Time is a scarce resource, and when it comes to growing your business, where you invest your time can make a critical difference to your success. Here are some strategies you can begin to use immediately, which will allow you to free up at least 15% of your time.
Can you free up 15%+ of your time immediately? When I ask people this question, the answer varies widely from ‘for sure ‘ to ‘probably’ to ‘no way’. Stick with me and I’ll show you how you can do it with 100% certainty. Sounds bold, doesn’t it 🙂
Have you ever reacted without thinking?? Stupid question right. Well, the truth is most of us go through our days reacting and not even realising it. Right now you have patterns and habits in your life that you do subconsciously without thinking. This is actually a good thing because if you had to think about everything, you’d be exhausted. Habits help us operate our lives and are fundamental to being human.
And this is where your opportunity lies.
Just like you get up, get dressed and have breakfast (or not) out of habit, you are making continual choices about how to invest your time (out of habit) each and every moment of the day. Notice my language here …. “choices about how you invest your time”. Time management is not about managing time, it’s about managing habits and choices. Yes … choices. This is the critical principle – you and only you are in control of how you invest your time. Not your customers, employees, your kids or your spouse. In this country, no one can make you do anything … it’s all 100% up to you.
Of course, all decisions about how you invest your time have consequences, nonetheless, you are in control.
Now on to freeing up that time – I’m going to share four strategies with you. Before you embark on using these strategies, be sure to completely buy into the notion that you are in 100% control of your time. That must be step #1
Strategy #1 – Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s law states that a task will expand to fill to time allocated to it. In other words, if you don’t give something a time limit, it will grow widely in inefficiency. Set a time limit for all major tasks and meetings – and experiment with making that time limit 15-20% less than you normally would. I.e. instead of 1hr meetings, make them 40mins. This will force you and those attending to be focused and effective. It will prompt you to stop people who waffle and encourage you to be more clear with your thinking.
Strategy #2 – 80:20 Rule – 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities. Key question “If you could only do 3 tasks in your business, what would they be?”. Answering this question should guide you towards what your most valuable activities are. When you guide your time choices to invest more time in those things, you’ll find a way to take care of the minutia that is currently filling/wasting your time.
Strategy #3 – Learn to say no – this one plays in line with the 80:20 above. Once you are clear on what activities you ‘should’ be doing, it becomes easier to say no to those you shouldn’t.
Strategy #4 – Time Blocking – once you are clear on what you want to invest your time doing, create blocks of uninterrupted time to get them done. Being interrupted can decrease your efficiency exponentially. What should take 30mins can often take hours if you allow yourself to be interrupted. And if you find your mind coming up with elaborate excuses of why you can’t create interrupted blocks of time, recognize it for what it is … an excuse. Be creative and dedicated … it is YOUR time … no-one else’s.
Have some fun with it. And I’d love to hear about your success stories … or challenges ????
Jamie Cunningham
