Have you ever woken up in the morning all pumped and ready to win the day only to find your focus wavering throughout the day due to distractions, client fires or lack of planning?
If the answer is yes, I'm going to share with you a handful of little “tricks” that I use to make sure that I focus my time where it matters, and where it brings the most “return on investment” throughout my day.
Tip #1: Track Your Time
You've probably heard the saying that what you don't measure doesn't get improved. And it usually applies to marketing and sales. But it can also apply to your time.
Basically, if you want to get better with your time management, you have to start measuring where and how you spend your time.
The way I like to do this is by using a little tool called RescueTime, which basically tracks me around, records everything that I do on my computer, and brings it to me in a nice-looking little dashboard.
And it does so automatically.
I don't have to actually go in and start or end timers and fiddle with all that kind of stuff, it just does it all automatically for me.
And at the end of the day or at the end of the week, or whenever it makes sense, I take a quick inventory look and see how I spent my time and what percentage of it was spent on production, promotional, provisional or pedestrian types of activities.
That's when you can then begin to refine, modify, and optimize how you spend your time.
So if you've been in business for a while, you probably know about the four P's, which are the four types of activities that any business owner could be doing in their business at any given time.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, I'm going to give you a quick rundown of what the four activity types are.
The first one is Production.
Production represents all the types of activities that have anything to do with you creating new content, new courses, new products, new upsells, further product development, that kind of thing.
The second type of activity is Promotional.
Promotional is everything that's marketing and sales related. So basically, everything that you're doing in order to promote and sell your products and services.
The third type of activity is Provisional.
This is everything that you're doing to fulfill the service or product and to deliver it to your buyers. So basically, it all has to do with the fulfillment process of your product or service.
The fourth type of activity is the Pedestrian.
These are everything else:
- answering emails
- project management
- quality assurance
- having to deal with client fires
- having to book a plane ticket.
All of this falls into the broad category of pedestrian types of activities.
And I'm pretty sure you don't need me to tell you which of these activities you should be doing most of in order to get the most out of your time.
Tip #2: Organize Your Calendar.
Obviously, you should always schedule the production and promotional types of activities first in your calendar. And then if you have time, in between those, schedule everything else.
I’ve done a whole topic on how to organize your calendar for maximum efficiency, so I won’t do a deep dive into it right now.
Tip #3: Learn to Pick Your Battles.
You will have your calendar all scheduled out and nice and you should know what you're doing hour by hour.
But life is life. Things happen and you'll find yourself having to reschedule some stuff, you're gonna have some things coming up, like maybe a new business meeting or anything that's gonna push things out and that's okay.
The key is, and this is the most important thing that I tell people, to not feel guilty about rescheduling stuff and fall off the wagon.
But at the same time, if you have rescheduled something more than twice and it still hasn't gotten done, then it's time to either delegate it to somebody else or pick somebody from your team that you can work together with to complete this task.
You're doing yourself, your clients and your company a disservice by continuing to push out tasks that can actually be done. So if it's something that you can work on with somebody else, bring them in, keep yourselves accountable and have a working meeting where you can just bang that out and have it done with.
If that's not possible, then delegate it.
For more tips on how you can organize your business and your time and prepare yourself for scaling, make sure you join our free Facebook group.
And subscribe to our YouTube channel where we post new videos every week!
Have you ever woken up in the morning all pumped and ready to win the day only to find your focus wavering throughout the day due to distractions, client fires or lack of planning?
If the answer is yes, I’m going to share with you a handful of little “tricks” that I use to make sure that I focus my time where it matters, and where it brings the most “return on investment” throughout my day.
Tip #1: Track Your Time
You’ve probably heard the saying that what you don’t measure doesn’t get improved. And it usually applies to marketing and sales. But it can also apply to your time.
Basically, if you want to get better with your time management, you have to start measuring where and how you spend your time.
The way I like to do this is by using a little tool called RescueTime, which basically tracks me around, records everything that I do on my computer, and brings it to me in a nice-looking little dashboard.
And it does so automatically.
I don’t have to actually go in and start or end timers and fiddle with all that kind of stuff, it just does it all automatically for me.
And at the end of the day or at the end of the week, or whenever it makes sense, I take a quick inventory look and see how I spent my time and what percentage of it was spent on production, promotional, provisional or pedestrian types of activities.
That’s when you can then begin to refine, modify, and optimize how you spend your time.
So if you’ve been in business for a while, you probably know about the four P’s, which are the four types of activities that any business owner could be doing in their business at any given time.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, I’m going to give you a quick rundown of what the four activity types are.
The first one is Production.
Production represents all the types of activities that have anything to do with you creating new content, new courses, new products, new upsells, further product development, that kind of thing.
The second type of activity is Promotional.
Promotional is everything that’s marketing and sales related. So basically, everything that you’re doing in order to promote and sell your products and services.
The third type of activity is Provisional.
This is everything that you’re doing to fulfill the service or product and to deliver it to your buyers. So basically, it all has to do with the fulfillment process of your product or service.
The fourth type of activity is the Pedestrian.
These are everything else:
- answering emails
- project management
- quality assurance
- having to deal with client fires
- having to book a plane ticket.
All of this falls into the broad category of pedestrian types of activities.
And I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to tell you which of these activities you should be doing most of in order to get the most out of your time.
Tip #2: Organize Your Calendar.
Obviously, you should always schedule the production and promotional types of activities first in your calendar. And then if you have time, in between those, schedule everything else.
I’ve done a whole topic on how to organize your calendar for maximum efficiency, so I won’t do a deep dive into it right now.
Tip #3: Learn to Pick Your Battles.
You will have your calendar all scheduled out and nice and you should know what you’re doing hour by hour.
But life is life. Things happen and you’ll find yourself having to reschedule some stuff, you’re gonna have some things coming up, like maybe a new business meeting or anything that’s gonna push things out and that’s okay.
The key is, and this is the most important thing that I tell people, to not feel guilty about rescheduling stuff and fall off the wagon.
But at the same time, if you have rescheduled something more than twice and it still hasn’t gotten done, then it’s time to either delegate it to somebody else or pick somebody from your team that you can work together with to complete this task.
You’re doing yourself, your clients and your company a disservice by continuing to push out tasks that can actually be done. So if it’s something that you can work on with somebody else, bring them in, keep yourselves accountable and have a working meeting where you can just bang that out and have it done with.
If that’s not possible, then delegate it.
For more tips on how you can organize your business and your time and prepare yourself for scaling, make sure you join our free Facebook group.
And subscribe to our YouTube channel where we post new videos every week!
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