It’s occurred to me recently that it doesn’t seem like there’s enough time to do everything I wish to perform in my business. Between working with customers, composing short articles and books, teaching/training other specialists, marketing, and simply living a great life, there seems to be less and less time in each and every day.
As I was thinking of what to blog about for this article it struck me that, perhaps, blogging about time management for entrepreneurs would be an excellent subject so here we are.
If you, like me, are feeling a bit crunched by whatever you wish to do, here are some pointers and methods I’ve utilized to help things move along
1) Do a life assessment and get clear on your top concerns for each day/week/month. I tend to do it daily, and after that inspect it once again weekly to ensure I’m on track – you might discover some other mix works much better for you. In this procedure, you get clear on where you desire to focus your energy, and it can help you make choices more quickly if an event arises that is not a life concern. You can more easily decide how or whether to focus on it today.
2) Utilize the 80/20 guideline to your advantage. By now, you have actually most likely heard something about this principle which mentions “80% of your success originates from 20% of your efforts” so you, as a small company owner, desire to determine where YOUR most lucrative 20% is and spend the bulk of your time in those activities. For me, my most lucrative activities are working with customers, producing several income streams, and developing time each day to be influenced. What are yours?
3) Request for help. This idea may make you unpleasant if you are a person who feels that you need to do everything yourself. I’d motivate you to try this anyway. I’ve found that, by hiring assistance, I’m really able to produce a lot more in much less time. It’s fantastic to feel like my jobs are moving ahead without my needing to follow up on each and every detail.
4) Automate. As much as possible use innovation to your benefit. This may indicate getting email access on your mobile phone (if you are in the car a lot) or taking the steps to get your website up and running with crucial info, or it might mean learning how to use autoresponders or product packaging your knowledge in such a method that individuals can purchase it at any time. Whatever it is for you, automation is an excellent method to increase your efforts. The biggest problem I find out about this is the time included to set it up. However, the excellent thing about automation is that you set it up as soon as, and it ranges from there.
The more I do this the much easier my company is to run. I have likewise put customers on repeating billing so this conserves the time and effort of invoicing each month. A simplification is an excellent tool for discovering more time.
6) Consolidate. You might know, by now, that I run numerous newsletters and numerous sites. It’s becoming more apparent to me that combining some of my efforts would help my service run more smoothly. Where are places in your organization that you could consolidate your efforts and get more return on your financial investment?
It takes a certain ability to do this well, but once you get in the practice, you can tremendously multiply your returns from a one-time financial investment of your effort. In creating new materials for your organization, constantly ask yourself, “how can I utilize this again?”.
8) Vision. By remaining connected to the huge picture/big vision for your organization, you will be regularly inspired and find yourself more in “flow”. Through “flow”, you can accomplish fantastic things in less time so costs time each day being inspired by your vision will help you conserve time.
9) Chunking. This technique describes finishing similar types of work all at the exact same time. You may execute this in your service by making a running list of calls to return and then reserving a block of time devoted to achieving this (or, even better, having among your assistants accomplish this). It’s a more reliable and much better usage of energy, where possible, to accomplish comparable tasks entirely. Very the same choose writing, scheduling clients, and so on
10) Analysis. Monitor what’s working really well in your company – what are you feeling proud of? What are clients matching you for? What should you be doing more of? Also, keep track of where you feel things could be done better? What are customers complaining about? Examining your service and its development with time will frequently mention places where you can simplify, combine, or modification in order to save more time and work more easily.
I hope, after reading this, you’ve created some inspired actions that you can take, today, to find more time and produce more joy in your company.
Make more money and have a more enjoyable time!
