Profitology

Category: Time Management

  • Attention Business Owners: Are you Wasting your Time?

    Attention Business Owners: Are you Wasting your Time?

    We’ve all heard the saying everyone has the same 24 hours in a day, choose how you spend your time wisely. Yet we are all guilty of watching the clock tick by, getting to the end of the day and not feeling like we have accomplished as much as we planned to do.

    Worse still, we use our 24 hours ineffectively, convincing ourselves that because we are “busy” we are making the time spent worthwhile.

    One common example of this is being active on social media. Even if we are disciplined enough to not get caught up in chatting with friends, or flicking through our neighbour’s holiday snaps, we often are guilty of spending a vast amount of time contributing in group discussions, liking and commenting on business posts and sharing content on our business page. All worthwhile exercises of course, if there is a strategy behind the activity to further your business results.

    Another example is attending networking events and lunches to make new contacts meet prospects and raise your profile. Many times people attend these events with no planned outcomes or agenda, hoping they will meet the client of their dreams, only to find they are being handed multiple business cards with promises to catch up for coffee, with each party hoping it will further their business.

    These are two common time wasters in business, however, have you thought about how you are creating Time Theft with these ones?

    1.      Doing tasks which do not utilise your best skill sets or expertise, which could be done by someone else

    2.      Repeating yourself when giving directions and delegating tasks to another team member.

    3.      Re-writing letters, emails, quotes, and other correspondence from scratch each time you prepare a document

    4.      Constantly having to look for files, information or resources because it is not stored in sensible, easy to find, places

    5.      Having to chase up where an item of work is up to as there is no formal workflow system in place to collect and report on this information

    There are many more cases where we waste time in business (or our days in general) because we don’t take the time to set up systems and processes to create efficiencies and save time in the long run.

    Systemising processes, focusing attention on those tasks which match our skill set, and outsourcing the ones which don’t not only improves productivity, it makes the day far more enjoyable.

    I challenge you to take note of how you spend your day for a week and look for those tasks which you find yourself repeatedly doing. Then ask yourself two questions.

    1.      Do I need to do this task?

    2.      If so, how can I streamline it so it doesn’t take as much time?

    How much Time Theft are you guilty of?

  • Why Procrastination Exposes Insecurities

    Why Procrastination Exposes Insecurities

    I don’t think I know anyone who hasn’t delayed starting a task at some time in their life. Whether it be putting off an assignment, delaying making a phone call or avoiding that difficult conversation with your boss.

    Wikipedia defines procrastination as the avoidance of doing a task that needs to be accomplished. It could be further stated as a habitual or intentional delay of starting or finishing a task despite its negative consequences.

    Procrastination is often linked to poor time management skills. I have come across many tips on how to implement productivity and/or time management processes to overcome procrastination.

    However, I recently stumbled across a comment by Gary Vaynerchuk that Perfectionism is a disguise for insecurities. This led me to ponder whether Procrastination is actually a display of insecurity.

    Why Insecurity is Hidden by Procrastination

    As I considered this concept, I thought back to all of the times I have procrastinated over the years and I must admit that more often than not the delay of doing a task has been due to a lack of confidence rather than a lack of time.

    I have put off making phone calls to prospective clients due to uncertainty as to what the outcome would be. Rather than facing the possible bad news of a No, I made excuses for myself as to why it was not the right time to pick up the phone.

    I have delayed commencing a task because I have lacked the experience and not wanted to appear incompetent in front of a client. By delaying, I have hoped that some form of inspiration would strike to guide me as to the best way to proceed.

    I have delayed making phone calls, or holding meetings to deliver bad news to a client, fearful of what their reaction would be. Often finding after I took the plunge, the reaction was nowhere as bad as I imagined, and actually caused myself unnecessary worry.

    Another great example of the existence of procrastination to hide an insecurity is when I ran my accounting business and assigned a large task to one of my team members. It was a task which she had not completed before as a whole, however, she had performed various aspects of the task in smaller pieces and I was confident she had the necessary skills and experience to complete it.

    Despite the encroaching deadline, she avoided starting the task as it was daunting for her, and she was afraid of appearing incompetent. The task in its entirety was daunting, and she did not want to make a mistake. A fact she admitted to me when we sat down to discuss her progress and the issues preventing her from making a start.

    Sure enough, when we broke it down in to manageable actions, she was able to complete the task with a little hand holding and guidance. However, the job was rushed in the end, and it was a push to have it completed by the deadline.

    What Procrastination has taught me

    Putting off a task isn’t going to make it any easier. There will be no magic wand or solution which does the task for you.

    Starting a task early gives you time to research and seek help to complete the task. An added bonus is you will then gain the experience and confidence to take on similar tasks in the future.

    Next time you are asked to do something you lack confidence in, bite the bullet, get the job done, and feel the weight lift from your shoulders as you move on to those matters which fall in to your comfort zone.

    Share your thoughts. When you procrastinate is it due to a lack of time, or are you actually covering up an insecurity?

