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5 Questions You Should Ask To Become More Productive

Andrew Flanagan
4 min readMar 4, 2022

Being on the path to success is really difficult for most of us. We are not taught in school how to be successful.

We do not know how to start being more productive, or more successful because that is not what our education system teaches us.

So how do we get out of a system that makes us employees and not creative entrepreneurs?

In this blog, we will look into how we can increase our productivity so that we can get closer to our goals, by charting the five moves that we need to be successful in our goals.

The Basics:

As we have discussed in past blogs p]roductivity is all bout setting goals.

When we set goals we then need a system to be able to achieve those goals.

This is where we need to start thinking about our five moves.

Our five moves are the five objectives we have to complete that will get us to our goals.

Example:

An example of this is writing a book.

Now you could spend ages going to conferences, going to online courses to learn how to find your voice or how to write a book. However, this is not going to be an output that matters, which we discussed last time.

Instead, you need to know the five moves that will get you to be a published author.

How do you find these moves, you ask people in your industry of course!

So the five moves to write a book:

1. Write A Good Book. Worry About Nothing Else Until This Is Done

2. Either Get An Agent Or Self Publish

3.Start Blogging & Using Social Media To Build Up An Email List

4. Create A Book Promotion

5. Buy Solo Ads

These are the five moves to becoming a successful book author.

So let us apply this to starting a coaching business.

1. Start Posting On Social MEdia

2. Cold Message Prospects Book Them On To Phone Calls

3. Start Speaking To Clients Weekly/Monthly

4. Grab Testimonials

5. Develop Online Courses Which You Can Then Sell To Clients

You see it becomes easy after a while to be able to plan the five moves.

Once you know the five moves everything else becomes even easier.

When you look at a big goal like publishing a book or creating a business that goal seems hard to achieve. But when you break it down into just five achievable moves everything becomes easier and more manageable.

It is where I believe most of us go wrong in our lives. We never take a moment to break down the steps. We rush about trying to do one hundred different tasks, and when we cannot manage that we start to panic, we lose our motivation, we begin to fail more often.

By taking a breather and figuring out the five moves you can then become more productive and increase the output that truly matters to you.

But how does this work in an office setting, because not everyone wants to start their own company or be a successful writer.

How To Get A Promotion:

So you’re now in a position where you want to get .promoted to the next level but you do not know-how. Then you need to think about your next five moves.

The first way of obtaining them is to ask your manager how they got there. They may not want to answer oin which case you need to look at what they do in their roles, and start to focus down on that.

As I have said before in the last blog, it maybe about leadership in which case one of your five moves should be to start being a leader more. Volunteering answers and solutions in meeeting may be another one.

Takining inciative more often may be another one. Exceeding the target for the quarter could be one.

You have to figure out what are the five moves to get promoted.

In my call centre job the five moves where:

1. Handle New Calls

2. Review Well

3. Be Organised

4. Retain And Move Files On Quickly & Efficiently

5. Be A Team Player

If I would have known this at the time, then my efforts would have been clearer, I would be able to assess these both daily and weekly, to see if I am on track or not.

With these habits, it becomes easier to know where you are. You can gain clarity.

Questions To Ask Yourself:

The Biggest Goal Or Dream I Have That I Need To Plan Out Right Now Is…

The Five Moves That Would Help Me Progress Swiftly Toward Accomplishing That Dream Are…

The Timeline For Each Of My Five Moves Will Be

Five People Who Have Achieved That Dream Who I Could Study, Seek Out, Interview Or Model Are…

The Less Important Activities Or Bad Habits I Am Going To Cut Out Of My Schedule Are

Conclusion:

Plotting your five moves will move you closer to your goals. You will gain clarity when you do not believe that there is.

It is hard when starting out on this journey to know all the answers or to even know where to start. But you must persist.

The way forward is more simple than you can imagine.

Just plan your five steps.

Until Monday this has been your coach Andy.

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Andrew Flanagan

Mindset & Business Coach: Helping Entrepreneurs Grow Their Revenue Online Utilizing battle-tested practical methods