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Time is Currency for the True Entrepreneur
You’ve heard it before, time is money. This is absolutely true for entrepreneurs. The typical employee gets paid regardless of what happens or what they do (or don’t do). I often joke with my friends that being a meteorologist is the only job in the world where they could be wrong 98% of the time and still keep a job. True entrepreneurs understand that the time they put into a task or project is essential to its success, and ultimately their success. As such, successful entrepreneurs are cautious of the time that they offer.
It is a glorious thing to know that God isn’t respective of a person. What He will do for one, He will do for another. This is most evident with the time that He has given each of us. We all have the same 24 hours a day to accomplish our goals, aspirations, and dreams. Whether you are rich, poor, successful, unsuccessful, black, white, multilingual, or can only speak one language, God has given each of us access to the same amount of time per day. So how do we best utilize the time given to us with the millions of things we have going on each day? You may be inclined to think time management and you are right, but true entrepreneurs must use aggressive strategies of time management to accomplish more.
Here are a few strategies for aggressive time management for entrepreneurs:
Time Blocks
Time management in and of itself is and under-used discipline. I truly believe that many people have more fear of success than they do of failure (or maybe failure once they succeed). Scheduling time blocks throughout your day is an effective way of managing the time that God has given you. When properly followed, time blocks provide an ease to accomplish goals or tasks, meet with customers/clients/patients, study the Word of God, spend time with family and friends, and even drive from meetings to the office, to home all within your allotted time. Not only would you be managing your time well, but you will also get more done. It may seem radical and even a little insane to schedule time with the family, but as entrepreneurs (and most likely the breadwinners) there are more things to get done than there is time. Successful time management will allow you to get more done and spend more time with the family.
One Productive Thing a Day
Regardless of what goes on during the day, make a commitment to do at least one productive thing each and every single day (yes, even on the weekends). The term ‘productive’ in this case means an action that will result in income immediately or in the future. This could be an email to your list of prospective clients to join a teleseminar, responding to a workshop request, or writing your next article. So, before you call it a night, make a commitment to do at least one productive thing.
Disconnect
It is difficult to break away in a world that has become so interconnected because of technology. There are PDAs, iPhones, netbooks, eateries with free Internet, email, social
networking updates and everything in between that keeps most people constantly connected to everything. How can anyone get anything accomplished with these constant distractions? The only solution is to disconnect from it all. Turn it off, don’t login, or unplug it from the wall. Do what you must to remove the distractions. This may include locking the door and not answering the phone during periods where you have allotted your time to something else. Remember, time is currency; it’s the type of currency that you can’t get back once it’s gone.
Anti-Multi-Tasking
There are many people who pride themselves on being able to “focus” on many things at the same time; working on 10 different things simultaneously. The reality is they may not be focusing on anything. To focus is to actually give your full attention to something and in doing so you are able to provide a complete response to that thing. Multi-tasking has the ability to spread someone so thin that they cannot provide attention (or enough of it) to a single task. When you focus on a single task, you can put your full brain power to completing it. The result is a well thought-out, defined product or solution completed in a faster time than if you did while multi-tasking. Let the computers do the multi-tasking. If you are a true entrepreneur, focus on a single task or project at a time.
Don’t be a “Yes” Man/Woman
When it comes to time management, there are things called “time vampires”. These are people that will suck up all your time with unscheduled, useless, unproductive chatter.
You have to be cautious of these things. Saying “yes” to every meeting, every lunch request, or every phone call can cause these time vampires to suck up your entire day. It is ok to say “no”. In fact, when you say no and instruct them as to how they can schedule a meeting with you (with an agenda) in your office (don’t have to waste time if they are late) then they tend to respect you and your time.
Use that extra hour
Lastly, we just gained an extra hour of time during the Fall. How will you use it? Will you sleep in or just wake up your normal time to get in an extra hour of productivity?
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Ralph, very helpful post. I intend to implement some of these suggestions.
I like you comment on being a “yes” man. Robert Ringer wrote of the importance learning to say “no” in his blockbuster book, Looking Out For Number One. He advocated using it not only as a way to control your time, but also to stay out of trouble. We take on too many obligations out of fear of saying no.
Good reminder to remove distractions when you are trying to get something done. With my iPhone, Twitter, FB, email all clamoring for my attention, it’s easy to get lost in it all when I’m trying to do something completely different. Another idea for dedicating time to family is to, if possible, unplug for the entire weekend. I’m not sure I could do it!
I thank God for this. In my own life, I know I can use my time MORE wisely and productively. I like the idea of having a time block and turning off distractions. One of my biggest distractions is texting (lol), but now that i don’t have a phone I now see I get more things done. Thanks for such a great article. God bless you.
As a Stay at Home Mom/Blogging Entrepreneur, carefully using my time is essential to successfully completing my goals for the day. It is so easy to get bogged down on menial house chores or sucked into cyberspace. I make a commitment to myself to get up before my daughter does and finish the essentials before letting the distractions overtake.
When I was self employed it was so hard to shut off the ‘must work now’ part of my brain.
i agree with all this pointers except the one about disconnecting from it all. That is going to be hard, no impossible for me since i make most of my living on the internet. But i like this they all make sense.
Saying “NO” and focusing are the two most important things in this list.
I get tons of e-mails everyday by marketing hounds wanting me to pimp their product. I refuse, and just focus on one thing, and that’s content and building relationships.
Good post!
I especially liked the “block off time” suggestion. I got up earlier than usual this morning to spend time reading and commenting on pf blogs.
This is a great article and I do try to incorporate these in my daily routine but I’ll be honest I’m not consistent with it. People don’t understand the importance of time management, which is why so many people waste valuable time on things that does not add value to their life as well as others.
Another tip I learn is only have assigning yourself 6 tasks a day, nothing more because it may be too overwhelming. Plus if you don’t complete all of them you may feel you had a very unproductive day. With those tasks instead of completing the hardest or easiet one first, it’s better to complete the one that has the most importance at that time. For example, you may have 3 task involving closing a sale and the other involving emails, admin or customer service. Closing the sales may be more important, so you would focus your energy on those.
Again great article, and please visit my site where Christian Entrepreneurs can fellowship, collaborate, share insight on topics like this as well as others and earn money, http://www.theprospermagazine.com.
God Bless!
Thanks for some really useful tips!
I’ve more recently found great benefit in using ‘time blocks’ – making the use of my time more productive. It may seem pedantic, but I use a weekly timetable (includes study, reading, preaching preparation, blogging, planning, communications, meetings, networking and running) that I devised to help me with my working schedule. It reminds me of being at school – but it seems to work!
Though it can be SO DIFFICULT, I agree that it’s essential to cut off from distractions and intrusions. For slightly different reasons, having been off last week with bronchitis, I had to be INTENTIONAL about not looking at emails or taking calls. The priority was my health – not work! This is where I think we need to be vigilant about our boundaries and ensure that other people are aware of them too.
In the past I’ve wondered whether our focus on time management is slightly displaced. After all, can we REALLY manage it? In truth, is time not something that’s out of our control?
A slight alteration of perspective has been helpful to me. I tend now to focus on priority management, rather than time management – getting those things that are of most importance done within the time allotted to me.
My musings on Taming Time are here, http://nferguson.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/taming-time/
I also heard that our brains aren’t really designed for multi-tasking but sometimes it has to be done, especially when the boss is breathing down your neck!
Time actually is better than money in some ways. unlike money, it can buy you happiness, which is why I regularly put all this hullabaloo aside and spend time with my loved ones. You can always have money, but you’ll never know when you’ll run out of time.
Great Article! Thanks for this information as we go into 2010.