Morning Routine

If you want to take your productivity to the next level, then you have to perfect your morning routine. How you start your day is an excellent indicator of how the rest of your day is going to go. You need to find something that works for you and start putting it on your calendar. If you want to increase your productivity, then you have to get serious about your morning routine.

Develop a Sense of Urgency

Not having a sense of urgency will not only keep you from increasing your productivity levels, but it will also keep you from reaching your full potential and achieving your goals. Create a trigger that will remind you to move forward with a sense of urgency. Whether you write a reminder down on a notecard or put it in your smartphone, you need to have something that will continuously remind you to get moving.

Limit Distractions

If you don’t make an intentional effort to limit the distractions around you when it’s time to work, your productivity will take a hit. Keep breaks to a minimum, limit chatter with others, and stop surfing the Internet when it’s time to get some meaningful work done.  

For entrepreneurs, every minute counts. To help you increase your productivity, put these five practices in place and notice how quickly you start to accomplish more throughout your day.

The Top 5 Time Management Apps for Entrepreneurs

Your time, as an entrepreneur, is valuable. Every minute you waste looking for your to-do list is a minute that you’re not earning money and building your business. Rather than hiring an assistant to help you keep track of your time, why not try one of these five time management apps for entrepreneurs.

Todoist

Todoist is an app that recognizes that not every task on your to-do list is equally important. You can create multiple products for different aspects of your life and business. As you add items to your agenda, you can set priority levels and due dates. Todoist will then show you the essential tasks with the nearest due date first.

Toggl

Toggl is an app that shows you how much time different tasks take to complete. This is the perfect time tracking app for entrepreneurs. Toggl allows you to track various activities with the touch of a button, then adds up how much time you are spending on that activity each day, week, and month. This can allow entrepreneurs to know their average hourly profitability for each client and task.

RescueTime

RescueTime can help you stop distractions once and for all. It runs securely in the background of all your devices and tracks how much time you spend on different websites and applications throughout the day. It will give you an accurate picture of how long you are spending on Facebook, email, and other distractions. It will provide you with detailed reports on your productivity so that you can see where you need to improve.

Letterspace

Letterspace is a notetaking app that is perfect for the disorganized mind. The app allows you to use #hashtags and @mentions within your notes and then organizes your thoughts in the sidebar next to those tags. If you forget to tag your notes, the app also has full-text search capabilities so that you can find what you're looking for easily.

Instapaper

If you ever get distracted by an interesting video or article, Instapaper can help you stay on track. Whenever you come across something while browsing the Internet, Instapaper will send it to the app. This way you can read it later on any device. It also allows you to comment on and highlight text in an article so that you can save and retrieve information as well as share it on social media.

These five time management apps will help you stay focused on what matters most so that you can quickly grow your business. Incorporate your favorite apps into your daily routine and see how much you can accomplish.

The 5 Best Ways to Dramatically Increase Productivity

Being productive at work can be challenging. It can be hard to know where to start managing your time in ways that are conducive to your productivity. No matter who you are, it can be a struggle to understand how to structure your time effectively. No matter who you are or what you do for work, you need to be on point with how to manage your time. Here are five of the best ways that you can dramatically increase your productivity.

Turn Off All Distractions

Every time an email pops up on your screen, every time your phone buzzes, or when your office door opens, your train of thought is destroyed. We all like to believe that we can both participate in a group chat and write our presentation, but the truth is, we can’t. Your best work comes with silence. If you want to increase your productivity, then you have to turn off all the distractions.

Stop Multitasking

It can be incredibly tempting to want to try and take care of several tasks at once. However, it has been proven that multitasking just doesn't work. If you think that you can efficiently juggle phone calls, emails, and presentations without losing your productivity, you're fooling yourself. If you want to increase your productivity, you need to focus on one task at a time.

Take Breaks

You might think that spending more time working will help you get more things done; however, when you're burned out, you will never work as well. Studies show that taking regular breaks during the day will dramatically help increase concentration and boost your mood. To help boost your productivity, take short breaks and walk around the office or grab a mid-day latte.

Implement the 2-Minute Rule

Make the most of your time by filling those tiny windows of downtime with actual tasks. Finding and completing tasks that take less than two minutes to finish will save you time during the day. If you have tasks that you can complete in two minutes or less, just jump in and do them.

Tackle the Biggest Tasks When You’re Alert

Understanding when you work best is key to completing the big projects on time. No set schedule works for everyone. If you're a morning person, tackle your big tasks when you first start your day.

Not every day will be productive, so don’t beat yourself up over it. Instead, try to refocus your energy and implement these productivity tips into your day. Once you find what works for you, you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done.