Archive for the ‘Time Management’ Category

Procrastination is a disease that I have.  I have to admit that I have gotten better at tackling this monkey on my head, but it hasn’t been very easy.  I have another blog that I write frequently, and I have really gotten behind on that one and now I’m starting another one which I’m sure some of you will find rather crazy.  Since I have my new website up and running, I had to get on the ball and get this started, otherwise that monkey will be sticking bananas in my ears too!

Anyway, I need to get started on this blog, because I have found that they do help SEO (Search Engine Optimization for all of you that are sick of acronyms) so that I can validate that I can 1. Create a sharp looking blog and 2. Begin to give you some information that you can use to create your own online presence.

Back to the procrastination thing for a second.

People overlook one of their most prescious commodities in life which is time. I went out shopping with my wife at 3 ahem on he dreaded “Black Friday” right after National Turkey Day and we could not believe the massive lines of people that were lined up down the street to get into a department store.  Not only were they lined up at an ungodly time of the morning, but they had been there since 11:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day just so they could be the first in line.  I told my wife that I wondered if these people ever added up their time to see if it was really worth waiting outside like this.  Fortunately for us, our whole shopping experience took 45 minutes.  We knew exactly what we wanted and we got in the check out pretty quick.

Time is something that people don’t really consider as a commodity.  If you are an entrepreneur, you always have to track your time to see whether or not something is worth doing.  As a matter of fact, there are many reasons people don’t get things done in a timely manner and one of them is the fact that most of the business owners I know, try to wear every hat they can in their business.  Result: overwhelmed, worn out, frustrated and then procrastination will set in because they have such a large load to bear that they can’t seem to move.

One thing you can do as a business owner is to either delegate out responsibilities to someone on your staff, or hire out work that you just can’t do for yourself.  Do you really think Donald Trump pours concrete or handles legal matters on some of the high profile and complex projects that he deals in?  I don’t think so.  If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you are going to have to know how to hire and delegate responsibilities or you will burn yourself out.

Here are a few tips on how to handle time more effectively and get more done:

1. Hire out work that you don’t like to do or can’t do yourself.  You can easily find people that can help you out on Google by searching there.
2. Delegate responsibilities to your staff.  After all, they should be reporting to you anyway. Right, boss?
3. Start planning your day by either planning the day before or at the beginning of the week.
4. Watch out for the time vampires! Don’t let losers waste your time with trivial stuff. Your time is way tool precious!
5. Read a couple of books on time management.  You can find a ton of ideas on how to manage your time better as well as resources as to where you can get planners calendars, etc. to help you on your quest to save your most precious commodity.

If you really want to follow a good model on how to manage your time, read a book or two on Ben Franklin. Franklin was a printer, politician, scientist, ambassador, publisher,architect of our postal and library systems, signer of the Declaration and Constitution and the list can go on and on.  One of the things that people don’t know about Franklin, is that he was also a master of time management.  Franklin made and utilized planners for his own personal use and as a matter of fact, the company Franklin-Conant that sells time planners and calendars have named their business after Ben.

Well, I hope that you didn’t thnk you wasted yourtime reading this blog posting today.  Pleasecontinue to tune in because I will be posting loads of ideas, tips and techniques that wil help both your offline and online business and life!

God Bless!

Mark