Have you ever asked yourself how you are choosing what you spend your time on?
What are your daily activities, inside your business and outside your business?
If you are like many business owners, there is always something that could be done. Maybe you have some things that actually should be done, yet haven’t been started yet?
When the economic cycle is good for your industry, you may not need to spend as much time on marketing and client acquisition. Then, making another sales call is not as important as spending time on something else, isn't it?
This choice would probably be reversed, when sales are down, and you are wondering how to pay your bills at the end of the month.
If that would be the case, generating more business suddenly becomes more important and all other activities that you could have engaged in are pushed back.
Everything we want to do is competing for our time and we get to decide what we choose to do.
Some of it may be something we really don’t enjoy at all. Maybe it is bookkeeping, or something else.
It is something that is part of your business and needs to be done.
Well, although it needs to be done, does it need to be done by you?
How about outsourcing certain tasks, so that you free up some of your time?
Imagine having more time available, so that you can do and enjoy the things that are really important for you?
Today, I challenge you!
I challenge you to take a look at your schedule and everything that you normally do to run your business, and how you spend your time outside your business.
Make a list of all of those activities.
For example, accounting, marketing, customer service, dinner with family/friends, exercise, time with spouse/kids, spiritual/religious activities, TV, etc. Whatever it may be, put it all in the first column of a blank piece of paper. In the next column, write how many hours you would like to spend on each of those activities. Pick a time range that works for you, daily, weekly, or monthly. My suggestion would be to do it on a weekly basis. In the 3rd column, write how many hours you are actually spending on those activities right now.
This will show you really quick how you would like to spend your time and how you are actually spending it!
Take a look at the activities on which you would like to spend more time. Why aren’t you?
What are you spending your time on instead?
Most likely, you are spending your time on activities that you really don’t want to spend that much time on, aren't you?
When you are spending your time on the activities that you enjoy, rather than on the activities you don’t enjoy, your productivity goes up, along with your level of satisfaction and the feeling of fulfillment!
Now comes the fun part!
How can you free up time from the tasks you don’t enjoy, so that you have more time available for joyful activities?
Here are 3 ways:
- Delegate – Just because something needs to get done, who else besides you can do it?
- Choose NOT to do them – What? You mean to tell me not to do them at all? That’s right! That’s exactly what I am saying. There may be tasks on your list of activities that I call time wasters. Those are activities we engage in, so that we have an excuse for not having time to do something else.
- Set yourself a time limit, or a deadline – Sometimes, when you are dreading to do something, it takes more time to accomplish. Sounds familiar? Your thoughts might be somewhere else, you distract yourself every 15 minutes or so and something that could be accomplished in an hour, suddenly takes 2-3 hours to finish.
We are each given 24 hours each day, and you can either spend it on activities you enjoy, or on something you don’t enjoy.
The question is “what is really important to you”? - The choice is yours!
