The post A Minimalist Approach to Business appeared first on Crewdo.

Running a business is hard.

Running a business with unnecessary distractions is even harder.

Simplified systems and processes are the keys to maintaining your sanity as an entrepreneur and can also directly impact your bottom line. If you feel like you are drowning in work, forgetting important tasks or deadlines and generally feeling overwhelmed I am making this video for you.

I am a co-founder of two businesses Beavr (Aesthetic Marketing Services) and Medical Resale and also have a young family at home. For me to give 100% to all facets of my life it is important for me to maintain some sort of order. Part of this is simplifying the way I run my business and utilising technology to make my business life easier.

In this video, I am going to show you my thought process and also the tools I use to apply digital minimalism in my business life. Let’s get into it.

Email is an important aspect of conducting business but it can also be a headache to manage.

A simple method to taming your email conundrum is to treat your inbox like a to-do list and aim to maintain a zero inbox at the end of every day. This means when you finish for the day you can rest easy with the peace of mind of knowing your emails have been actioned.

Now, I am not saying you have to reply to every email but rather only check your emails periodically throughout the day and apply the A.T.I.D method.

This stands for Action, Task, Ignore, Delegate.

If there is an email that arrives. If you can take action right away and reply, do it. If it requires a bit more work, Create a task (I use Trello which I will touch on shortly so keep watching). If it has no value ignore it. If someone else can do it delegate it.

Once you have selected an action simply archive the email in your inbox.

For those that are panicking about finding emails if you need to find an email just search for it in All Mail section of your email application. If you use Gmail for business they make searching for emails really simple.

The next method for simplifying your online life is to centralise all of the main applications you use on a daily basis.

For me, I use a variety of applications for Like Gmail, Google drive for file management, Trello for Task Management, Slack for communicating with my remote team and Basecamp for project management.

I used to always have a large number of tabs open in my browser which always resulted in me trying to multi-task and end up taking twice as long to complete anything. Until I found an app called shift.

Shift is an application that helps me centralise all of my main applications so that they are available to me without having to open my web browser. This app helps me stay on the task at hand and saves me a tonne of time trying to find the right tab on my browser.

Next method is removing distractions.

Time is our most important asset which makes distractions our enemy.

I have strived to eliminate all distractions by leaving my desktop blank and deleting any saved documents on my desktop once I have finished using them. This sets the tone for the next day and helps me tackle the important things first with complete clarity.

My biggest problem when starting my businesses was learning to manage my tasks and not forgetting important dates.

For me a process and system need to be simple and minimalistic otherwise I will just stop using it and resorting back to old habits.

This is where Trello comes in. I use Trello to manage all of the tasks in my life.

I have created 3 columns Someday, for tasks that are not time sensitive and can be actioned at a later date. Waiting, This is generally for important emails or tasks I am waiting for someone else to action and Today, for important tasks I need to complete in the day.

To integrate Trello into my Gmail I use a chrome extension called Gmail-to-Trello this enables me to instantly add an email to my to-do list directly from my inbox.

By centralising all of my tasks it gives me so much more bandwidth in my brain as I no longer need to remember important tasks. So long as I have added these to my Trello I can switch off and focus on other things. That is a brief insight as to how digital minimalism helps me stay sane as a busy entrepreneur and new father.

If you are feeling overwhelmed take a day to go through the process of decluttering your digital life. You may lose a day going through the process but you will gain many more just by having more clarity and headspace to grow your business.

If you found this video useful please leave me a comment below. I love sharing my ideas and hearing your feedback.

See you in the next video.

The post Digital Minimalism for Entrepreneurs | Simplify your life appeared first on Crewdo.

Whenever we jump in the car to go somewhere we have never been before the first thing we generally do is look at a map. But what about the destinations we want to get to in life?

We all aspire for something whether it’s a fully fledged dream of travelling without a care in the world or a brief afterthought when we drive past a beautiful house or we see a fit person on Instagram. But when was the last time you sat down and looked at where you are now vs the things you want to accomplish and the road map required to get you there?

I wanted to make this video to talk about how to simplify your dreams and aspirations by turning them into an actionable roadmap rather than a forever fairy tale. So, let’s get into it.

Visualisation is one of the most important aspects to manifesting your dreams.

Sure action is important and I’ll touch on that soon but if you can’t see, hear, and taste what you want to achieve than how do you know it’s something you really want to pursue?

