I run a number of Internet businesses and often used to find myself spending hours at the computer thinking that I’m working. I’d spend my time checking web stats, reading and posting to forums, checking and replying to emails, checking my AdSense, tweaking my AdWords adverts, etc, etc. At the end of the day I realised that I hadn’t even looked at my ‘to do’ list.
Nowadays I take a completely different approach. Today for example I gave myself two hours to complete some specific tasks. Ok, so it actually took me a few minutes longer but after they were finished I stopped and spent the rest of the afternoon out walking, barely even thinking about work.
In those few hours I spent working I’d achieved more than I sometimes achieve in a full day. So how did I manage this? I certainly didn’t work any faster or even any more intensely than usual.
The key here is that it’s all about time management. Effective and disciplined time management is vital to the entrepreneur, especially if they work alone. Many entrepreneurs fall into this category and should consider time to be their most valuable resource, even more valuable than money itself.
To be successful at anything you really need to be on top of your time management:
- Start by creating a timetable stating what you’ll do on each working day of the week.
- Buy yourself a timer, time every task and make sure you stick to your plan.
- Perform the important and creative tasks first, the ones that give the best return on time spent.
- Leave the tasks like checking emails, forums, etc until last. They really can wait.
- Consider switching off the phone if possible, at least while performing important tasks.
- Plan in some free time each day to relax a little, don’t work straight through without a break.
- Continually evolve your time plan according to what works best for you.
If you do all of this your productivity will increase dramatically and you’ll be able to turn those 12 hour non-productive days into 8 hour days where you achieve so much more.
Now here’s a bold summarising statement: “Time management is more important to the entrepreneur than money itself. The reason being, money is almost unlimited and you can make as much as you like. However, unless you have some kind of time machine there’ll always be 24 hours in any day, only half of which are usable for working, only a third of which should be used for working”.
Whether you agree or disagree that time is more valuable than money, it’s a fact that money is almost limitless yet time is strictly limited. Whether you’re poor or a millionaire it makes no difference, you still only have the same amount of limited time to achieve your goals.