  • Forget Lengthy To-Do Lists, Focus On These 5 Tips Instead

    Forget Lengthy To-Do Lists, Focus On These 5 Tips Instead

    Struggling to get it all done? Is your workload piling up? Don’t have enough hours in the day?

    If you are a mother and entrepreneur who wants to build a lucrative business while trying to raise a wonderful family, you have a lot on your plate. Up early in the morning to prepare the kids for school and sneak in one or two tasks for your business. Then, up late at night, after the kids are in bed, trying to finish the tasks that you have started earlier in the day.

    Is anyone else burning the candle at both ends?

    Are we actually doing ourselves any favours? Is it okay to take care of our business, spouse and kids while neglecting our health and well-being?

    When we are tired, we make mistakes. When we are exhausted, we are less productive. And everything is a struggle. Our business and family won’t be able to depend on us if we are unwell.

    So how do we keep it together?

    Breaking down what you need to do

    If you are anything like me, you write a list of all the things you need or want to do for a day. And it keeps growing and growing and growing. If we’re being honest, we know we cannot complete all the tasks we write on our to-do list within a day, but we create the list anyway.

    What if we choose only two or three tasks to complete in a day and just focus on those? And then, instead of concentrating on what we didn’t achieve for the day, what if we write a list of all of the things that we did achieve at the end of the day? Are we going to get better results?

    I think we would.

    So, don’t get up too early or pull an all-nighter to squeeze in an extra hour of work. Don’t look at the long list of tasks and feel disheartened. Instead, try to apply these tips to help you manage your time better:

    1. Improve your focus by turning off distractions.

    Email alerts, social media notifications, text messages – anything that grabs your attention away from meaningful work affects your focus. It’s so much easier to concentrate on a task at hand when you get rid of interruptions. Remember what Peter Drucker said: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

    2. Block out periods of time for highly demanding tasks. Turn off your phone and close the door.

    Consider keeping a diary for a week to track how you spend your time. Guard your time fiercely – know where every minute goes and you’ll have a better chance of taking control of every hour. We all have a limit of 24 hours a day so don’t let a minute or two slip unaccounted for. Schedule realistic breaks and include buffer for unexpected things. But be sure to carve out blocks of time and set up the right environment for deep, focused work.

    3. Wake up an hour or two earlier in the day to do those pressing tasks.

    Client calls, emails, family-related chores occupy most part of our day. But the early risers have control over the first few hours of their day. And they use this time for their most important priorities. Most successful people find early morning as the best time to exercise, meditate or do work that matters most to them. Decide your top priorities and start working on them first thing in the morning.

    4. Choose a task that you are going to complete. Set the clock for 30 minutes and get it done.

    It’s amazing how much you can achieve in small bursts of time when you focus intensely. Set a timer and do what you can within that span of time to get a clearer picture of how long it takes you to do something. Once you are able to figure out how much time it takes to complete a task, you will have a better way of planning a day-to-day schedule that works for you.

    5. Know your strengths, weaknesses, and limits so you can plan accordingly.

    Which tasks do you love? Which ones are you great at? What about the tasks that you do not find enjoyable, or struggle to complete? See if you can get help or hire someone to do it for you. If not now, plan to delegate that work in the future.

    The first step in managing our time well is knowing where it goes. This takes honesty and careful observation. The best part is that this is something we can work on if we care enough about our sanity, goals, and success.

    Over to you: What tips and tricks did you find helpful in managing your time? What obstacles did you have to face when trying to juggle work/business and family life? Share them in the comments.

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  • 5 Tips for Better Time Management

    5 Tips for Better Time Management

    Time management: it sounds easy enough. However, when you own or manage a small business, it’s too easy to get pulled from one crisis to the next and lose sight of all of the things you wanted to accomplish during the day.

    Ways to get more out of your day

    Good time management is a skill, just like sales or being able to creative effective marketing plans. To improve your time management skills, consider the following points:

    1.  Set deadlines. Too often we say that we’ll tackle this project or that one when we have a free minute, but does that time ever really come? Rather than schedule a project for that elusive free moment, give every project a deadline.  That way nothing will end up at the bottom of the pile.
    2. Delegate. There’s no rule that says the boss has to do everything herself. In fact, one of the most important skills of a good manager is the ability to hand off key projects to subordinates rather than feeling that you have to be “hands on” in every aspect of the business.
    3. Turn off distractions. Emails, Facebook, iPads and the like are fascinating and useful ways to communicate. They can also consume a huge slice of your day, if you aren’t careful. Better to designate specific times of the day to check your email messages and limit Facebook time to a set period, like 15 or 20 minutes.
    4.  Break your projects up into more manageable tasks. That huge, complicated project that you’ve been putting off and putting off will look a lot more manageable if you divide it up into smaller chunks, each with its own deadline. Before you know it, you’ll be more than half-way to completing the task.
    5. Prioritise. It’s tempting to do all of the easy tasks on your list first, so you can cross more things off. However, a more efficient way is to rank your day’s (or week’s) tasks in order of importance. By doing the most important things first, you won’t end up feeling so stressed at the end of the day.