Time Management Pt.2 - Relating To Your Business

In the first of my Time Management posts, I talked about what time management is and how it's vital that you understand the concept of the value of time. In this post, I want to look at how everything we discussed in the first post then related to you and your business, whether that business is consulting for offline clients, or marketing information (or really any business for that matter - whilst the specifics may be slightly different, the fundamentals are all the same). 


We looked in the last post at the four quarters, and the way in which they help us to assign a value to the different time that we use every day. Let's think about how those four quarters relate to our business. 


Realistically, the only quarter that changes much at all is Quarter 2, the 'Need to' category. Q1 is the same - We still need to eat properly, sleep, exercise and stay healthy. Q3 will stay the same as we want to spend time in our day doing what we enjoy (as much of Q3 as is possible really) and Q4 is still as relevant as ever - It's only Q2 that we really need to focus on. 


In our business, we need to be constantly focusing on Q2, and establishing how best to use that time. 


When we spoke in the first part of this training about the breakdown of your day into four quarters, we spoke about the idea that you must always think of the four quarters as part of a circle, one that can't get any bigger. A day consists of 24 hours, so it's up to you how you assign your time to the four different quarters. 


With that in mind, we as business owners must ensure that whatever we do on a daily basis has a direct impact on our income, as this is ultimately what is going to allow us to enjoy more of Q3, and have the money to spend on things like vacations and experiences (I'm not going to get into the whole 'money doesn't buy you happiness' debate here, let's just assume that as entrepreneurs we're all trying to make a better living for ourselves). 


So the first thing to do is to work out how much time you WANT to spend working on Q2 - Or in other words, how much time do you want to spend working on your business? If you're full time, that might be 8 - 10 hours (or maybe less). If you're part time, it could be 30 minutes per day, or an hour, or 2 hours. This part is up to you. But you need to assign some time, and that time is going to come out of your circle. 


(It's worth pointing out at this stage that if you are working at this part time, there's nothing wrong with having 5 sections to your circle, with one representing your day job and another representing your part time business. The principles of time management are still the same)


Now you should have a figure. Let's say for argument's sake it's 3 hours. This is the time that you're going to devote to improving your business, putting more money in your pocket and ultimately making you more time and money to enjoy on Q3. 


So how are you going to use it?


This is the next step, understanding how to make the most of that time. Because the second you put a value on your time, you start to realise that it's actually pretty precious, and that wasting it is going to cost you in all of the other areas of your life. 


And in the next post, we'll talk about using lists to maximise your effectiveness, and outsourcing.