How To Manage Time More Efficiently
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Knowing how to manage time is of the greatest importance in every aspect of modern society.
In business, the old adage is “Time is Money”, but that seems applicable to other facets of our stresses and strains of everyday life.
It accentuates the importance of having the right skills and tools to manage time.
That specifically applies to today’s entrepreneur, who, while carefully delegating her business tasks to her staff, desperately would like to establish a routine in business in order to better manage her time.
But how do we value the entrepreneurs time?
For the salaried employee it’s easy. She can calculate her earning rate per hour.
To see if she manage time perfectly and efficiently, the entrepreneur needs something alike. But how?
Her activities are extremely varied like planning, consultation, organizing, co-coordinating and reviewing, both directly as well as through on-line systems, which frequently extends working from a few hours to 16 hours per day.
How time is spent best or how well she practices the delicate art of how to manage time efficiently is exactly what gets misplaced or pushed to the background.
Here are some tips on how to value her time in order to manage time efficiently.
- Money value
It’s absolutely necessary to formulate a way of recognizing whether the time spent is worth the value.A simple money value for each hour spent is the easiest and simplest method to establish this. You have to make a beginning somewhere. Simply start with the total money earned in a certain period and divide that by the number of hours worked. Later on you can go into further details by specifying what kind of activities that period comprised.
- The first step
What really counts is the first step to be able to estimate how one functions, or delegates his/her business chores. It should eventually result in an answer to the ultimate business question about how much the returns can be maximized for minimum effort – and that apparently includes the value of time spent.Once that figure is calculated, it will be more than likely that it is terribly low or not even comes close to what a salaried person earns within the business. Yet now the entrepreneur has all the data before her that she needs to set her goals to take it higher, in steps and match with supporting actions, on managing routines or delegating the right things to the right persons.
- Invisible Benefits
The least this exercise can do is to throw up some data on how one’s time is being spent, wasteful or useful, but once the figure is known in money terms, it is easier to take corrective steps, in many areas of the business which costs money and manage time more efficiently. - Knowledge is power
Further the business owner becomes more equipped with the knowledge of the actual value of his/her contribution, and what or where one has to change in his/her routine, or delegation to others, such that the business operates more profitably.Ultimately she will manage time much better and more efficiently which in turn will lead to optimal delegation of business activities to others, so that more efficient routines get established, leading to profitable businesses all the way.
So, how do you manage time?
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Seems like time is getting more and more scarce lately.
I work harder and make less money and the cycle seems to never end.
The most important part of this article I see is concerning optimal delegation of business activities to others…in my case outsourcing the writing of articles to qualified writers at various content mills.
Its cheaper now for me to pay someone a few dollars for a decent article than it is for me to take the time to write them myself.
Don’t get me wrong…I still do write articles on some of my blogs, but I have several blogs I rarely write anything for that I post to on a regular basis.
>>>I work harder and make less money and the cycle seems to never end.
Take a step back, lean backwards and think of a way to work smarter, not harder.
Seems you already have found (at least part of) a solution: delegation and outsourcing.
Sounds good to me!
Time blocking helps tremendously for me and planning ahead. If I dont plan ahead its probably not getting done
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I’ve been to a time management seminar and this post is much better to read than what I got on the seminar. In the type of work that I have now, it is really very important to learn the secret of managing time. Thanks for this post!
Julia
Thanks Julia and you’re welcome!
Managing time varies from person to person and it also depends on the everyday responsibilie he is facing. I make a list of most important tasks of the day daily and then give them the priority on the basis of money value.
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That’s a very good article, Case.
Good time management and organisation is crucial to achieving a good profit margin.
I find it’s best to have a “to do” list ordered with the most time-consuming (& costly) tasks first, so these can be done as a priority and then you know how much time is left to do the less time consuming tasks, which are usually closer to the allocated amount of time.I think that not getting distracted and digressing onto other, unscheduled tasks is also very important in time management, as these can cause schedule over-run.
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I was agree with naveen’s idea. good time management is good priority, and it’s mean priority for everything. and it should be centered in most important things. and I thing every people agree with money value in first row.
How to manage time efficiently seems a usual question yet hard to do. For me, first you have to be well organized and make priorities for a daily or weekly task. Then manage your time with the loads according to importance. With this you’ll be more productive and earning money will come in an easy way.
You get so much more done with effective time management.
I’m currently using google chrome, and one of their extensions is a “to do list”. You just check them off as you finish them.
Great tool to prioritize your tasks daily.
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Sounds like an excellent plan to me!
I was lucky enough to get a place on Ed Dale’s mentoring programme and one of the first things he talked about was Critical Focus Time. I did a post about it on my blog but basically it’s about doing only certain tasks during CFT namely those that are directly related to bringing in money. I was quite surprised at what wasn’t included, for example, any social media stuff. It’s really helping to keep me focused and now, I feel, the next step is to create a routine around it. I’ve created the habit on doing a set amount of CFT per day but now I need to try to set specific times for doing it, otherwise my work day just goes on and on.
