In coaching business owners every week, we often see their time and energy wasted on activities that:
- They are not very good at
- They don’t enjoy doing
- Doesn’t add value in the best way to the business or their life
One of the best projects that you can take on is to write down everything that you spend your time on throughout a seven day period. This is not simply checking the achieved items on your to-do list, but detailing activities that you might not have otherwise considered as taking up important space in your day. These could include:
- Phone calls – who with and how long?
- Team players diverting your focus
- Putting out fires – equipment failures, shipping orders not completed, etc.
- Work being completed during “at home” hours
Once the week is up, stop and evaluate which activities were most important and added the most value to your business and your life.
How much time are you spending on the phone? Are these results producing calls? Do they add value? Also look at other communications such as email and texts- was it necessary that you were the one to take care of these?
Looking at time spent with team players; was their request of your time actually necessary or would training, delegating etc. reduce this type of interruption in the future?
Having done this activity with hundreds of business owners, I can confidently share that well over 80% of business owners are spending 80% of their time on activities that are not results producing.
To improve the use of your time and your energy, write down the top three to five results-producing activities that add value to your business and your life. Often these come up as:
- Time for planning and meeting with the team
- Time with clients and building relationships
- Time working on product development and systems
- Time with my children and family
- Time for my health and exercise
- Rest, recreation and rejuvenation
If these show up as being the activities that add the most value your business and life, why is it that they often get left out of your week? The answer is – it is not scheduled.
If it is not scheduled it does not get done!
From today, start writing down the activities that you do, then rate them on a scale from 1 to 10 – based on the enjoyment, skill level and value that it adds to your business and your life. Then make a commitment to STOP doing activities that are rated seven or less, focus on the ones that are seven or higher and delegate or even eliminate the rest.
Life is too short to be doing things that are a waste of your time and energy.
For more information on developing time management skills, improving efficiencies in your team and adding value to your business and life, contact PROTRADE United today.
