4 ways to work ON the business not IN

One of the top things business leaders claim they struggle with doing well is managing their time.  This has become very heightened in this work-from-home environmen  In a normal situation, it is very easy to get pulled into spending time on things that are not important. This is even worse as everyone is adjusting to new routines and schedules.

Below are 4 areas where people can and do spend their time.  To learn more about these four areas, read this article about the Eisenhower Matrix. Watch this video to learn more.

• Not Urgent & Not Important
• Urgent & Not Important
• Urgent & Important
• Not Urgent & Important

Don't allow yourself to get caught in the trap of distractions and delusions. These can feel like the most important because they are right in our face and therefore, we need to be disciplined to limit the amount of time we spend here to about 20% of our day.

It is critical that we are spending our time on the 2 inner circles. In fact, about 60% of our time should be focused on the Urgent & Important tasks.

The bullseye is the area that most business leaders never seem to have time for. They generally allow the daily demands and fires to suck up all their time and spend all day working IN the business instead of ON the business.

If we want to have and successful and growing company, we must dedicate about 20% of our time working on the Not Urgent but Important tasks. In today's economic situation, this should even be higher than 20% to ensure that we are setting our business up to survive.

At ActionCOACH, we are all about taking action.  Therefore, your action for this week is:

• Categorize your activities into the 4 areas outlined above
• Complete a time study to determine how much time you are spending in each area
• Develop a default diary to strategically allocate your time more appropriately - here is a video on the default diary.

Learn more about the Time Study and Default Diary tools here.

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