Many heart-felt entrepreneurs and business professionals struggle with managing their time on a daily basis, resulting in not accomplishing what they set out to leaving them feeling stressed and frustrated at the end of the day. They great news is, I have some great tips to help you gain more time and freedom in your business.
Here is the Wiki-Definition of time management. Time management-is the act or process of planning and exercising conscious control over the amount of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity.
Over the years, I’ve learned from so many “Time Management” Experts and through my own experiences in my own business career. I wanted to share my top 10 time management tips.
Megan’s Top 10 Tips for Creating More Time for Yourself and Becoming Ultra Productive.
- Set up systems to support you. As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, systems can set you free. Effective marketing and scheduling systems will allow your business to run efficiently and free up a ton of time.
- Focus on revenue generating activities. As a business owner, the main thing you should be focusing on is income producing activities. In other words, focus on things that are, or will potentially be, making money. These things can include making opportunity calls (with potential clients or partners) conducting consulting calls or strategy sessions, follow up calls or speaking engagements. After you get the previous items completed, then you can focus on your marketing and program planning, blogging and email follow up.
- Delegate the stuff you don’t have time to do or don’t like to do. There are so many tasks in a day to day business that are time suckers, especially if you are not skilled to do them. Many things in your business can be delegated to an assistant, another team member or outsourced all together. If you do not have any team members, you may want to seriously consider hiring a virtual assistant, to do things such as marketing, website updates, customer service calls, cold calling to potential prospects etc. Bottom line is, you should be focusing on the things in your business that only you can do and that are going to impact the growth of your business. I know this is a scary step for most business owners. But, you can do this- I’ll tell you how and why it makes perfect sense.
Let’s say that your time is worth $100.00 an hour, I’m guessing, it’s probably much more than that, but we’ll just use this amount as an example for now. Let’s also say, that you’re spending 10 hours a week on administration tasks. If you paid yourself that $100.00 an hour for that time put in on the admin tasks- that would be $1,000 per week and 44,000 per month. Those tasks can be done by an assistant or virtual assistant that makes let’s say $20.00 per hour. So, let’s take that 10 hours and multiply it by 20, that’s $200.00 per week and $800.00 per month. If you took those 10 hours per week (40 hours per month) and solely focused on income producing activities, how much money could you make in those 40 hours per month? Would you be able to make more than $800 per month to pay your assistant? Of course you would, in fact, I’m certain you would be able to grow your business exponentially. So, the math makes sense.
If you’re not moving forward on this you must ask yourself…what holding you back?
Is it fear of not finding the right person? Is it having to let go of control? Or, is it that you don’t believe that you can bring in the money to cover the expense of an assistant? You will have to let go of those limiting beliefs and shift your thoughts to thoughts that are empowering and supporting your business goals.
- Batch your time. Schedule your time in different time blocks or “batch your time”. For example, maybe on Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9:00-11:00am you do your office work, Monday afternoons from 1-3pm is your time to create new programs or marketing strategies. Tuesdays form 10am-2pm you write copy for your blog or newsletter, Wednesday and Thursday afternoons from 12pm-3pm you meet with your clients. You get my point. When you have designated focused time for certain tasks you can get so much more accomplished. I realize that sometimes, you’ll have to adjust your schedule for other things that come up, that’s ok. You can use this as a strong guideline.
- Use tools to help you with scheduling or documenting dates or information. There are so many tools available to assist you in scheduling or managing your time. There’s Google Calendar, Outlook, Timetrade or if you’re like me you use a good old fashioned weekly planner (I do also, use Timetrade as my online scheduler). I recommend having a dry erase board in your office that you can use to post dates for events and launches throughout the year, another great tool is a handheld recorder to record your thoughts/and or ideas as necessary, throughout the day. These tools can save you a lot of time.
- Family Calendar. If you have a family, I highly recommend having a family calendar, as well, that’s integrated with your business. This way you can put all of your kids’ activities right in your master calendar, so you don’t miss at thing. You can at least attempt to plan business events or meetings around your priorities which should be your family.
- Designated workout/mediation time. I think it’s really important to have a consistent time set, to work out and meditate each day (preferably in the morning – to start your day off right)- otherwise there’s a good chance that you won’t do it. Your health is the most important factor in your life, without your health nothing else matters. Working out will help to alleviate stress and provide you the energy you need, to accomplish everything you have to do each day. Meditation will help you to start your day with a positive mindset. Be sure to set your intentions for the day!
- Pre-plan your meals. An area many women are challenged in, is finding the time to prepare nutritious meals for them and their families. The best way to accomplish this is to plan your meals ahead of time. Saturday mornings over coffee, plan out all of the meals you would like to have throughout the week. Make your store list. Sunday afternoon, you can shop for the items you’ll need. When you get home you can cook your meats (chicken or steak) for the week and anything else you can prepare ahead of time and refrigerate or freeze for later that week. (This is a great example of batching your time!) This way when you get home in the evening, after running around all day, you can prepare a delicious meal in no time!
- Get plenty of sleep. Make certain you attempt to get at least 8 hours of sleep each night, so your body can rejuvenate itself, and you can wake up feeling fresh and ready to take on the day.
- Schedule down time. Every minute of your life should not be planned. Make sure you schedule down time for you and your family. Leave time throughout your week for you individually, you and your spouse and your whole family, where you can do something that’s enjoyable. This can be relaxing or fun. For example, reading, hiking or going to the park to have a spontaneous picnic. Make sure you take time to enjoy your life… you absolutely deserve it!
Our environments are more important than we realize. It determines if we feel happy, organized and successful. What tip(s) will you be implementing today?
Please share your comments below. I would love to hear from you!
Megan Tull is an Entrepreneur Success Strategist, Transformational Leader in Business and Life, an Author and an International Speaker. Megan is CEO and Founder of Silverlining Concepts, LLC, a business coaching and consulting firm that specializes in innovative and transformational training and workshops for entrepreneurs, CEO’s and small business owners.
She has a new book called The Passion Belief Method- Own Your Value and Earn Your Worth in Business available on Amazon and your favorite book stores. For more info about Megan and her services visit –www.megantull.com for more info on her book and to receive a free sample chapter visit- www.passionbeliefmethod.com
