Hi there!

I came across this quote recently, it is a modern restating of one of Benjamin Franklin's quotes ‘By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.’

Time management is one of my favourite topics, if I think back to when I first started out in business, I’m somewhat astounded how inefficiently I used to work compared to now.

Although I was always super-busy, I often failed to reach my goals. The more time and effort I put in, the further behind I seemed to fall.

It wasn’t until studied a Diploma of Project Management it really reinforced that to achieve specific goals within a specified timeframe, initiating, planning, executing and controlling all came into play with time management to meeting a specific success criteria.

How about you, have you ever researched the best ways to work efficiently?

Even if you have the best education that money can buy, no one really teaches us how to work. We graduate from college or university, find a job, and depending on the workplace culture, start emulating our work colleagues. In most cases, this means we pick up their bad habits, such as:

§ Failing to plan the day’s work

§ Losing time on low– impact tasks

§ Allowing procrastination to creep in

A typical work day scenario would be, you most likely come into the office in the morning with high expectations of productivity, but before you can get down to your real work, your colleagues want to chat, you need a coffee, and your Inbox is calling!

Have you ever stopped to calculate how much time you spend on these individual activities?

§ Chatting to colleagues – approx 15 minutes.

§ Making a coffee, or preparing your breakfast – approx 10 minutes.

§ Checking your emails – anything from 10 – 30+ minutes. That’s not taking into account a social media check-in – let’s get real!!

Recent statistics highlighted that the average office worker checks their Inbox 40 times a day.

If you’re checking your emails that frequently, then you’re interrupting your workflow and thought patterns just as frequently too. In other words, you’re probably sabotaging the quality of your work and work capacity!

Fast track to starting your own business when YOU the solopreneur are totally reliant on your own efforts to generate income, how imperative it is to have a solid routine and dedicated time to focus on money producing activities.

So back to the Inbox... I have found that scheduling 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the afternoon, is plenty of time to catch up on important emails and if you have deadlines, allocate a timeslot in the middle of the day to respond to clients. (Allocate a separate time in your calendar to unsubscribe from unwanted newsfeeds). The rest of my day is freed up for essential meetings, project work, brainstorming and marketing.

Bottom line, we live in a world where we are bombarded with technology, which in theory should make our time management easier, but if not harnessed can be overwhelming.

I hope this article has given you the boost you need to start thinking of other ways to free up valuable time.

To your success...