By Rick Chisholm | September 27, 2016 | 0 Comment
In any business, time is a valuable asset. There’s never enough, it’s always running out, and you need it to move forward. If you have nine work hours and you fill it with useless activities that don’t help your business grow, where will you be in a year? You’ve done a bunch of work, but you’re right back where you started, right?
So how do you get that time back? How do you free it up, recover it, and get the most out of it so you get more done, and make more progress toward your goals? There are tons of time management strategies. Hundreds, if not thousands, of methods and techniques to help you manage time. Today we’ll show you which ones work for us.
To free up time you have to be efficient. There are 86,400 seconds in a day and every last one counts. That means you’re gonna have to modify your process just a bit. You can’t just wing it. Gotta track what you can track because what you track you monitor and what you monitor you can control.
1. Start with what’s necessary (80/20 rule) – Forget convenience. You gotta work on what’s important. Figure out which tasks actually make a difference in your business right now. Do those first. When you put off secondary tasks for later, you suddenly find your business rockets forward since you make actionable use of your time.
2. Outsource work to a Virtual Assistant – There are thousands of people standing by to pick up minor tasks. All thosethings you don’t have time for…those should go to an affordable VA in the Philippines or elsewhere. These usually cost $5 or less per hour and can lift massive time burdens from your shoulders. Search freelance sites for VA’s outside Australia for lower costs.
3. Stop checking email every 5 minutes – Email is seriously one of the fastest ways to eat time and accomplish nothing. You check your email and either there’s nothing new, or there’s something new that can wait. I promise you the world won’t end if you set specific times to check your email. The more you do this the more others realize it’s true and they start to know what to expect from you. After a while it becomes normal instead of unusual and suddenly you’ve freed up boatloads of time.
4. Delegate what you can and let yourself be lazy – That doesn’t mean don’t do anything. It just means you need to put your focus where it counts. Start a habit of not doing anything that isn’t worth your time. You want to get your time back, you gotta value it. Know what your time is worth and only deal with tasks that add to that value. Delegate everything else. That’s what employees are for.
5. Use cloud-based task management systems – Cloud-based task management may be new to you but it’s been around a while. Apps like asana.com, trello.com, and todo-cloud.com help you delegate and free up time. Plus they give you a bird’s eye view of where your time goes so you quickly see when time slips through the cracks.
I have a lot of favorite books, but when it comes to time management there’s two that stand out. The first is The 4-Hour Workweek in which Tim Ferriss shows you ways to break free from your “9-5” so you think more strategically and move yourself toward millions. Tim shows you how to free up time with outside-the-box thinking. Doesn’t matter if you’re an employee or run a full-time business. His methods work.
The second is Manage Your Time, Manage Your Work, Manage Yourself by Merrill Douglas. This one’s about changing time wasting behaviors instead of trying to work faster or harder. It’s all about efficiency and streamlining so you get more done with less. A great read if you constantly feel stressed by your workload and how much more you have to do just to stay afloat.
According to a 2007 Proudfoot Consulting (Guardian 22 Oct. 07) survey of 2,500 businesses over 4 years, wasted time costs UK businesses £80bn per year. That’s 7% of GDP! And what were the biggest time-wasters?
You may notice a trend in the word “poor” above. That’s because companies who don’t capitalize on time management strategies tend to have less money. These are the top areas to focus on if you want to improve your systems and free up time.
Check out the lists below that show you the top DO’s & DON’T’s when it comes to effectively managing time:
1. Do prioritize your work & efforts
2. Do use a calendarto keep your schedule tidy
3. Do create reusable processes that others can easily follow
4. Do plan ahead so you never just stay busy.
5. Do declutteryour work area so your mind stays clear.
6. Do utilize MGT business toolssuch as our management apps.
7. Do delegate tasksthat can be handled by your staff
8. Do reward employees for a job well done to improve morale
9. Do allocate time for emails instead of constantly checking your inbox
10. Do create to-do lists and mark off items as you go
Time management is a complex subject that takes you deep into the world of efficiency. I could yap about it for days, but that wouldn’t be very efficient, would it? Instead I’ll leave you with a short list of a few more apps that could help you save more time.
1. Don’t fix cultural issues with tech!
2. Don’t work ontoo many tasks at the same time.
3. Don’t work if you’re not in the mood. You won’t get much done.
4. Don’t have meetings. There’s faster ways to communicate.
5. Don’t take calls while working on other tasks. They interrupt your flow.
6. Don’t try to do everything on your own. You just can’t.
Time management is a complex subject that takes you deep into the world of efficiency. I could yap about it for days, but that wouldn’t be very efficient, would it? Instead I’ll leave you with a short list of a few more apps that could help you save more time.
1. Startupizer – Controls what apps launch when you boot your computer.
2. Bartender – Lets you select what icons appear on your menu bar.
3. Keyboard Maestro Launch apps fast & automate responses & actions.
4. Text Expander Type a few letters or a phrase & the app fills in the rest.
5.Google Drive Keep all your documents together in one place on the cloud.
In time we’ll bring you plenty more useful tools like this. If you haven’t subscribed to our email list already, go ahead and do that now for more free resources. Click here to join, or just stick around as we help your business grow.
Until next time,
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