There’s really only one life hack you need to sit up and pay
attention to when building your business: time management. It’s a ridiculously
vital skill, yet many of us are guilty of falling behind. I think entrepreneurs
are easy to label with this false image of rolling out of bed whenever they
want, scheduling meetings ‘whenever’, as if being your own boss means you’re
the boss of time itself.
That’s not how I grew BusinessNET, and it’s not the path to
sustainable wealth. Ask anyone who’s ever grown a company. Being your own boss
doesn’t mean you stop punching time cards - it just means you make the cards.
I committed early on to wiping out distractions and managing
my time with laser focus, and I am 100 percent positive that if any one thing
made me a millionaire it’s having a system in place to manage my time. Here are
the four steps I found most effective:
1. Command an army of
gatekeepers.
I haven’t taken a direct phone call since I got members of
my team to screen all incoming calls. Hearing a different voice on the end of
the phone forces callers to do two things: they have to justify why they want
to speak to you, and they have to leave a concise message. By having a trusted
assistant vet the importance of your incoming calls you can schedule a follow
up when it suits you, letting your client know your time is precious without
lifting a finger.
Immediately after I began screening my calls I saw my own
productivity explode, and I also got more value out of real life conversations
instead of burning out after an over-chatty client call. Gatekeepers are worth
twice what you invest.
2. Stop checking your
email.
Just stop. Put down the phone, and step away from the
screen. Get someone else to do it for you (see number 1) or schedule half hour
slots into your work week (not work day). Respond to emails in order of priority,
to make sure you take care of vital matters first and cut down on irrelevant
exchanges.
In my case, I got my team to monitor my inbox and flag up
anything that needed my immediate attention. It freed up 15 hours of my work
week - what else could you accomplish in that time? How much could you grow
your business? The answer could be worth millions.
3. Make a To-Do list,
and stick with it.
Discipline is the core of time management. As luck would
have it, self-discipline becomes easier when you free up your time and your
focus. So, when I started to delegate more and my schedule began to clear, for
the first time in my life I actually managed to cross everything off a To-Do
list. Doing less allowed me to do more.
When your time is optimised, you see what’s important rise
to the top: high-concept core tasks which can be explained in three or four
words on a Post-It. As it turns out, those are the ones you need to focus on as
a leader and a business owner.
4. Eliminate
face-to-face meetings.
There is nothing you can say in a meeting that can’t be said
on a plane, in your living room or in your comfy home office. Meetings are
perhaps one of the most stressful and unnecessary phenomena of the business
world, and when I went cold turkey people were appalled. As it turns out, my
physical presence was not required as much as anyone thought - if I had messages,
I could pre-record them. If I absolutely had to input, I could do so via Skype,
and if I just wanted to know what was happening I got a member of my team to go
along and take notes.
Having no meetings freed up my time to take care of running
my business, improved my mental and physical health, and reduced the number of
meetings in my company overall - which as you could probably guess, went down
pretty well with everyone else.
Time management boils down to three steps: focus,
prioritise, delegate. You need to have your business’s short and long term plan
nailed down to complete tasks in the best order, and have a world-class team
behind you to take care of the paperwork. I built my multi-million-dollar
company on a foundation of time management - I believe the only productivity
‘hack’ you’ll ever need is a to-do list. Let go of your task-crowding mindset -
the results may surprise you.
Credit: entrepreneur.com
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