How to Free Up 50% More Time in Your Life

Have you ever wished you have more than 24 hours in a day? Are you wondering where to find the time to achieve your 2014 goals? Are you constantly juggling your work, family, self and friends, to a point of near burn-out?

Few of us live as if our time matters. We spend hours of our precious time on commuting – to our office, to client’s place, to do household errands. We wait for a friend who is tardy, a meeting that isn’t on time and a queue at the bank’s ATM machine that stretches too long. Yet we complain we have “no time.”

My approach to time management for business owners begin with identifying what matters most. In ActionCOACH there are 3 key areas to effective time management:

Key Area #1: SELF MASTERY – Take ownership of the value of your time.
It all starts with you. If you don’t respect your own time, then you will allow others to also take advantage of it. Ask yourself these questions, “how will this hour make me a better person?”; “could I buy your last hour?”

If you consciously plan to improve in every hour, this will mean you will do whatever it takes to ensure that you get the most out of every hour.

Some tips for you…

• When commuting listen to a self-enrichment CD
• When queuing at the bank, read a business magazine that helps you gain insight on improving your sale.

When you embrace the importance of your time, you will also

Key Area #2: DELEGATION MASTERY – don’t over promise and under deliver.
Accept the fact that you don’t have time for everything. Make conscious choices about what you’re going to do. Don’t feel obligated – or guilty – about all the other things. It’s better to say “No” now and be up-front about your limitations, rather than breaking your promise later.

These are the 3 things you need to first do in order to help you make those conscious choices.

i. Personally Organizing Yourself More Effectively

Personal time management is closely related to paper management. The problem of paper is basically one of decision-making. And that’s where trouble begins since a pile of paper can be an eye-sore and a source of stress. Once it piles up, you will feel overwhelmed and start to procrastinate on going through the pile. The pile then gets higher and a vicious cycle will form.

Take ACTION now by doing this – for each piece of paper decide on the following:

With this system, you avoid the constant firefighting that consumes the time of so many business owners.

ii. Keeping a list of things you are working on

Anyone who runs their own business has what seems like a million projects going on at the same time. With so much happening, it’s easy to lose track of how close to completion a particular project is. Nothing is more embarrassing than to have a customer call and ask about some project you’ve forgotten about.

Here’s what I do to keep myself organized and it has also helped many of my clients:

• Create a simple form of “who does what by when” to
• keep track of project and task owners.

Break large or complicated jobs into pieces with key milestones and deadlines along the way.

• Re-assign this form for someone in your team to follow-up.

iii. Redefining your own job, continuously, as the business grows.

In the beginning, every business owner must take on many tasks, including even sweeping the floor. But as the operation grows and matures,

hiring others to take on responsibilities becomes critical to healthy growth.

Take an honest look at your workload and identify tasks that you don’t do well. The real measure of a successful business owner is in knowing when to complement his/her own skills by hiring others who can take over certain key roles.

iii. Redefining your own job, continuously, as the business grows.

In the beginning, every business owner must take on many tasks, including even sweeping the floor. But as the operation grows and matures,

hiring others to take on responsibilities becomes critical to healthy growth.

Take an honest look at your workload and identify tasks that you don’t do well. The real measure of a successful business owner is in knowing when to complement his/her own skills by hiring others who can take over certain key roles.

Key Area #3: PLANNING MASTERY – Powerful Planning

Most business owners don’t plan at all and those who do often plan from the wrong end. They list the tasks to get them through the day, and then do the same thing every day of the week until the year has gone by.

Effective planning works the opposite way.

What you want to accomplish by the end of the year determines what you need to do each month. What must be done this month determines what you should do today and tomorrow. Schedule these tasks into your calendar working backward from your goals.

At ActionCOACH we advocate the use of a powerful system called the “Default Diary” – when applied and adhered to, this can be the single most powerful tool a business owner can have!

What a default diary does are…

Everything that is on the default diary is nonnegotiable: it has to happen at the planned time, otherwise there will have to be a replacement. This emphasizes the importance of the activities in it.

Having one’s priorities in place can boost one’s productivity and make business grow to their full potential. In the words of Leadership Author, John Maxwell, “Thinking ahead and prioritizing responsibilities marks the major differences between a leader and a follower.”

Maresa Ng – Asia's Top Business Growth Specialist
 
As Entrepreneur, Author, Investor, Professional Speaker, and ActionCOACH Asia Master Coach Trainer, Maresa has grown several of her own businesses and has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs, business owners & CEOs to succeed in turning around their businesses. She is the author of MPH Masterclass Guide to Starting a Business. Having spoken in over a dozen countries regionally, her business-building-seminars have touched the lives of thousands of business people and entrepreneurs. Maresa had achieved Top 3 Firm Builder in Asia Pacific in year 2015, and maintained Top 100 Global Coach in 2012 and 2013. One of her businesses was awarded SME100 Fastest Moving SMEs by SME & Entrepreneur Magazine in 2012. Her track record of both successes and failures has led her to be one of the most prominent business speakers and experts in the region. Described mainly as businesses secret-weapon, Maresa has the strategic and tactical ability, energy and passion to take entrepreneurs and businesses to the next level. Visit www.maresang.com and transform your business today.

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