How To Invest In Your Time
Many people choose to become self employed because they wish to be financially independent. People who are self employed will often be responsible for carrying out a number different tasks, and this may reduce their ability to focus their energy on things that are more important.
If this describes you, you will want learn how to invest in your time. As we’ve all heard, time is money. However, the difference between money and time is that once time has been used, there is no way to earn it back. Once you have wasted time, it is gone forever.
If you find that you are carrying out a large number of tasks each day, you will want to write them all down and figure out the amount of time you are spending on each of them. As an example, how much time are you spending on market research or answering the telephone? Add up the number of minutes you are spending on a task each day, and then add it up by a week. After you have done this, you will want to look at your earnings and profits. What is the primary thing you do to make money? If you have your own business, you will need to calculate how much money you make per hour.
It is important to perform basic math problems when you look at how you manage your time. If you are spending three hours a week talking on the telephone, how much are you earning from those conversations? Are you talking to clients who are paying you? If you are, how much are you being paid compared to the other tasks you are performing? When you begin to look at it from the perspective of months or years, you may find that you are losing vast amounts of money. When you have your own business, every minute counts, because it translates into money.
If you are spending three hours each week talking on the phone, this means that you are spending 12 hours each month on the phone. This is the equivalent of talking on the phone for an entire day! If the people you are talking to aren’t helping you increase your profits, this means that the amount of money you earn each day is being reduced when you talk on the telephone. In addition to the actual money that you are losing by wasting time, you will also want to look at the human factors that come into play. How much time are you spending with yourself or your family? While it is important to work long and hard to succeed, if it is not allowing you to spend time with those you love, is it really worth it?
To successfully practice good time management, it is important for you to understand your return on your investment when it comes to your time. You should not be wasting time on things that are not translating into profits. This will require you to write down the tasks that you are engaged in each day. Approximate the amount of time you are performing each task and review it to see if it is truly important. If you find that you are doing a lot of things that do not increase your bottom line, this is a sign that you may need to either prioritize your tasks of hire someone else to assist you with them.
No matter how skilled you are, it is impossible for you to be good at everthing. You only have one brain, two hands, and two legs. Hiring someone else to assist you can allow you to increase the profits of your business, and it will also allow you to become better at managing your time. Even if you can successsfully handle all the tasks you need to perform each day, you should take the time to decide if you can become more profitable by delegating those tasks to someone else. You will often find that hiring someone to take care of the grunt work can allow you place your energy into things that really matter, and this will allow your business to grow quickly and bring in more profits.
