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One of my Private Platinum clients showed up for her retreat last October, and said to me, “I feel so silly admitting this.   But, I have difficulty figuring out how to spend my time each day in my business.   It feels like I am working all of the time, yet not getting results.  Can you help me lay out my day so I can grow my business, and feel less stress and exhaustion?”

When I asked my client questions about how she invests her daily time, the problem became clear; she didn’t prioritize her daily activities to support her in growing her income.  Plus, there were all sorts of ‘time leaks’ in her day because she didn’t set boundaries with clients and family members.

For example, she was allowing non-urgent family requests, such as running to the pharmacy to pick up meds, to interrupt her day.  She also gave her clients unlimited access to her.  Her own priorities kept getting pushed further and further into the background.

This resulted in her working 6 days a week until 9 or 10 pm each night.  And, she was earning less than $20,000 per year for all this work!  No wonder she was stressed out, exhausted, and her income suffered.

The problem is clear: when you don’t manage your time properly, you become overworked, and work way too hard for too little money.

Here are 5 tips to help you better-manage your time so your business and income will grow:

1. Read first-thing every morning for 30 minutes to get your mind ready for the day.

I like to ease my ‘thinking brain’ into my day by investing 30 minutes each day reading something educational that gives me the knowledge I need to develop my personal mastery skills, and grow my business. 

Another big benefit of starting your day this way is it gives you creative fuel’ that will spark new ideas you can apply in your business immediately.

2. Focus on income and invest 90 minutes each day on your Bold Money Goal.

For the next 90 minutes of your day, invest time doing income generating activities directed toward achieving your Bold Money Goal. 

3. Build marketing momentum (or keep it going) by investing 120 minutes per day.

For a minimum if 120 minutes (two hours per day), plan to invest time doing marketing.  Activities include following up with potential clients, networking, social media updates, speaking, delivering a list-building teleseminar, contacting joint venture partners, referral sharing, newsletter preparation and broadcast, attending trade shows, etc.

Note: If you need clients or are new in business, a guideline is to invest up to half your day (4 hours) doing marketing activities!

The trap people often fall into is when they get clients, they then get into client delivery mode and forget about marketing.  Then, very quickly, marketing momentum is lost, and the “marketing machine” has to start all over again.  It takes an incredible amount of energy and time to restart the marketing machine!

It is much better to spend time every single day marketing.  This evens out your cash flow and income.

4. Work on 3 ‘smaller’ goals for 45 minutes.

By smaller goals, I am talking about those projects that aren’t urgent, yet they need to be done to grow your business.  It could be such things as researching keywords to optimize your website, working on creating a Facebook page, and other tasks. 

Invest 15 minutes on each of your top three small goals.  This may not seem like a lot of time.  But, take these small bites of time, and watch you accomplish these smaller goals with ease! 

5. End your day with 30 minutes of creative time.

At the end of each day, invest 30 minutes in creative free thought, and write down all you ideas.  You’ll feel relaxed, stress will melt away, and it’s a very pleasant way to close the work day.

These 5 ideas will help give you structure to how you invest time during your day.  Of course, you also need to allow time for client fulfillment activities, delivering discovery sessions, content creation, attending professional development activities, and so on.

 Get connected to the TRUE COST of not managing your time.

 Time is a non-renewable resource. When your time is gone, it’s gone. Which means: when you don’t invest your time wisely, you sacrifice your dream.

 So what happened with my client?

We restructured her workday so she was only working 5 days per week, instead of 6.  And, she set boundaries with clients by setting aside a time period each day when they could call her (rather than allowing them to call any time day and night).  She also communicated to family members the importance of her work, and set boundaries of when she would be able to take time to fulfill family needs.

By doing this, she was able to treat her business as the priority it is.  After all, she deserves to earn the income she desires…and so do you!  This allows her, and you, to serve others, as well as yourselves.

I am so happy you’re back visiting my blog!  Leave a comment on the blog, and make sure you join my FREE newsletter so we stay in touch, and I can learn more about what you’re creating!

Have you ever looked at your calendar, and panicked because realized you overbooked yourself, and can’t possibly accomplish everything you’ve committed to doing?

I recently had a week where I had multiple Platinum client coaching and follow-up activities to take care of, I was travelling out of town for a couple of days, and I had five different seminars to lead within two days time—with one of those seminars being entirely brand-new content.

I had a whole 4-hour time slot in my calendar to create my slide presentation and handouts, before a 7:30 am seminar scheduled the next morning.

Before some of you suggest I become a better time manager, hear me out.

The truth is I didn’t panic.

You see, I work at a high rate of velocity, and have learned how to accelerate the rate in which I can deliver and create high-quality, high-value content, whether it’s planning activities for a seven-hour coaching retreat, or a new seminar.

To create the same volume (and quality) of work I do, many people invest days, if not weeks, creating their plans, content, and materials.  I know this, because one of the things I routinely work on with my Platinum clients is accelerating the pace at which they complete work, so they increase their income more quickly.  Universally, there is usually some “reengineering” in the manner in which they get their work done.

What’s the result of getting things done more quickly?  You WORK LESS, ACHIEVE FASTER, GREATER RESULTS, which means more cash flows into your pocketbook.

