If like many other Business Owners you struggle with balancing the amount of things you have committed to with the amount of time you have, then you may be in danger of “time bankruptcy!”
This means you are reaching the point where time debt is creeping higher and higher and you are over extending your time resources the same way you can over extend financial resources. Where you are borrowing hours from one priority for another and will never get that time back as every minute can only be lived once.
Are you overextending your time resources and in danger of time bankruptcy?
It seems that everyone has the tendency of wanting to do more things that they have time to do, however we would argue that this is extra difficult for business owners!
One of the primary challenges we see many of our clients struggle with is dealing with day to day demands, juggling multiple priorities and having enough time to work “on” their business to improve it for the better.
They end up borrowing the ever so important business development and improvement time for other reactive activities and they never get that time back. Years can go by without really moving forward and eventually they and their business suffer as a result.
What happens when you reach that point?
- Losing the passion for your business?
- Losing sight of the vision for the business you wanted to create?
- Losing the possibility of the lifestyle you had hoped the business will achieve for you?
- Being your own employee, grafting every day with not enough of a reward?
When this happens it’s like being on a hamster wheel of frustration and dissatisfaction!
Now this may sound extreme but it does happen and what we want is to help you avoid this so that you can invest your time in the best activity to get what you want out of your business.
How to get your time debt under control!
- Learning to say “no” to free up some time
- Taking time to think, assess and plan so you have clarity on how you want to move forward
- Prioritising – making tough proactive decisions about where to invest your time
- Breaking your habits – Improving your mindset and behaviour relating to your use of time
- Being aware of how you waste time or get distracted and finding ways to stop it
- Improving your “focus”
- Outsourcing and delegating all activities that are not the best use of your time
- Implementing better systems and processes
- Organising your diary into blocks of time
These are some brief suggestions, and there will be more so it’s important you invest to identify what will work for you and how to improve.
It all starts with you asking yourself the right questions:
Where am I borrowing from important business development time – what do I borrow it for?
What decisions do I need to make to change this?
Then as you go through each day doing your best to stop borrowing time from important activity ask yourself:
What am I giving up to do this?
How am I going to feel about this later today, in a month, in a year or in 10 years?
How can I do what I need to do and not lose out on the important stuff?
If all else fails, at least keep a bank of unscheduled time in a day as an emergency fund so that as things crop up it is less stressful and you can keep to your commitments.
