How would it feel if you could free up more time?
Imagine if you could free up at least 2 hours of your time every day. If you could, what would you do with that time?
This article is not about time management tips, it’s about showing you simple strategies you can use to free up more time, at least 2 hours a day and create expanding time abundance.
Time management frustration
Most ambitious entrepreneurs I know want to be freed up to have more time to do the things they love, are best at and bring the most revenue into their business.
But they feel stuck and frustrated.
They feel they don’t have enough time and are filling their calendars with lots of stuff.
Stuff they find irritating, that fills up their time and doesn’t contribute to the real growth of their business.
Do you ever wish you had more time to do the things that really matter?
That you had more energy. That your activities were motivating and exciting rather than stuffed to the max with stuff?
Creating time freedom
When was the last time you were able to take proper time off… and not dread coming back to a sea of admin, hundreds of emails or a to-do list that’s a mile long?
Whether you run your business on your own or have a small team juggling endless activities and responsibilities – having “time freedom” can sound like something only the most successful entrepreneurs have.
But, time freedom can be yours.
You can free up more time, provided that you’re willing to be intentional about what you do and drop some activities.
What is time freedom?
Having time freedom or time abundance simply means being freed up to be super productive.
You can achieve this simply by doing activities you’re great at, love to do, are passionate about, and bring in the most revenue into your business.
By getting clarity on those 3 things, you can filter out a lot of frustrating activities.
It’s not necessarily about doing “less”, it’s about doing more of the right things.
Time freedom is that satisfied feeling of knowing you’re intentionally spending your time on what really matters and ignoring the rest.
Rather than feeling you don’t have enough time, you feel that 24 hours is more than enough time.
Creating better time boundaries
This, of course, requires that you’re crystal clear on your vision, your goals and your priorities.
You become an expert at saying no to the things, people and activities that don’t fit into that vision.
With time abundance, you can continually free up more time and develop the productivity habits that get you more focused and reduce your stress.
This is a mindset shift.
It can help you double your free time and revenue and increase your simplicity, confidence and capability.
Let’s dive into the 3 simple ways you can free up more time:
1. Get clear on your bigger future goals
If you’re not clear on the bigger vision you have for your business it’s easy to lose focus and spend lots of time trying different things with different people.
There may be lots of false starts, spending time simply trying to move forward and make progress.
You may get caught up doing so many things you can’t see the wood through the trees.
When you’re clear on what your big goals are and can zero in on what you love to do, are best at and delivers the biggest impact and align that insight with being clear on who you want to be a hero, this frees up a lot of time.
Your vision
Your vision helps to intellectually engage you and emotionally commit you to this bigger and better future you want to create.
The vision eliminates confusion because there’s always a bigger, more exciting future that acts as your guiding path and plan.
Having this path helps you filter put the activities and people that don’t support your vision..
When you eliminate confusion you become clear on your destination, creating higher levels of clarity, confidence and time.
Where do you want to achieve?
One of the best ways to get clarity on your vision is to use a question from Strategic Coach Founder, Dan Sullivan:
“If we were having this discussion 3 years from now, what has to have happened both personally and professionally, for you to be happy with your progress?”
By envisioning where you are now and what you want your life to look like, it will help clarity where you should be spending your time to create the biggest impact.
Having a clear, well-articulated picture of your ideal future can become a competitive advantage for you, helping free up more time to spend on things you love to do and are best at with the people who matter most.
This in turn creates a strong sense of direction, purpose and confidence while eliminating cluttered thinking, procrastination and confusion which can suck up so much of your time.
2. Take a time audit
Being able to free up more time is a precondition for the creativity and productivity essential to growth, sustainability, and success in your entrepreneurial business.
If you have followed Step 1, you will have a clearer vision of what you want to achieve in the next three years.
Your current activity will either support that vision or take you further away from it.
But, how exactly are you currently spending your time?
Transform your time management
To be able to transform your time and free up more of it, it’s essential to understand exactly where your time goes.
When I worked in corporate we had a time sheet system that had everyone track their time against things like specific client work, business development, pitches, team meetings and admin.
Although many people didn’t like the time sheet system it allowed me, as the Managing Partner, to analyse the information to ensure that everyone was maximising their productivity and that every client job was profitable.
If you are an individual entrepreneur or the owner of a small business, it’s still imperative to understand how valuable your time is, both personally and to the business as a whole.
Before you can multiply you have to simplify.
Rather than time and effort, as an entrepreneur you need to focus on results.
Transform busywork into productive work
Instead of busywork, the aim is to transform your time into your most productive and creative work.
Once you get a handle on exactly where you’re spending your time versus where you want to spend your time, it can be a game changer for your business.
Freeing yourself up to doing more of what you love and are best at is the key to your business growth.
Free up more time by tracking your time
Step 1 – Start by identifying and writing down or capturing digitally every activity you are currently doing over a 7-day period.
You can use software such as timelyapp or toggl amongst others to do this.
Step 2 – Begin to group all of the activities together based on the type of work you do and add the hours together.
If you’re a photographer for example this may include – client work photoshoot, client work editing, prospect meetings, marketing, social media, admin, accounts, networking – you get the drift.
Step 3 – You now have a view of all the hours you’ve spent in the last week, broken down by activity.
The next step is to break down the groups of activities into 3 different areas.
Analyse your time
Identify which activities you LOVE to do, which activities FRUSTRATE you but are profitable, and which activities are just STUFF, which you don’t like doing and aren’t really profitable.
The result is an eye opener for many people who undertake this audit, and can become the catalyst to free up more time.
They are surprised by how much time they are spending in day-to-day activities that they don’t actually like doing, aren’t passionate about and are not particularly profitable.
The next step is to create some real change to free up some of your time so you can spend it where it’s crucially important to you.
3. Spend more time doing what you’re best at
Now you have a clear picture of exactly where you’re spending your time.
If you want to change things and start spending more time doing what you love to do, are great at and is your most profitable activities then you probably want to make some changes.
With my coaching clients and during my corporate career we also work in 90 day periods.
Setting short term goals
My suggestion here is that you choose 5 specific improvements you want to make when it comes to freeing up more of your time into areas that you Love in the next 90 days.
This could be a big focus in the first 90 days on reducing and eliminating some of the stuff activities.
If you find, for example, that 50% of your time is taken up with stuff. An improvement might be “I want to reduce my stuff time to 30% in the next 90 days”
If there are projects or opportunities that you feel could propel your business forward in the next 90 days, look at how you could free up X hours to achieve that.
My clients have been able to free up 10-20 hours a week by hiring the right people to do some of the stuff activities as well as experts who can help in areas that they’re simply not very good at.
These time achievements will be custom designed to what’s crucially important to you in that next 90-day period.
Bonus Tip – Celebrate achievements every day
One other simple way to free up more of your time is to be intentional and crystal clear on the 3 biggest activities that will move your business forward each day.
At the start of the day, before you start working, simply ask yourself “what three main things do I want to have accomplished today?”
Figuring out what’s most important keeps you from losing hours to reactive and low value work.
What’s one changes you can make right now to experience more time freedom?
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