Examples of where you can achieve results could be taking less time to prepare for your coaching clients you serve, creating workshop or teleseminar content faster, or even creating an information product in a fraction of the time, and getting it to market faster.

Most of us entrepreneurs have a habit of working on our projects MUCH longer than we need to.  Why do we do this?  It’s because of a phenomenon called Parkinson’s Law. Parkinson’s Law, stated in terms of time, says—

“The amount of time in which one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete that said task.”

Translation: If you need to make a video introduction for your website, you’ll as likely take four weeks to produce, edit, tweak, and post it, when you could have accomplished the task in less than one week.  Dragging completion out of this project means you fill time, which is unproductive, and reduces your income potential!

By now, I know you’re convinced you can create results faster, in less time, with less effort, and produce high-quality work, to boot.  First, remember work expands to fill the time allotted.  Second, you have to consciously and deliberately create focused momentum.  Here are four tips how to increase the velocity of how fast you complete tasks:

1.  Be accountable to someone.

Whether it’s scheduling a workshop you’ve been meaning to lead for the last year, or signing yourself up for personal coaching, go public with the announcement or commitment.  Set a date.  Invest in coaching services and finally commit to growing your business, rather than saying to yourself, “I’ll do it when ________.”  Put some strong accountability in place so you have to get it done.

2.  Set specific time frames.

Be very clear and specific about a time, and date when you must “deliver the goods,” lead the seminar, or invest in you.  Also, set aside a specific amount of time to do the work.

My rule of thumb is decide how much time it will take you to complete a task, say 12 hours, and then cut that amount of time in half, to 6 hours.  By doing this you’ve just doubled the velocity of getting the task completed!

3.  Get focused.

Allow no distractions or interruptions during “creation time.”  This means no texting, tweeting, emailing, phoning, surfing the Internet, or straying off task.  Get focused, and committed to completing the task in the time you allotted.  (This will be easy if you stacked up your calendar with other “To-Do’s” and appointments.)

4. Believe in yourself.

This is probably the most important point of all, which is believing in yourself, that you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to doing—and you will do it brilliantly well.

When pressed with a tight timeframe, don’t panic.  Just sit down, and get to the work.  When you follow these steps, you can easily double your results while working much less, which will mean a whole lot more cash in your pocketbook!

Action Steps to Accelerate Results:

1. What’s one profitable or income-producing task that’s been on your To-Do list for a while that you’re ready to tackle?  Write it down.

2. How can you pro-actively use the four steps I outlined above to achieve the task?

3. Schedule this task on your calendar, and get to it!

Have you ever used the ‘ABC’ system of prioritizing tasks on your To Do list?  When you did this, did you end up with a list of all A’s, and being no closer to knowing what task to work on next?

Simply assigning an alphabetical code to items on your To Do list doesn’t work.  What does work is applying thought-out criteria to separate the A’s, from the B’s, and C’s.   By doing this you will effortlessly gain clarity about what activities you need to do to focus on doing in your business, and accelerate growth of your business with grace and ease.

The AaBC System

The criteria you apply to each of the tasks on your To Do list is the cornerstone of the AaBC System.  Following this system will make it crystal clear where you must spend your time on a daily basis.

A – Is for items that will 1) push your business ahead, 2) that only you can do, and 3) are time sensitive.  All three criteria must be met to classify an activity as an A activity.

A activities, by nature, are those activities that will grow your business, and leverage your unique brilliance and skills.

You should aim to invest 80% of your time performing A activities. 

Examples of A activities are—

• Creating a new product by a specific date
• Delivering services (such as coaching, consulting, teleseminars)
• Interviewing serious coaching candidates

a – Small a’s are time sensitive.  However, if they don’t happen, it will not be detrimental to your business.  Time sensitivity is the only criteria a items share with their big sister, A.

An example of small a activity is adding a few more presentation slides to a seminar you are leading the next morning.  If the task is not completed, it will not significantly affect the quality of your presentation.

B – Is for items that are 1) important, 2) will move your business forward, but, 3) have no time sensitive deadline.

Examples of B items are—

• Making contact with a potential business referral partner
• Writing a proposal for a grant program that is ‘rolling’ (has no due date for application)
• Following up on request to be a guest speaker with no specified date

B items are perfect activities to delegate to another person to do for you.

C – is for items that won’t any difference in your business if you choose not to do them. 

C items might include—

• Responding to inquiries for joint venture partnerships you’re mildly interested
• Recording a new MP3 download for subscribers to your e-newsletter
• Responding to an interview request by a reporter of a lesser-known publication

You can do C items if you have spare time, and enjoy doing them as “downtime” from A activities.  After all, we all need a break from brainy tasks from time to time!

Also, a good rule to follow is don’t pay an assistant to do C tasks.

Remember, they won’t make a difference in your business if you choose not to do them, so you don’t want to pay someone to work on these tasks.

Learn to say, “No, thank you”

We all love to help people, and do favors for others.  However, to grow your business, you’ll have to learn to say “No, thank you” to some requests of your time.  Your time is a limited resource; once it passes, it never shall return.  Learn to say “No, thank you” to requests such as speaking at groups with less than30 people.

Making choices and prioritizing how you spend your time in your business on a daily basis will powerfully move you and your business forward, and transform your business so you will achieve your most important goals!

What are your tips for prioritizing so you focus on what moves your business forward?  Share with our readers by making a comment.