As I reflected back in 2005, about the things I accomplished and those I did not, one key factor in order to earn more money is effective time management. Time management has been spoken at length before and I think repeating it is important. After all, repetition is the mother of learning.
Everyone has 24 hours a day. How you manage your time and where you spend those 24 hours is up to you, but what you do in those hours will determine how much you will earn. Your current income will reflect if you are managing your time well. If you are the achieving type and already earning the money you want, improving your time management skills will allow you to enjoy more of life, through working less hours. Here is my take on time management.
First off, I think you can’t really manage time! You can manage yourself and your activities, but you can’t manage time. Whether you do anything or not, time marches on. Ok, how then do you manage your activities? I’m sure you have heard before, that the task at hand expands to fill the time available to do it. This means, if you have a task that can be done in 1 hour, if you have 2 hours, you take 2 hours to get it done. How do you know if you can make better use of you time? One way I’ve found to be useful for me, is to time log your daily activities. This gives you a good idea if you are being effective with your time. More about time logging later.
I’m sure you have come across people who complain they don’t earn enough because they don’t have time or they have too much to do or whatever else excuse that you can come up with. Invariably, those are all excuses. At the basic level, it means their time management skill are ineffective. Granted that some have jobs that take so much of their time or have children or sick parents to take care of, and they are disadvantage by those who have more “free timeâ€, yet you and I know and hear of people who against all odd, with little time or money, manage to get through night school to advance their career or to start a side business and anything else in between.
What you do with the time your have will determine your financial future. Let me illustrate further. Let’s just say you spend 8 hours at work. I say at work because in that time, you don’t do 8 hours of productive work. You may spend a significant amount of time shuffling paper, answering personal calls, replying e-mail, chatting with colleagues, getting coffee and the going to bathroom several times. The actual productive time you put in whether for yourself, if you are an entrepreneur or for your company is much less than 8 hours. Some studies have shown, most employees put in about 2 hours of productive work only! Gosh and they say they have to stay late and have no time for family, friends or exercise. Of course, there are those who are really overworked. I don’t deny that, but for the majority of us, we belong to those who are not so time effective.
How I know? Well, I’ve been in that situation before having gotten the habit of checking my e-mail and reading the news and doing everything else before I the things that will generate the most income for me. I found that I get distracted and before long, half a day has gone by. Today with internet access so readily available, many people are spending more and more time doing personal things at the office, while they seem to be working. You may think that you can cheat the system and the boss doesn’t know. But the boss does know and worst still, you are cheating yourself thinking you are working when you are actually not. In the end, you are only bluffing yourself.
Why? I believe if you already form the habit of pretending to be working, you can come out with excuses to yourself why you aren’t making the money you should. Basically you are telling your subconscious mind, you can’t earn more money. That is not a good place to be at. If you take an honest look at yourself and admit you are not that productive or effective, then it can be the first step to making changes.
Remember, what you did in the past have gotten you to where you are today and what you do today will determine where you will be in the months and years ahead.
How do you check if you are being ineffective? I suggest that your start a time log. What is a time log? You basically log or note down what you did and how long it took you to get it done. If you spent 20 minutes chatting with a colleague, write it down. Spend time talking over the telephone with a friend, write it down. You don’t have to show the time log to anyone, and be brutally honest with yourself. Do this for a week or two at least and review your time log.
At the end of the week, total up the time you have spent for different activities. You will be able to see a pattern, where you were productive and where you are not. If you actually spent 2 hours doing productive work, can your imagine the potential if you just increasing it by 50%? Or doubling that? What would happen to your income? Would you have more time to do the things you liked to do? Can you work less or take on more responsibilities? Sure you can. Try logging your time for just 2 weeks. I guarantee it will increase your level of awareness and improve your time management. Then you can choose to focus on activities that brings in the highest returns.
As you focus on doing thing that bring in more money, you’d get better at them, causing an exponential effect. Have you ever thought about that? You see, if you are in management, but you are not managing your people and your team, then you are not doing the things that bring the highest return for your effort. If you are not getting the highest return for your efforts and time, then you won’t be able to make significant changes to your income. Now, I do understand that there are other things like meetings, planning and all the other stuff you need to handle, but, if you can reduce, delegate or eliminate those, and increase your effectiveness in the areas that gives the highest payback, you will make more money.
If you are in sales, your top priority is making the sale now (and in the future) and any other activity that will move you towards more sales. Anything else will be a waste of your time and won’t help you earn more money.
However, they are certain activities that don’t generate income immediately. I call these growth activities or actions. What are these? These could be learning new skills, reading, thinking time or even relaxing to recharge. Any activities that can spring board future growth.
Time Management is especially critical if you are an entrepreneur and/or self employed because there will be no one supervising you. There’s nobody to check up on your work or if you are being productive. Only your income will tell you that. What if you have done the time log and don’t like what you see, but still can’t get yourself to change? Well, I would suggest that you get an accountability partner and monitor your progress. It could be your spouse, an outside friend. Anyone who wouldn’t or couldn’t use the information against you.
If you can’t find one, imagine yourself showing your time log to your spouse or children. What would they say? Hey, you goof off when you say you have not time to spend with us. Time logging is for anyone who wants to improve their performance. It will result in more time and more money. Until we develop the habit, it is easy to slip back and allow valuable time to be wasted. Time management skills is one skill you can’t afford not to be good at.
