Suzie, pay attention to these tips to manage your time more effectively to earn more by doing less work.
I seem to be having more and more conservations with members of my team on a weekly basis.
You see…
Whenever Gurus talk about success in business, they often talk about lead generation, sales conversions, cash-flow etc, but one of the most important aspects of success, especially relevant to a home businesses, is the management of your time.
It’s critical.
Effectively managing your time will probably one of the biggest hurdles that you have had to overcome but if you can dedicate the time and the focus necessary to making it happen, you will see rewards and benefits that you didn’t think imaginable.
Here’s the reality…
Failing to manage your time could prove to be one of the biggest business expenses that you’ll ever face that could leave you swimming upstream constantly while trying to build your business.
Us human beings have a bad habit of trying to take shortcuts at every given opportunity.
I’m sure there’s a psychological reason for this but I’m just going to assume that it’s how we are wired.
Successful time management is all about taking actions and developing new habits and behaviours.
In other words: we have to change.
So, how do we go about doing this?
Well..
There are a number of important questions, we need to look into the mirror and ask ourselves, some of which include the following:
IS WHAT IM DOING NOW THE MOST EFFECTIVE USE OF MY TIME?
They key to getting more done, is to be more efficient.
In nearly every personal development book that I have read recently there is nearly always a chapter on efficiency and effectiveness.
There’s a reason for this.
You see…
Your success in your home business is going to be directly proportional to your ability to do certain tasks well.
This is efficiency.
Doing the right tasks well is what is known as effectiveness.
Let me explain…
A monkey can be trained to be efficient but as a home business owner you want to focus your energies on learning to decipher which is the right job to do at any given moment and then to do it well.
So…
Let’s say you have a leaking U-bend pipe under your kitchen sink that needs repairing.
You’ve identified that it’s the U-bend that needs replacing and you manage to repair it.
You turn on the tap and guess what?
No Leaking!
That is efficiency.
Effectiveness would be determining that it was the U-bed that was causing the problem.
So, what I’m saying here is that to be efficient, you need to have clearly-defined objectives.
Another important question to ask oneself is….
What am I actually going to achieve by doing what I’m doing now?
There’s a saying that is used quite frequently in Network Marketing and Direct Sales Circles…
Fred is …
“Too Busy Being Broke”
Sounds harsh but the overall meaning behind this expression is true in many cases.
If you have a goal to achieve A but you spend the majority of your time doing activities that will not result in you receiving the benefits of A then you need to stop doing what you’re doing.
Let’s say someone wants to sell more of their products, but instead of engaging in income-producing activity, they’re:
- Watching motivational videos, or
- Organising their desk
…and any other form of work that isn’t conducive to selling more products/services.
They should hopefully realise that the time spent doing these activities won’t result in their ultimate goal….
To Increase Their Profits!
Oh yes…
Pareto sure was a wise man!
His principle was that 80% of the results that you will ultimately achieve will only come from 20% of your activities.
So, if you can try to get into the habit of frequently asking yourself which of your activities are reaping the most results and focus all of your energy on these activities, you will be infinitely more successful.
AM I DOING ENOUGH PLANNING?
We all have a habit of drifting through life especially when it comes to our businesses.
Yes, most of us have loosely defined goals and have a rough idea is what we are trying to achieve but, in all fairness, it’s often the case that we haven’t dedicated enough time to working out exactly how we are going to get from A to B.
Following on from the points I’ve made earlier, there are a number of steps that we can all take to improve our chances of using our time effectively and achieving our goals.
The first strategy that I would recommend would be to simply, map out and plan your week in terms of the activities that you must complete.
Try to define your objectives and then work out what you need to do each day to get the objective accomplished.
The second tip I would suggest is to ask yourself the following questions about your objectives:
- Which activities do I need to do to finish these objectives?
- How long should I take to achieve these objectives?
- What are the results that I’m expecting to achieve as a result of this objective?
- What is the monetary value of this objective to me?
Your objectives need to be measurable.
Having an objective to start a home business to earn more income isn’t an objective.
But, having in an objective to earn an extra $120,000 a year is a rock solid measurable objective.
Another way to make your objectives seem more realistic and achievable, at a subconscious level, is to commit to investing time in writing your goals and objectives down.
Another important consideration when it comes to managing your time well is to have goals.
Goals and time management go hand in hand and I’m going to write a more detailed post about goals at a later date but here are a few tips that work for me:
- Decide what you want and what you don’t want.
- Divide the ‘do-want’ goals into long-term, medium-term and short-term goals.
- Use deadlines to measure your goals so that you can minimise the chances of procrastinating which is one of the major causes of failure to achieve goals.
- If you miss a goal don’t beat yourself up too much. If you came close, celebrate how close you came. Sounds mad but it is one of the best ways for your to remain mentally on-track.
So, that’s it from me today.
You now know how to manage time better which is a significant key to achieving your business, sales and income goals while avoiding burn-out.
I hope you got some value from this post.
