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Understanding the benefits of time management to help you stay focused and productive could be the key to your success.
As entrepreneurs we all want to have more time freedom to spend on activities that grow our business.
To manage time effectively we need to produce bigger results doing activities we love to do.
We need to learn to leverage time.
How would you feel if you could free up more of your time to do more of the things you love to do and delivers the biggest results?
What would you do if you could free up time to get back an hour a day? Two hours a day?
If you were more productive and more focused?
The advantage of good time management
Effective time management is about creating big results in the shortest amount of time.
It is about using your time to maximise effectiveness and results. The purpose of time management is to help people work smarter, not harder and to get more important work done in less time.
Importance of time management for business owners
People learn to deliver bigger result in less time as a result of being able to effectively manage time.
Effective time management and the results people create with that time boosts their productivity, results, client impact and confidence.
The benefits of time management are immense when your focus is on producing results rather than worrying about time and effort.
To help reduce overwhelm, plan your day more effectively, download my FREE Daily Productivity Planner to help your stay focused and productive DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE PRODUCTIVITY PLANNER
Disadvantages of bad time management
This is a common barrier I hear on a regular basis: the entrepreneurs I speak to as a coach don’t have time to pursue their biggest goals and dreams.
People want to expand time freedom but are mired in busyness and don’t have time to grow their business.
Long hours and working harder means they don’t have time to spend with their family and loved ones.
Learn to work smarter, not harder
This article is focused on outlining the benefits of time management and providing tangible tools you can use to expand your time freedom.
If you want to free yourself up to focus on what matters most – freedom of time and freedom of money, then you need to work smarter, not harder.
By using one single time management strategy or a combination of the tips and strategies laid out below, you can free up at least 20 hours a month.
Find the ones that work for you (not all will work for everyone), and then commit to freeing yourself up at least an hour a day.
Then make sure you maximise that time you’ve got back to focus on multiplying growth improvements in your business and personal life.
Develop time management skills
The single biggest benefit of effective time management is more time freedom for you.
More time freedom to focus on growing your business.
More time freedom to spend with your family.
Time freedom to spend building your business.
When you have more time freedom you can spend more time doing something you really, really want to do, whether that’s spending more time with your family, working on a personal goal, business growth, exercising, reading more, or whatever.
Proven benefits of time management
The gift of time is precious. Use these 7 benefits of time management to free up more time to spend doing what’s crucially important to you and that you love to do.
1. Think about people, rather than how
We often spend hours and hours working out HOW to do something when that thing is not one of our strengths or we’re starting from scratch.
Instead of spending this time, think instead about the people who could actually take on the work. This could be a member of your team or external expertise.
Who do you know who has the expertise and knowledge to take on the task or project and complete it in much less time that you would?
Delegate to manage time
Understanding the benefits of time management will help you delegate more, outsource specific projects or tasks so you could save yourself hours of time.
You’ll also free up huge amounts of energy and so more of what you’re best at.
Look at your current list of To-Do’s.
Which items should you take on that maximise your greatest strengths and really move your business forward? Conversely, which items suck up your time and energy and could easily be done by someone else with the relevant expertise.
This could be a game changer for you and free up time.
2. Set up your day the night before
Morning routines can be powerful.
The game changer for me was creating a simple 15 minute evening routine where I:
- Write down the 3 biggest achievements I had that day
- Prioritise and write down the 3 things I want to achieve tomorrow
By having that clarity on where I should be investing my time, and what areas of my business I should be focusing on ensures I start every day in a motivated, energised way.
This ensures I don’t get into the office and wonder what to work on first.
The key here is being clear on the benefits of time management and being intentional with your time and focus. If you don’t have that intentionality it’s very easy to put together a big, long to-do list and become easily distracted.
3. Shrink your to-do list
How many items are currently on your to-do list?
10? 15? 20?
Having so many items on a to-do list is a recipe for disaster.
If you’ve had 10-15 items on your daily to-do list, how many of you have actually gone through the list and finished all the tasks?
Chances are not many of you.
