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If time were money, how would you manage yours? Time is far more precious than money. There are a finite number of days that you will spend on this earth, while money is something you can usually get more of. If you are 35 years old with a life expectancy of 75... you have already spent 12,775 days on Earth and have 480 months left to fulfill your life destiny. If you plan to retire at the age of 50 you have 180 months to make enough money to retire (a million dollars doesn't put a dent in retirement nowadays...) and in those months 1,440 days are weekends... so you have 3600 workdays to make it all happen. What are you waiting for... time to stop confusing being busy with being successful! The fact is that many business owners - like yourself - actually manage their money as though it is more precious than their time. They started the business to choose their own hours, spend more time with their family, and be their own boss. But, somewhere along the way the only goals that mattered became the financial ones. Or, the only item worth measuring and managing was money. Your time will never be managed for you - you have to make a decision to choose to spend your time wisely. To take ownership of your own schedule, and use the power you have to change what isn't working. I'll show you a bunch of tools to get you started, but first let's take a look at what your time is worth first, to attach time to money.
Your time has a price tag, and sometimes it's much lower than you think.
Here's a really simple exercise to determine what your time is worth based on your annual income and the number of working hours in a year.
It's also unrealistic to assume that each of the 1,645 hours in a year is a productive one. Various studies have put actual productivity at anywhere between 25 minutes and four hours per day. That's a lot of room for improvement! Now, this calculation doesn't factor in overtime hours, taxes, or expenses. If you work as a consultant for an hourly rate, it doesn't factor in the cost for you to provide your services. The point is, this is your hourly worth in the best-case scenario. When you start thinking about time management, the goal is to get more done in less time, and thus increase your hourly worth (among other benefits, of course!). There are five major things that drain your time. But don't worry, it's really easy to fix the leaks. Your email is a consistent distraction. With the mail program running all the time, emails can distract you as they arrive. Or, you'll find yourself checking for new messages every 15, 10 or five minutes. Writing, reading and responding to emails can easily monopolize your time, because they seem like an ever urgent and important task. Cell Phone Your cell phone have likely given you increased freedom from your workplace, but they seem to have also taken away your freedom to choose when you work. You can work outside of the office, but this often means you also work evenings and weekends when spending time with your family and friends. Open Door Policies While you want to be open and accessible to your staff, sometimes you can make yourself too accessible. Open door policies have the potential to create a daily mass of employees lined up at your door seeking immediate answers for non-emergency issues. Meetings Unstructured, unnecessary, run-on meetings can gobble up hours for no reason at all. Especially as a business owner, your presence may be requested at a variety of meetings, but it's not always required. Days spent in back to back meeting often mean that your workday starts at five instead of nine. You Since effective time management is a choice, everyone is guilty of letting themselves sabotage their ability to work productively and efficiently at all times. It's easy for business owners to avoid separating business hours from leisure time and let the two run together. We all have distractions that we fall into from time to time. "It takes the human mind 15 minutes to properly focus... if you get interrupted every 7 minutes... you have a huge problem!" Karl Bryan, CEO, Author, International Speaker Now you need to take some time to figure out where your time actually goes, so you can see what leaks need to be repaired. You can use the worksheets provided in the members-only section of the site to assist you as you complete this personal time management research exercise. You're going to take a good long look at how you spend your time so you can paint a clear picture of your current situation. Once you understand your own personal habits and patterns, you can start making changes that will have the greatest impact on your own schedule. You'll learn how to be a better time manager. 1. Complete a Time Audit for three working days in a row. Use the Time Log Worksheet, and record how you spend your time in detail for three working days (it is a bugger... we know so do not try get it perfect as that will just stop it from happening... but just do it. And remember 'the more you defend your excuses... they more they own you!'). Be honest with yourself, and be as specific as possible. If you notice something about what you're doing, or which distractions have the greatest negative impact, log these notes as well. The more information you can record, the better. 2. Take a look at your time records, and categorize the different ways you spend your time.Use different colored markers or highlighters to shade the blocks of time you spent on various activities. You can create your own categories, or use the ones below:
3. Based on the categories you created, go through each of your days and decide if you have spent enough, too much, or too little time on each main task.Based on your observations, answer the following questions:
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