Create a proactive schedule
You often hear how people say that there are not enough hours in the day, or we simply just don’t have the time that we really wish we had. There is a way for us to get the most use of our time whether this is for work, our free time or both.
We need to start by allocating our time based on our unique priorities and values. Firstly, we need to know why we need to manage our time and the priorities we need to strive for.
Now we need to understand where we currently spend our time so that we can budget for maximum performance. I’ve heard people say, you need to master your time, or your time will master you. Meaning in short, that if you do not run your day (maybe with a plan from the day or night before) your day will run you.
Getting rid of the barriers
Many of us know what to we want to do but we often spend our time on the things we know take us away from the path that we want to be on.
I have often fallen for the trick of being busy, but I was often busy on the wrong thing that didn’t serve me or my business at all. I was effectively running around like a busy fool.
A great way of eliminating these barriers that take us away from working on what is important for us, our business or personal life is to create a structured plan. But it has to be a plan we stick to.
Delegate without fear
One of the biggest causes for business to fail today is the lack of ability of the business owner or hierarchy to delegate. When we say delegate, we are not talking about the menial tasks that all business are required to carry out, we are talking about tasks such as handing over the company credit card, invoicing, bank details purchases etc.
This comes down to you ensuring that you have employed the right people in the first place, people that you can trust.
You need to focus on doing things that make you successful. If you are good at gaining clients or new business, you need to spend your time doing this, you don’t want to spend your time filing, invoicing customers or recruitment. So, for arguments sake let’s say that what you earns you or the business £75 per hour. If you recruit someone to do the filing, invoicing for £15 per hour you have earned your business more income. So if there is say 2 hours of filing invoicing to do that is £30 or £120 per week. You make £150 a day, £600 per week that is a total of £31,200 a year, wow!
This is because the money you make for the business far outweighs the cost of employing when you consider the time saved for you to get the important money-making tasks complete.
If you think about it, it’s common sense. If you are too busy working on your business to spend free time doing what you want, then you may need to ask yourself why you are doing this at all. Is this what I really want? But if you learn to delegate you will without a doubt give yourself valuable time to focus on the important necessary parts of the business and give yourself more free time too.
Delegating also allows you work in the areas that you are strongest in. This will help you complete tasks more quickly and allows you more time again. If you spend more of your time on the things that you are weaker at or are more time consuming with little or less reward, it will create discouragement. This will then lead to inefficiencies, disharmony you get the point.
By delegating as we have just discussed, you will be definitely come out on top.
Skill Improvement
Improving your skills in any area is going to be beneficial to you and the business, primarily because it saves you time. When we do things better it also means that we also do things a lot faster. This alone will mean that you are able to do more in the same period of time.
Single-tasking and multitasking
It is really important to understand that there is a time to single-tasks and a time to do multitasking.
Best time to multitask:
When you can do one thing with focus and the other passively. An example of this may be when you are dealing with emails during your commute to work on the train.
Best time to single task:
All the tasks that need focus and concentration. You really need to be ruthless regarding distractions in order for this to be productive. This way you will get more work done quickly and to a better standard with fewer errors. Tasks that require a lot of detail would fall into this category.
Not focusing will also cost you more time overall, so being efficient in the long run is more beneficial to you and the business.
Focus
To be truly focused, you must remain disciplined. You need to have the ability to let everything else go whilst your mind is firmly on the matter at hand. Think of the many work hours lost through lack of focus to both employee and the owner.
It seems like we all get into a habit of turning up for work and being pulled from one task to another or easily distracted by social media messages on our phones. The list is endless, but we can all do something about this, simply remove these distraction (switch off phones, don’t respond to emails unless absolutely necessary) and focus!
If you can learn to set aside the distractions and put all of the energy into accomplishing that set goal then you will only benefit from this new disciplined focus. Make this part of your daily and weekly routine and don’t let anything take you away from this. As you focus more you will begin to see that you actually accomplish more in a lot less time with better results.
Work smart
One of your top goals should be to work more efficiently meaning that you will ultimately be working fewer hours. To help enable us to put this into practice we must do the following: Have goals, be ruthless against distractions, work from a priority list, stay focused, disciplined and always delegate.
