Okay, there’s no way of dressing this up.
Here’s the truth, most of us don’t use our time to the best of our ability.
If your business isn’t where you want it to be, and you’re not living the life you want, you need to face up to reality.
You need to value your time more!
Time is the most precious currency for all of us. It’s irreplaceable.
We all have the same 24 hours each day and 168 in a week, but we all use them differently.
Ultimately how we use that time will be a key defining factor of success in our business and lives.
I’ve learned during the last ten years that people want quick fixes for their problems, anything that is a fast, painless solution that will cost them as little discomfort as possible.
However, you are different from most people, which is why you own your own business.
There are no quick fixes, but here are some pointers that will help rid you of the “Time Vampires” and assist you in getting more things done!
Where are you heading?
For me, the giant leap in my productivity and the ability to get stuff done came when I could be clear about what I wanted. It was an Aha moment.
Having clarity about your goal helps to keep you on track.
Once you have a clear picture of where you want to be, it provides the magnetic North for what you spend your time doing. Without it, you leave yourself wide open to the Time Vampires and distractions of the everyday.
To get more stuff done, write as clearly as you can exactly where you want to be six, nine and twelve months from today.
What’s the most effective use of my time right now?
Once you have a clear goal, you can answer this question accurately.
Simply put, will what you’re doing now this minute move you closer to where you want to be?
If the answer is no, you’d better stop and find something that will.
This is the most crucial question you can ask yourself many times daily. Using this question when planning your time will help you to ensure that you focus a high proportion of your time on the right things making more effective use of your time.
Take Action
If you’re serious about achieving super success with your business this year, then take your time wrestling with and adequately answering the previous two questions.
We discuss the importance of 90 minutes daily, focussing on getting and keeping customers, which would be an ideal time to answer question one.
You will need to have some tangible measures represented by numbers, all of which can be measured. If it gets measured, it gets done. Once you have that in place, you can start to assess and understand how to spend your time better moving to your North Star.
Kick the procrastination habit.
Another part of valuing your time is kicking the procrastination habit.
Try these techniques.
Learn to take advantage of small segments of time.
Procrastinators are notorious for thinking they need a massive block of time to start on something. Learning to use the five, ten and fifteen-minute slots in your day to organise and break down the things you need to do into smaller steps and work on them.
Big jobs you don’t usually want to do are hard to start but become much more manageable once started.
Break down your projects into small manageable steps and work on completing them one at a time. By doing this, you will start to see immediate progress, and that’s what matters here. Each completed step has a cumulative effect on the completion of the entire project, and each one is a little win.
Be realistic about the time.
Procrastinators tend to be poor time estimators and have unrealistic expectations about what they can do in a period.
Set end times
Setting end times and deadlines helps to keep everybody focused on getting the job done; without them, work has a nasty habit of expanding, so progress is slow. Putting end times in place will dramatically improve your productivity.
Schedule and allow yourself free time
Long periods of intense work don’t do anyone any good. The truth is that your effectiveness diminishes, your thinking blurs, and you start to lose momentum. Scheduling breaks and blocking out your time in your diary are not things to feel guilty about. You deserve it.
Be honest about when your “best” work time is
Are you a morning person and up with the Larks or a Night Owl?
It doesn’t matter.
You are the boss of your business; therefore, you get to decide when your best thinking and most productive work is done. Your responsibility is to ensure that you’re available to do those things at that time and that people get the best version of you.
Learn to delegate responsibilities.
Procrastinators often believe they should be able to do everything themselves, which is unrealistic. Also, if your goals are mad enough and you go back to the first question, there will be much work that will not be the best use of your time. Delegating this kind of work will free up your time so you can devote more to the more essential things.
What can you do in 90 minutes?
Getting and keeping customers is the most critical activity of any business; taking 90-minute chunks to focus on this activity will contact you to your goal quicker.
Here is a list of suggested activities that will help.
If you need any help with your marketing, remember to hit reply and let’s schedule a time to chat.