Can you believe we are well on our way to being halfway through January already? Time flies, right? So, I’m curious, how often have said to yourself in this very short year “I just don’t have enough time.”?
I hear it everyday from entrepreneurs. “I’m too busy.” “I have too much to do.” “I don’t have time for that.” The truth is, we each have the same finite amount of time in any given week. The trick is spend it working on the “right” things. But how do you know what the “right things” are, and if they aren’t, how do you stop doing them?
Here’s a simple approach to figuring out how to take back control of your time and free yourself up to do the things you really want to be doing.
To get started, take a moment and think about your last week. Write down the things that come to your mind that took up a good deal of your time. How often did you do those same activities more than 5 times? Now, how many of those activities did you actually LOVE doing?
You see, so much of what we spend our time DOING is not what got us into business in the first place.
Last week you created your vision for 2016. Did any of that vision include the activities you listed above? The overwhelming odds are that much of them didn’t. Your passion got you into your business, yet the reality is that every day there are important “things that must get done” that don’t directly tie to your passion.
So what’s an entrepreneur to do? Much of the solution lies in spending your time on the right things and creating a streamlined system for managing your business.
One of the five principles of a results based business is to “Know how the work gets done”. (To get my FREE Report “The Five Principles of a Results Driven Business” visit www.ResultsPartner.com/principles.)
I’m a firm believer that you can’t effectively delegate or outsource until YOU know how you want the work to be completed. How can you “inspect what you expect” when you don’t know how to “do it” yourself?
Now before you say “I don’t have time to figure that out”, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be difficult, and the time you’ll spend to figure this out will save you TONS of time going forward.
Here’s a simple process for identifying these repeatable processes and streamlining them to SAVE YOU TIME!
First, take some time to make a list of all of the day to day activities you can think of that take up your time. Write them down….I know there are probably several.
Start by picking the task that drives you the most nuts.Then follow these five quick steps to creating your own mini-system for this task.
- First ask yourself if this task must be done. It seems silly, but many things we routinely do, really don’t drive our business. If the answer is no, STOP DOING IT! You just created more free time to work “on” your business.
- If the task is necessary, ask yourself if there is anyone on your team who could do it for you. Delegation is the most difficult thing for most entrepreneurs!
- If yes, delegate it! If yes, but you don’t have a team, let’s talk!
- If no, ask yourself how this task could be streamlined or systemitized. Get feedback from your team if you have one (you might find someone willing to take it on!).
- WRITE DOWN the new system you design, whether you delegate it or do it yourself. This is the most important step! Much of the time spent in “do/redo” mode is because there is not a documented system in place. You’ll be amazed how much time you spend reinventing the wheel each time when you don’t have a documented process.
That’s it! This truly isn’t rocket science, we just don’t do it! If you will commit just an hour a week to looking at the tasks you really don’t like doing and finding a better way, or better yet, someone else to do it, you will be amazed at how much more time you open up for yourself!
So there you have it…an easy system for finding the time stealers in your day. See you next time!
