Time Is Money! How Much Are You Wasting?

Time is money. It’s a common phrase many business owners take to heart. But the real question should be, “How much time are you wasting?”

Indeed, the success (even the survival!) of your business will depend mostly on how you answer this essential question is the most important question.

It doesn’t matter where your business stands or how it operates. If you can’t reach your audience, then it isn’t going to be well-off. 

A lot of work is required when you’re aiming for a profit goal. That being said, it also requires plenty of time before such a goal is achieved. 

In most cases, you will find out that you are actually wasting more money as you spend much of your time on unnecessary tasks, projects, and activities. 

You need to find the best way to make full use of your time and make sure that every second you spend produces a return. Let’s take a look at a few pointers you might want to consider.

Take a second to review your productivity

At the end of each day, ask yourself how the whole day went. It really helps to evaluate how much you got done and how much time you used doing whatever it was you needed to do and whether it was wasted or not.

Example of wasted time

You’ve wasted your day if you were supposed to be focusing on critical meetings and closing clients, but you instead you focused on tasks that were better off delegated to another person.

Example of greatly utilized time

You know you’ve made full use of your time when the direct result of your activities is an increase in profit. You know you are making great use of your time when you can reap the concrete rewards that come right after it. That’s an example of time utilized well, and having a productive day at that.

Stop wasting time.

You need to start focusing on getting more sales and growing your business, the same business you have worked hard to build! To do that, you need to stop wasting time.

Follow this plan to productivity:

1. Work in a productive zone. This requires a bit of planning to pull off. And to do this, you’ll have to create your own zone of productivity that includes where exactly you work, your break times, and even what tasks you’ll be taking on like writing articles or taking calls.

    

2. Be flexible with your workflow. Now, this does not mean that you allow yourself to be all over the place with how you work. But simply not to follow one method of working the whole way through. Some tasks may need a different, more flexible approach to them as you go along. Just don’t allow yourself to get distracted!

    

3. Get rid of distractions. Speaking of distractions, it would be for your own good not to have any around while you’re working. Some things you can do are:

• Make sure not to use your phone too much.
• Keep music to background noise.
• Have breaks that don’t take too long and pull you away from your work entirely.
• Stay off social media and your email as much as possible. If your duties require you to frequent these, make a plan to minimize it, or make it focused productive time.  So often, one finds themself wandering as the nature of the media is designed to lure you to other postings. It is very easy to get off track when working online.   

1. Be in a working attitude. If you’ve got the mindset proper before beginning your tasks for the day, then you’re more than ready to go. Having the right mindset is what keeps you going for the day, and what gets your work done.

    

2. Do periodic “self-checks.”  Be aware of your actions. It is natural to drift “out of the zone.”  When you do a self-check to ask yourself, is what you are doing is really serving the goal?  If yes, keep moving forward. If not, redirect yourself to a more productive track.

    

3. Avoid the stress of the deadline. This one might be hard to pull off, but more often than not, it can be achieved. Understandably, it’s not always easy to adhere to a stress-free deadline due to unforeseen events or mishaps that can derail your workflow.  Still, if you follow all these steps, then you might even complete your tasks early.  

Following these suggestions may result in helping you buy your time back while also increasing your workload in general. You will find you will be able to reach out and connect to your audience better when there is productivity in your life.   

The largest asset you have is your time, spend it wisely.