Ever said there’s not enough time in the day? Feel guilty about working late when you should be spending time with family?
The following is simple and straight forward, and you probably know some, if not all of it. Are you doing it all though?
Set goals – Start with the end in mind, know what your destination is. What is it you want to achieve personally. What will give you the drive to keep going when things get tough? Get clear on your goals, write them down and share them with those around you. Even better if you can get someone to hold you accountable.
Plan – Have a quarterly action plan to help you achieve your goals. Understand what are the important tasks you need to do to move you towards your goals.
At the end of each day – make a fresh list of what you’ve got to do for tomorrow. Grade these tasks A,B,C – A – will make you money, B – might make you money, C – won’t make you money would be nice to do. If you have a lot of A’s grade them by which will make you most money – A1, A2 etc. The next day start on the A list first.
Important rather than Urgent – You, like most people have fires to fight, working reactively. This is working IN this business. In order to reduce this you need to find time to work on the Important tasks, which are not Urgent. Ie working ON the business. This could be systemising your most time consuming tasks, so you can delegate or outsource to free up your time ongoing.
Focus time OFF-LINE – we get distracted by so much in our world of technology. Facebook, messages, email. Plan some time each day with all notifications and distractions turned off. Get calls diverted, or an answer phone message that you’ll get back to them in an hour. You’ll be surprised by how much you’ll get done in that focus hour.
Skill / Fun – What tasks are you doing that you don’t like doing or don’t need to be doing? Plot out a matrix of Low to High Fun one side and Low to High Skill on another and plot out all your tasks. Those you are doing which are Low skill and Low Fun for you outsource or delegate. You can usually pay someone to do these tasks for £10-£20 per hour which frees up your time to focus on the tasks you enjoy and which earn you £50-£100+ per hour.
Eat That Frog – Mark Twain once wrote that if you Ate a Frog for Breakfast that would probably be the worst thing you would have to do that day. By getting your most disliked task done and out of the way first thing, your day will be a lot easier. Also the task you dislike the most is usually the most important task, the one you always put off.
Want to find out more come along to one of my events to find out how to Create a Business that Works without You.
