How are you investing your time?

How to invest your time

One the biggest challenge all my clients have had before they started working with me was time management.

In this video, I explain how they have changed their habits to work less in their business but still be profitable.

(JK) Time. That is one of the things that a lot of business owners say.

They often say that they don’t have any time to do anything.

But I know this happens to be one of your specialist subjects. Are there any clients, I’m sure there have been, any clients lately, you can tell us about, who have taken your advice and have moved forward and time management has been a particular benefit.

(FD) Yes, all my clients, when I’ve met them have all said,

I just don’t have enough time,

and we all have the same time, in the day. It’s how we choose to invest it.

One of the first things I do with clients is to find out how they’re spending their time.

Then we also move on to their employees, to make sure that everybody is being productive.

So, looking at are they scheduling activities,

  • are they working in the business versus on the business,
  • are they monitoring how productive they’re being?
  • What are they delegating?

All of these things. We know everything, but we don’t do it. Ok, this is where the problem arises.

So really prioritizing and then time blocking either in hourly or one-hour blocks.

Having what I call a default diary, something from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed. Putting in your work and leisure activities. Now it’s even more important because there are more people working from home and everything just gets blurred into one thing. So really saying,

OK, well, I’m going for a walk at this time, then I’m going to come back, then I’m going to feed the dog, then I need to sit down by 9.30 and start the work.

And so if you’ve got zoom calls or telephone calls or things like that booked in, put them into the diary and then any gaps around the block it out for half an hour / one hour, and put in the activities that you really need to get done that day or anything else.

It’s not rocket science, but it’s getting organized.

I had a client who started when we first started. He had five managers reporting to him and his biggest issue was he said,

I just never get anything that I want to be done because everyone’s just constantly asking me questions.

It’s not that they were disturbing him. I mean, they were disturbing him, I guess, because he was trying to do his own work, but was getting distracted by other issues, which obviously is a part of running the business, but these things could have waited.

OK, so the first thing I said to him, try and get this default diary going, and he actually thought, why is she even telling me such a simple thing. I said to him because I could see from his face that he was looking sceptical. I said, just please try it for a couple of weeks and see how it goes.

Well, two and a half years on from time to time, he still says to me that time thing you told me, it changed my life.

And it sounds dramatic, but he says everybody is booking in time to see me now.

If something is really urgent, of course, he’ll make time for them. But otherwise, things can wait and people can see him when they need to and he can get on with whatever he needs to.

Other clients, again, really chaotic because they’re all juggling lots of things and so over time, we’ve managed to delegate some of the activities.

If you want to grow that business, you have to start delegating because there’s only so much time in a day.

Otherwise, you’re trading time for money.

Do what you add the most value in.

Don’t try to book-keeping if that’s not your thing. Don’t start doing just lots of admin, because that is time-consuming and you could get somebody else away from for much less.

So again, these are all common-sense things, but people sometimes also have this false economy that they’re going to save a little bit of money. In the long term, it doesn’t help. Many business owners say this.

“I’m drowning. I’m drowning”.

Well, it’s a common phrase. And so, try and just

  • simplify things,
  • delegate,
  • organize,
  • plan,
  • structure.

All of those good things that we all know about, and it does make a difference in your life and to others. Also making sure that your employees are also, organizing themselves properly so that they become more productive.

Does this resonate with you? If you would like to book a complimentary, no-obligation, coaching session to discuss this further, please email me at falgunidesai@actioncoach.com