Don’t Spend Your Time, Invest it to Receive a Higher Return from Your Business

Which is more valuable to you? 86,400 dollars or 86,400 seconds?

I'm sure we can think of thousands of ways to use the money but we should be mindful that we can all earn money, spend it and then go earn again. Once our time has been spent it cannot be replaced.

Knowing that the 86,400 seconds that we receive in a day can’t be replenished once the clock hits twelve should motivate us, especially business owners, to evaluate how we’re using our time.

As business owners, becoming more efficient with our use of time is a vital key to guide our business to the goals we’ve set for it. Everything that we do in the business, we should aim to see a positive return on.

What Does it Look Like to Invest Your Time?

This is the main idea of investing your time. What you put in towards the business, see a reward from it that is greater than what you put in. Obviously, you can’t get back more seconds to the day, but you’ll get more time for yourself, away from the business.

Said another way, what if you invested your time into systemizing the business so that your business can run without you?

You’d probably be able to do things like…

• Be home in time for dinner
• Go on a long-awaited vacation
• Plan for the next steps of the business

Business owners that don’t have enough time to do things usually have the same problems: they don’t delegate tasks well, they don’t prioritize tasks, and/or they aren’t well-organized in their day-to-day life. These issues are as simple to fix as they are common; most of the time, you only need to make a slight change in how you accomplish or go about completing certain tasks in order to squeeze more productivity in the time that you use.

How Should I Invest My Time in My Business?

Follow these 20 simple steps and you will find you have more time available and you will be  investing more of your time rather than spending it….

1. Be decisive
2. Set clear goals and objectives (using SMART)
3. Set a daily work plan (the night before)
4. Prioritize tasks using A,B,C,D,E (consider the consequences in setting priorities).  Re-prioritise “A” tasks using 1,2,3 to identify the most important A tasks and so on
5. Separate the urgent from the important (what are the long term potential consequences of not doing tasks?)
6. Use the law of forced efficiency (what is the highest value use of your time, right now?)
7. Use the 80/20 rule to identify the 20% of tasks that will have the greatest benefit and just do those
8. Develop stamina and high energy through proper exercise, diet and rest
9. Develop single-handling skills to concentrate on one task at a time
10. Eat that Frog (do the hardest task of the day first – don’t sit and look at it or procrastinate – just DO IT!)
11. Organize your work workspace (don’t work in a mess). Use the acronym TRAF–Toss, Refer (delegate), Action, File to help you.
12. Use travel time effectively (listen to CDs, prepare a work schedule for flights/rail journeys)
13. Develop expertise in key tasks through practice and repetition
14. Work in ‘real’ time (pick up the tempo, develop a sense of urgency, do it NOW!)
15. Learn to decide quickly; don’t carry ifs, buts, and maybes around
16. Re-engineer work processes:  map them out and identify what needs to be done to reduce the number of steps by 30% minimum
17. Reinvent yourself at least once a year:  identify what you need to do to become more productive, because everything changes (90 day plan)
18. Ask yourself this regularly: knowing what I know right now, would I be doing this/be in this relationship/working with this client, etc
19. Set posteriorities: identify what tasks to procrastinate on, i.e. the lower priorities that can wait, the 80% of tasks that have less value and only contribute 20% of the output
20. Decide to work to live, not live to work. This means working towards a balanced life.  It’s the quantity of time on downtime and the quality of time at work to aim for

The key here is to be Intensely Action-Orientated because it’s acting and executing that generate results. 

Are you tired of working from sunrise to sunset and want more time away from the business? Contact one of our business coaches today to discover how you can get back your time in our complimentary business strategy sessions. 

Book your session now – we only offer 5 of these a month, so you’ll want to get this scheduled quickly.  

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