Time Management Challenge

My husband has this awesome goal in life - to work less and enjoy more. I think it is brilliant. However, the more I strive to work less, the more worried I get about not doing enough (that's my own head trash I am working on) and out of that fear, I create more work than is necessary.

Necessary. How do you know if what you are doing is necessary? In your business, the tasks that are necessary are the ones that give you the greatest return on your investment of time. For ZynnyMe, our webinars are a huge pay off. We give great value and information, build our list, sell entries to our bootcamp and create amazing relationships within our community. On the other hand, email doesn't give me a huge return on my investment. It is one of those things I need to do, but doesn't necessarily equate to huge returns. Yet - I spend a ton of time in my inbox when I need to be creating the things that give us the biggest return.

I have an "idea" of how I spend my time, but I haven't really taken a hard honest look. Who has time for that? Snicker, snicker. Do you have any clue as to where your time goes? You might have an idea but your brain tends to forget that hour long detour on facebook and the giving into other distractions. 

I am constantly striving to improve, to be efficient and effective.  I want to maximize my time - to not only increase the bottom line of my business, but to increase the bottom line of happiness in my life. So over the next few weeks, I am going to implement time tracking. Here is what I am going to do:

• I am going to sign up for the 14 day free trial with RescueTime and add it to my browser. It will track my online behaviors and with the free trial I can also track my offline work as well.
• I am going to look at my report every day and be held accountable with a partner, explaining why I spent my time the way I did.
• I am taking the facebook app off of my homepage on my phone. If I find myself still going there often, I will take it off my phone completely.
• I am going to practice time blocking. Setting a timer, focusing on one task and limiting how much time I spend. This is meant to incentivize my focus and help me prioritize. When you have a limited amount of time, you start making your choices differently.
• I am going to play around with different schedules for my work day to see what is best for me.

And through this challenge I have some goals in mind: 

• Reduce amount of time on email to 2 times per day.
• Reduce social media usage to 2 times per day. There is an exception to this when bootcamp has started, but that won't be for over another month.
• Increase personal development time - CEU's, online courses, book reading, etc.
• Increase time for health and wellness.
• Feel more balanced with my time.
• Walk away with a clear sense of where my time is going and feel good about it.

With simply tracking my time and evaluating the return on my time investments, I can determine which activities are wasteful and which are essential to my business and livelihood. Tracking will impact my behavior because I do better when I am accountable and intentional. Want to join me? Want to really see how you spend your time running your business? 

I welcome you to share what you are doing differently too! 

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