Providing that you didn’t fail miserably on the first task that I set out for you in my previous article (See Becoming Successful: Getting Started) , you should be on your way to starting your new venture. As we discussed earlier, this venture does not necessarily have to be a business. It could be that you want to start or become more involved in a community or charitable organization, start a new hobby that you want to become great at, or possibly just learn something new. Regardless of what your venture is, when you sat down to create your first task list and approached those tasks over the last week or so you probably ran into my most common complaint, “I just don’t have enough time”.
I’ve been self employed for a long time now and one of the roles I play is as a consultant for major corporations. If you happen to work for one of these giants I can be certain of one thing, you have plenty of time available, you have just been trained to mis-manage it. Oh! I’m sorry, did I just insult you? Well, get used to it. Major corporations, from top to bottom, have become extremely adept at wasting time, money and every other resource they can get their hands on. If you have spent much time inside this environment, you have to learn to be brutally honest with yourself with regard to how you use resources. If you are going to accomplish something on your own, you have to treat your resources with special care.
Time is your most important resource.
While some people will argue with me that money is the most important resource, especially when starting a business, I argue right back that the two are interchangable. Effort (time) provides you with money, money can provide you with effort from others, thus freeing up your time. For those of you who yearn to be rich, you probably do so in an effort to have more time. Money spent may come back to you, time never will.
If you will agree with me that time is your most valuable resource, then you have to agree with me that it should not be wasted. Take a few moments to reflect on the previous day. The previous week. The previous month. How much did you really get done? How much time did you spend on low value activities? How much time did you spend entertaining yourself? How much of the time you spent working really went to getting work done? Be honest. If you want to tell me that you spent 80 hours locked inside the walls of XYZ corp and there was nothing you could do that would have trimmed that down to 70, then so be it. You’re done. You have accepted your fate. Stop reading.
If however you can look back on your past week and identify areas that were total time wasters, time spent watching televisions shows that you weren’t even interested in, or periods of time when you were completely and utterly bored, then welcome. You have found the time resources you need to get yourself started.
Your Job is working against you.
Time management goes hand in hand with task management. The average employee knows that they have to go to work every day for 8 hours and “work”. Some are paid hourly and thus incented to work at something less that peak efficiency to ensure that more work will still be left for tomorrow, or that overtime is available. Most of these jobs are either service type jobs where you are in front of customers the entire time (bad) or jobs where you are expected to complete repetetive tasks all day (good). Your goal with this type of job is to ensure that you work like crazy when work is presented and utilize any downtime you can get by doing this to your advantage. Above all, get out of there on time! You are too valuable to use that time working for someone else rather than for yourself.
[ad#250sq]Other people are paid a set wage for their typical 40-hour work week and are thus encouraged to “look good” by working late and completing all of the tasks set before them on a schedule. The problem with this type of work is psychology. If I ask 2 different people to complete the same task, one scheduled for January 5th and the other for January 12th, both people will complete their task at exactly the same time. The day that it is due. If, however I challenge myself to complete the task in the absolute shortest period of time, say 3 days instead of 8, chances are just as good that I will get it done. This leaves me with 5 whole days to myself.
Sure, you say, if I get it done in just 3 days the boss will just give me more work. Besides, I doubt that it would be possible to complete an 8 day task that fast. You may be right. However, from what I have seen of the American workplace, so much non-work goes on there that an 8 day task can probably be done in one! (ok, I am being funny) The truth is that you want to train yourself to be much more efficient than you are today. Above all, get out of there on time! If you are working the 80 hour week, you are inefficient and foolish. (Sorry to insult you again)
Time Management isn’t hard, but it can be painful.
Changing your habits is one of the most painful things that a person can do, but if you wish to become successful you need to challenge yourself to question your current habits and see if they are the ones you really want to portray to the world. Are you really being efficient? Are you really being effective? Do you tell people NO enough? When you are asked to take on a task do you evaluate whether the task should be completed in the first place? Dig deep and get to know yourself. Only then can you change your habits for the better.
We all have strengths, we all have weaknesses, but if you are going to build yourself a better daily routine, you need to quickly turn those weaknesses to strengths or at least minimize their negative effects. The world if full of do’s and don’ts, Here’s my list.
Do:
- Limit your telephone time. Push phone calls to voicemail and respond to them via email whenever possible. Pick up for friends, relationships are important.
- Limit your email. Check it as little as possible. Start by tracking how many times a day you check it now. Cut it in half immediately. When you are down to 2-3 times a day, you are almost there.
- Limit your television time. Most of it stinks anyhow. Get TIVO! The extra cost is tiny compared to the hours you can save skipping commercials and the boring parts. I usually get a 1 hour show down to less than 30 minutes and I don’t miss a thing.
- Carry work with you at all times. I always have a book, articles, minor tasks, lists of potential clients, etc with me. Any free time I get I can then use to build my future.
- Get some exercise every day. As little as 30 minutes a day can change your life.
- Organize your work. Spend time at the beginning and end of your day organizing your work. Most people spend a ton of time just figuring out what to do next.
Don’t:
- Try to change everything at once. Pick one thing that you have identified as a weakness and work on it. When you have it under control, add another.
- Get too far ahead of yourself. I know people who have confused becoming more efficient at work with not giving a damn. If you hope to transition from your day job to your newly created venture, ensure that you are the most valuable employee that they have ever lost when you go.
That’s it in a nutshell. Building a better day takes a brutal examination of your present day and ripping up those bad habits so that new ones have some room to grow.
Next week we’ll talk about what could be the single most important issue when starting a new venture. Getting exposure.
