Seattle Small Business Blog

Your time is your life and your business. Master them by being forceful and deliberate! Lose no time in choosing how to use your time. Control your time and you control your life. Let others control your time and your time is not your own. Own it NOW!

If there is something you want done and want to do, then schedule it and nothing else for that allotted slot of time. The most important work you can do is work at a schedule that you have planned yourself. You’ve marked a time for your endeavors and if anyone asks what you’ll be doing at that time just say you will be busy.

The best way to be productive is to set aside time to focus on a project. Do the project. Ignore distractions. Say no to interruptions. Dedicate yourself by dedicating your time to what you are doing. Do that one thing either for the whole time or until it is done. Only then do you move on to something else.

Lock the doors and put up a “will be gone until such and such o’clock” sign. Shut off the phones and leave a message in your outgoing voice mail saying you will be unavailable until such and such a time. Set an alarm to go off, signaling when you have put in the time wanted on that activity for the day. Then work straight through until the alarm rings before going on to the next item in your schedule. That way you don’t always have to be looking at the clock, which is one more distraction you have gotten rid of.

That is how you make the time to do one thing at a time. If you want to accomplish more, schedule more. With a schedule there is no need to hesitate and procrastinate wondering what to do with your time. It does not take long to plan a schedule. Figure it once and write it down. It is simple, it is structured, and it brings success, which brings satisfaction. Time management equates to increased output. You can apply it to business as well as to your personal life.

Try to track down the things that waste your time. Find and eliminate them. Cut out excessive television, computer games, sitting doing nothing. Those things get you nowhere. Write goals so that you can be doing something worthwhile. That way you can have a streamlined upwardly mobile direction and a dynamic proactive life.

See what you could be doing more efficiently than you are doing now. Sometimes we are doing something simple that can just as well be done while we are also doing something else (listening to motivational or informational DVD’s while driving is one example) thus we get more done. Other times we try to multitask and the complexity and the details make us have to do them again, when if we concentrated on just the one thing then we would have done it right the first time and thus saved a lot of time. There is also the sometimes-smart option of not doing the work at all. Hire someone else to do it instead. And by all means, if there is a way to automate the task using technology, see what you can do to set it up.

To make time truly your own, find out when you have the most energy for doing things. Maybe it is in the morning, afternoon, or night. That way you know how to best make your schedule, which just might include a siesta nap in the middle of the day. Working tired equates to dragging your feet and is inefficient.

A schedule is a tool you use to control your time. With your own schedule, you rule your time and your life. Do you want more than 24 hours in a day? Then schedule a 36-hour day! A study was even done of people living in caves where they couldn’t see the daylight and the study found that a 36 hour cycle was natural in that situation. The people would sleep for 12 hours and be awake for 24.

So what is it that you would like to do with your life or your business? If for instance your main objective in business is making money, then you should focus on marketing. Make it the priority in your schedule. The value of time is in how we use it. We can spend it mindlessly, or invest it wisely. It is your life; it is your choice.

There is a famous story in business articles and productivity books. It’s often attributed to different people and the exact dollar figure that the consultant was paid is always different.

But the story goes something like this: A man was concerned that he wasn’t being very productive. So he asked a consultant for a suggestion. That consultant made a profound suggestion that worked! He told the man to do the following: before leaving work at the end of the day, list the top three things he wanted to accomplish the following day. Then, when he got into work the next day, he should tackle them in order, not starting one until the one before it was complete. He was to keep working until he finished all three. Then he could be done for the day.

This story has taken on a life of its own and it is retold in every productivity book, but it never grows old. That’s because the truth of this tale, no matter how fictional the story itself is, is universal.

If you want to be successful in business – whether your business is online or offline – you need to know what you want to accomplish and prioritize it.

Now, the story itself was clearly written in an era when the owner of a business had a plush office and a company car and could come and go as he or she pleased. Nowadays, most online business owners work out of their homes (and sometimes have another job until their small business grows) so the story needs to be tweaked and updated for the modern entrepreneur.

The new moral of the story might be this: Prioritize everything! Rather than listing the top three items to be done, list everything and assign a number (from 1 to infinity… and for most entrepreneurs, the list seems that long!).

Then, get to work. Start at one and begin working down. Periodically you’ll have to re-prioritize as changes occur in your business. Task management programs such as Microsoft Outlook can help with prioritization. Even just a Microsoft Word document with an auto-numbering feature is better than nothing.

If you start working on the first one and keep going until you cannot work any more on it, then move to the next point on your list, you’ll see two things happen:

First, your productivity will increase dramatically because you’ll have started to hone in on doing what needs to be done.

And, second, you will work far more efficiently because you know the most important thing to do and you’re doing it first, before everything else.