Being clear and concise with what it is you want and setting aside a brief moment each day to live and feel what it is you are pursuing will ignite the fire in you to take action. And there’s nothing wrong with putting some positive vibes out into the universe.

Once you are clear on what it is you are wanting to pursue look at the gap between where you are now vs where you want to get to?

And what are the milestones in between, that you need to achieve to get you closer to your destination?

An example for me as I was working in a well paid corporate job, company car and all that kind of jazz but I was miserable, I hated it. For me, my ideal lifestyle was to be in control of how I spent my time. Being in full-time employment was never going to give that to me so the first milestone for me was to get educated on becoming a business owner.

The second milestone was to start a business and the third milestone was to learn how to shape my business to match the lifestyle I wanted to have. I was getting up early and diving into books, going to work for the day, going to rugby training and then coming home at 8 pm to start work on my business before heading to bed at about 2 am.

It wasn’t easy but I was clear on the path I needed to take to get me to where I wanted to be.

Next step is to break milestones into daily actionable steps.

A vision with no action is merely a dream. Put time aside to ensure you are inching forward each and every day.

Need to learn more? Swap out watching your favourite Netflix show each night to read or listen to podcasts. Want to get fitter? Do 30 minutes of exercise. Don’t have enough time? Get up earlier.

Small, smart choices + Consistency + Time = Amazing results.

When I was growing up I would always hear the phrase when I win the lotto I am going to do this. Or when I win the lotto I am going to buy that.

But we have already won the lotto. We have the ability to shape our lives with our actions. Don’t lump your dreams in the too hard basket.  Make time to create your map and have fun along the way.

The post How To Reverse Engineer Your Life appeared first on Crewdo.

We live in a world of abundance. A world where we can have almost anything we want at a click of a button. It provides us with extreme convenience but at what cost?

We are taught from a young age to strive for more, dream big, reach for the stars! But what happens if we strive for less? I have been toying with the idea over the last 3 years and the results of striving for less have helped me create a lifestyle beyond my wildest dreams.

Let me explain.

The best thing I have ever learnt is material things won’t make me happy.

People don’t give a shit about what I wear or drive and those that do, do I really want them in my life anyway.

Focusing on me and my family needs and acquiring materials that bring a level of joy and comfort in our lives has enabled us to focus on what’s important and eliminate the rest regardless of what people will think of us.

An example of this is we recently built a house, we could have afforded to buy a bigger block of land and build a bigger house but why? Instead, we focused on what would best serve us and our young children and built a small functional home that suited a family who enjoys spending time in the kitchen and travelling often.

A big house for our current situation was unnecessary. The old me would have wanted the biggest house on the street but by striving for less we now have a home that allows us to spend time doing the things we love without being bogged down trying to keep the place tidy.

Another example is stripping away all of the digital clutter that distracts me from the things that matter the most.

I went through a stage of feeling like a slave to my phone. Phone calls, emails, texts, social media were in control of my life. I needed it to change.

A simple method was to identify the things that were most distracting and either eliminate or put restrictions in place. I went through my phone and deleted all of the unnecessary apps that no longer served a meaningful purpose in my life.

For the remaining apps, I grouped them all together and then placed them onto the second page of my phone.

This meant when I opened my phone I am greeted with a blank screen. This helped me overcome my subconscious habit of opening my phone without even thinking and start opening apps like a zombie.

For any apps, I do need I just use the search function on my iPhone. This helps me be more conscious of my actions on my phone and really helped shake the habit of opening my phone to see the time and then finding myself 15 minutes deep in Instagram watching funny cat videos.

The next thing I focused on was eliminating unnecessary tasks to free me up to give me space to work on the things that were going to propel me closer to my goals.

It is so easy to sleepwalk through life and be busy being busy. When was the last time you allocated a chunk of your day just to focus on you and your goals?

I call these growth tasks. Rather than filling my day with “Things” I ensure I get the hard things done first and then it gives me the mental space and creativity to focus on the things that help me and my businesses grow. Part of the process was saying no more often, delegating more work, switching meetings to online conference calls and automating certain processes with software.

By trying to do less I have been able to achieve so much more.

It is so easy to fall into the false belief that in order to achieve more we need to do more. It is often the act of doing more that causes us to start pulling ourselves in different directions. By focusing on doing less it gives us the clarity and time we need to do more.

So what is something you could less of? Leave a comment below and let me know I would love to hear from you.

The post Why You Should Strive For Less? appeared first on Crewdo.