When you have items on your to-do list unfinished at the end of the day, it can cause feelings of failure and overwhelm.
Instead, shrink that to-do list down to only 3 items per day.
These are your MIT (most Important Tasks).
If you complete those 3 items you’ll feel great, confident and happy. You’ll have a feeling of positive focus, momentum and progress.
4. Create strategic planning days
If you are always working in your business, it can feel like you’re on a treadmill, running fast but not actually going anywhere.
You’re spending your time:
- Firefighting
- Jumping from meeting to meeting
- Worrying about cashflow
- Trying to find new clients
- Handling all of the admin
- Doing tasks you hate, that don’t utilise your strengths
- Simply going from day to day trying to stay afloat
The antidote to this busyness and reactiveness is to be far more strategic, to free up time. To have a clear strategy of exactly where you’re going and a simple game plan to get you there.
You understand exactly what the biggest dangers in your business are; what the biggest opportunities are and what your biggest strengths are.
By setting one day aside each month, a Strategic Day, with no distractions, no emails, no social media you can focus simply on growing your business, achieving your biggest goals and maximising your opportunities.
Time management benefits of a strategic planning day
This Strategic Day could be spent:
- Focusing on your biggest money making opportunities
- Laying out your vision for the next 3 years
- Setting 90 Day Goals
- Meeting with your most profitable clients
- Spending strategic time with your team to review performance
- Building an effective marketing strategy
You choose what your strategic day is about. The benefit is to take yourself completely out of the business and to work strategically on the what is most important in your business with no distractions.
5. Focus time on your biggest opportunities
Use the 80:20 Rule (Pareto Principle) to think about how to spend time developing and growing your biggest opportunities.
Think about your clients and customers. Do 20% of them bring in 80% of revenue to your business?
If they do, how can you find ways to build more powerful relationships and sell more to that 20%?
Are some of your clients taking up way too much of your time, not paying enough and bringing your energy down? If they are, what steps can you take to stop working with them?
Using the benefits of time management with clients
Think about the referrals you’ve had in your business. Have them come from a small number of people? If yes, focus more and more of your time on deepening relationships there.
This is all about leveraging your time for maximum impact and results.
So:
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Maintain focus on your biggest relationships and opportunities
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Identify the most important relationships and opportunities for short-term cash flow
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Cultivate longer-term prospects, referral sources and centres of influence
6. Use time tracking to focus on results
If you’re an entrepreneur that has come from a corporate background before setting up your entrepreneurial business it can be difficult to shake the 9-5 mentality.
For the first few months of your business life you will actually be working far longer than that. To get things set up and moving forward and to bring revenue into the business.
Working longer hours at the start of your business is simply something we all have to do.
But, when the revenue and cash flow is more settled and you have a clear plan of where you’re going your mindset and time management should begin to shift.
It will become more about the results you can achieve, not the time spent “in the office”.
How to create time leverage
If you can leverage time, productivity and relationships to deliver the results you want in half the time, you don’t need to continue working a 9-5 if you don’t want to.
The reason entrepreneurs start their business is they want more personal freedom. If you can set up your mindset and business to focus on RESULTS, not TIME SPENT, this will free up your thinking.
7. Use goal setting to start managing time
Think of your development and growth in terms of goals.
Every stage of individual and business growth comes from having goals—desiring something in life that is new, better, or different.
Setting higher and more demanding goals automatically forces us to develop new relationships, structures, and habits. You can then use these as the tools to take you to the next growth stage.
New relationships can provide you with larger opportunities and better results.
A better team and new organisational structures can give you the support you need to achieve those larger opportunities and results.
New habits will allow you to reach higher levels of performance and achievement that enable you to get there.
We all want to expand our time freedom.
Use these 7 benefits of time management to help free up more of your time to focus on the people that matter most and your personal and business goals.
Read also:
The importance of time management: 10 ways it matters
8 time management tips to manage time effectively
Over to you.
What’s your best time management tip?
How do you free up time?
Let me know in the comments.
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P.S. Whenever you’re ready….. here are 5 ways I can help you free up your time to grow YOUR business:
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