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Honestly, TV used to be my biggest time waster. Watching programs that came on in between shows that I liked wasted many hours. However, now that I stopped watching TV, it’s easier to not get back into that bad habit when I do watch the occasional show.
But now, my biggest time waster is the internet and other people. The internet is a never ending universe of things to do. As for people, I find that I waste time going to appointments that people are late too. Either that or I have to make time to reschedule meetings to work with their needs.
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Managing your time is huge specially if you are working from home, I easily find distractions that seem to make the time fly by so so quickly.
I was on a Webinar recently and discovered a way to prioritize the work that needs to be done.
Basically you split your to do list into 4 columns
1. not important/not urgent – delegate or bin it
2. not important/urgent – delegate it
3. important/not urgent – complete these items second
4. important/urgent – complete these items first
columns 1 and 4 should only be dealt with once.
columns 3 and 4 are your income producing activity.
What do you think?
I wouldn’t spend my “precious” time setting up my to do list like this everyday but I think having important and urgent in mind helps.
Oh and the idea to deal with the unimportant things once is good too!
Hi Hayley
Good plan. Any system creating a prioritized to-do list is good.
It’s a matter of personal preference which one to use.
Yours looks great.
I think you should set it up every day though.
Once you’re used to that, it’s just a matter of adding and deleting items, which can be done in minutes.
They are well spend, as they provide you the focus for the rest of the day!
Time management has become more difficult because of tecnology. This was supposed to help but actually means we are distracted or interupted far more often.
If I need to get something done I tend to switch the emails and cell phone and that really helps.
You are spot on focusing on the money tasks. Too many people focus on the none profit making tasks. And remember you can’t do everything!
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I too agree that there is no such thing like “i have no time”, instead our biggest problem is how to prioritize our tasks correctly.
Hayley the system presented by you seems pretty good, the only thing left is to correctly classify our tasks..and this in my opinion comes with experience.
Hi
Great article
I think the internet marketer or people trying to make a living online is very similar to the entrepenure..
For example when endeavouring in making a profitbale site one spends hours and weeks or even months working on the site only to get a few cents here and there , however later on as time passes the website gets more popular more traffic comes..
you see entrepenures and internet marketers have the mindset of sowing and then reaping the harvest later, who ever heard of sowing a seed and harvesting straight away..there no such things…however for encouragement dont give up if you dont see hundreds of dollors for your adventure straight away just be patient and perserve and take action.
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It is so hard to stay focused when working online. It’s way too easy to get side tracked and start following rabbit trails. I waste too much time following links that I really don’t need to.
Checking email and affiliate accounts can also waste a lot of time.
I find that I need to shut down email and only check it a few times during the day. Like others here, I try to set apart blocks of time to complete certain tasks. It’s important that those tasks are related to doing something that will enhance my business.
That’s the biggest problem for most people in IM Jean.
Especially when they discover social media like Twitter etc. On top of their email that has to be checked every 10 minutes, it’s a huge time waster.
Case,
I’ve found that by handling my emails once daily at a set time (usually first thing in the am), I’m able to concentrate on other matters without that distraction. I handle all of the important / urgent messages immediately and delegate those that do not require my direct involvement.
That’s exactly the way I handle my email, although I (have to) check more often to see if there’s any trouble downloading products etc.
BTW, did you stop publishing in February?
For myself, managing time is not the hard part, I think it is easy for someone to be able to manage and schedule their time. The hardest part is actually doing the things you want to do. Sure you may say you want to schedule a certain block of time, and dedicate it to doing a certain task, but the hardest part comes in actually doing that task. See… for myself that is what I struggle with… I can make one of the greatest time schedules, and plan out the things I want to do, but ultimately procrastination sets in, and I never wind up doing the tasks I want to do.
Just my take on it.
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If you work hard and get less money than you want it only means one thing you should work less and take some time off. To have a rest and think about how you work, not how much but in what way. And therein lies the key to success. to have everything planned.
One word: Outsourcing. There is so much menial data entry involved in certain things that wasting my own time or using sketchy software just isn’t practice. $3.33 for data entry is a no brainier. Odesk anyone?
Time management has to be one of the most important things to get sorted for a small business, otherwise pretty soon you will find the business has taken over your home life.
I use googles diary app which I think syncs with stuff like iphones.
As a management student then, we always put between our class discussion,the importance of Time Management and it has been a shame to us if we didn’t able to managed our time wisely as what our professor were always saying. We tend not to value our time which it fact, one of the most valuable factor in our existence. We can earn the money we have lost and we can regain our energy with rest and plenty of foods. We can find new friends and lover but we can’t take back the time we spent for nothing. I have came to my mind that it was indeed a very spilled milk and an opportunity lost for me that I have taken for granted the courses I took in college. I felt that the knowledge I’ve gain was not that enough or did not compensated the sacrifices my parents and I’ve done. I can’t take back the time anymore. I’m just remorseful of it this time. If only I have thought it and took it seriously that time.