Time is our most precious resource and honestly, you cannot afford to waste it. You aren’t going to get any more time during the course of each day, so it’s up to you to maximize what you have and manage yourself well around it.
I’m sure there are a few things that you can think of right now that are wasting your time every day that you would love to be rid of. Things that have been keeping you from getting it done. I’m going to share five ways that entrepreneurs waste time and give you solutions for moving beyond them.
What are your day to day experiences? Every day there are so many things going on that if you’re not careful, your day will have control of you and you won’t have a say in how anything goes. On a daily basis people are caught up in the everyday to-dos of business and family, multiple devices, overloaded inboxes, tools and tasks, friends, followers, fans and other connections. I’m sure you can you relate to at least a couple of things in that list and that you’ve been in the midst of what I just described.
Of course this is what you want to shift away from, so let me dive into the 5 ways that I see entrepreneurs wasting time.
- Doing irrelevant things-Focusing on the mail, some social media, the accounting, the marketing, etc., wastes time and takes you away from the important things. Focus on the revenue generating things and delegate the things that don’t require your specific expertise.
- Doing the right things inefficiently. Efficiency is doing things the right way and effectiveness is doing the right things. So here the problem is being effective, but not efficient. Once you know what to do, approach things in a way that lets you be productive. A good example is having a process for repetitive tasks instead of reinventing the wheel each time.
- Spending time-If you don’t know exactly where your focus should be, then chances are you’re focusing on the wrong things daily. You’re spending time versus investing it. Identify your priorities so you know what’s important to have your tasks be an investment of your time.
- No systems-Lack of systems will not only leave gaps, but will have things falling through the cracks. Systems are composed of tools, processes and people, they don’t have to be complicated. Determine what systems you need and then create each component for each system and implement it.
- Technology-Email and social media are two of the biggest time wasters so you need rules for both. Use inbox tools to manage email and set designated times to check it. Have a plan for social media and use it. Delegate a portion of it to make it easier to make your time on social media focused, deliberate and intentional.
Start with one time waster, apply the solution, and then move to another. Keep moving until you eliminate your time wasters.