My BS Revealed: Time Management Tricks for The Overachiever
By Christine OKelly | September 18, 2007
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If you’re running one or multiple home based businesses, you know it can be incredibly taxing on your time. This month I launched 2 new businesses, 1 blog, and 3 websites by applying some of the principles I learned in Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week.
Before I get into this, let me give you an idea of my current responsibilities – the reason I do this is to connect with people who think that they don’t have the time to start a business. I used to think this too, but if you think differently and optimize your time, it is possible. Here’s a snapshot of my life/time demands:
- Single mom with 2 kids ages 6 and 7
- After school activities
- 1 full time freelance writing business with 25+ regular clients and approx 75 part-time clients
- Write for 2 blogs
- 3 online businesses that are somewhat automated but require marketing
- Plans for 3-5 additional small niche websites within the next 30 days
- Plans to start a gumball machine vending business to get the kids in an entrepreneur mindset within the next 30 days
I certainly don’t have a 4 hour workweek. But remember, Tim Ferris was already making $70,000 per month when he began cutting down the time he spent working on his business. I’m in the growing stages. I used the principles in Tim’s 4 Hour Work Week as a way to give myself more time to develop other income streams without losing my mind or turning into a zombie.
Here’s how I’m doing it:
Remain Keenly Aware of When You Are Stalling
I launched My College Fundraising early last week and knew I would need Pay Per Click to get leads. I have never launched a Pay Per Click campaign before and was a little intimidated by the process. My ex-husband had launched one a few years ago and ended up with a huge bill so I’ve kind of avoided it out of “fear.” I set a goal for myself to have PPC running by Monday and by Tuesday morning, I hadn’t even started.
In my mind, I kept making up excuses about why the site wasn’t ready or why I wasn’t ready to hand leads. I also made internal excuses telling myself that I didn’t have the time to set it up. Bullsh**. At 5:51 am I decided to take action and by 6:12 am (19 minutes later) I had a PPC ad in position #1.
Leverage Parkinson’s Law
Tim Ferris introduced me to Parkinson’s Law, which dictates that “a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion. In other words, give yourself a longer period of time to complete something, and it will take longer. Give yourself a shorter deadline and you’ll get it finished faster.
One of the reasons I was stalling with Pay Per Click is that I ask people to fill out a form to receive a fundraising kit by mail and I don’t have that completed yet. I know what will be in it, but it is not assembled. My goal was to have this assembled before the launch of the site, but I was wasting all kinds of time trying to put extra items in the kit and therefore was subconsciously telling myself that I wasn’t ready to start PPC. Bullsh**. When I get a lead, I will complete the kit in record time with all of the essential materials. In the meantime, I’ll work on other necessary tasks.
Make Yourself Accountable
If I only do client work each day, then I really don’t have anything to contribute to this blog. This was one of the main reasons why I forced myself to take action on the PPC ad today. The act of writing this blog hold me accountable for making progress on these businesses.
Break your day into tasks and set deadlines for completion
If you don’t set deadlines for completion, tasks have a tendency to take forever. If you set a short deadline to accomplish something you will get it finished in record time.
Choose business models that don’t require a lot of customer support
For my hosting business and travel booking business, service and support is built in. These are turnkey businesses that I private label so there is no website maintenance, no customer support, just sales. My travel booking business allows me to make 60% commissions off of every booking – all I have to do is do smart marketing and relationship building with businesses and groups that already book a lot of travel. (If you’re interested in doing the same, visit Private Label Travel Agency).
Work on one critical component each day
This is another idea of Tim’s. You should have one CRITCAL function listed to accomplish each day. It’s ok if you are only doing one thing to further your business each day as long as it’s critical and will move you closer to your goal.
Focus on one business each day
When launching a business, you’ll probably need to accomplish more than just one critical action per day. In this case, I devote one or two days (or half days) to one business. I have a list of tasks mapped out that I need to accomplish during that time period and miraculously, it gets done.
More Ideas
Here are some other great posts from other bloggers about time management:
Haiku Productivity: The Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits
25 Time Management Tips from Jerky Beef at Blog Tips for the Entrepreneur
Put More Time in Your Day from Wendy Boswell at LifeHacker
Your Opinion
What else can we entrepreneurs do to manage my time better? What’s keeping you from accomplishing more of what you want? What strategies to you use to manage your time?
Topics: Business Development |
17 Comments »
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I’m so glad I stumbled upon your blog this afternoon. Great piece there. What an awesome headline!
I think my favorite point is “Remain Keenly Aware of When You Are Stalling.” I can’t tell you how much time I spend “Stumbling” around telling myself that I’m not avoiding work, but simply looking for inspiration. Then again, if I didn’t stumble way too much I wouldn’t have ended up here
Hi Dana! It’s great to meet you! I’m glad I could be part of your inspirational “research.”
The point about being aware of when you are stalling is my favorite too. When I find that I’m stalling TOO much with one particular job, I figure that maybe it’s time to do something else! And the fact that we can do that is the beauty of being an entrepreneur!
Thanks for sharing!
Christine, this is a really great post. I love the confidence you show in admitting (to yourself) why you are not undertaking certain tasks. I think the BIGGEST mistake far too many people make is not seeing things through to the conclusion. I’ve done it myself this week - created a site, found the content, amended a header etc but something real important stopped my from ftping it and promoting. That real important thing was I didn’t like some of my copy. As you say Bullsh** - it needs to go up NOW and the changes made later. Thanks for the kick up the ****.
Wow, great post, Christine! I feel like a slacker now! Seriously, there are some great time management concepts in here. Thanks!
Wizzer - I have that EXACT same issue - and I think a lot of people do.
I knew one person who was a web designer that NEVER launched a site for himself for almost 8 years - seriously. He would plan them out on paper (in the old days), mock them up in Photoshop, create logos, and then NEVER launch the site.
I think this is some way that we trick ourselves into thinking that we’re doing something when we’re really just afraid to move on.
Sometimes, I actually find myself getting physically tired in order to avoid doing something. That happened last night. I had a great idea that would have taken my 10 minutes to execute, but then I got “too tired” to do it. I know that the reason I’m not acting on it is because it probably WILL work and then my routine will change (although I’ll be achieving my goal). Why do we do this to ourselves? Man… I think this is turning into a new post…
Thanks SO much for sharing your BS Mark - seriously - I love stories like this. I think it helps us all. I can’t wait to see your site up and running! Then come over and promote it here!
Christine
Thanks Pat! It’s because of blogs like yours with so much good info that I have too many things to do in one day.
Man, what an eye opener.
I linked it to my site www.homebizchat.com
I read your entry and determined the following
1. Surfing the internet for the PERFECT template is not really helping my business
2. Creating additional tasks is not really project management
3. Just stop designing, preparing, creating or whatever and start calling, advertising and marketing. The website will NEVER be “perfect” so its no use waiting until it will be.
Thanks for the inspiration.
I am off to make my 100k — Wish me luck
Those are SUCH great points Jeff! Who among us hasn’t spent HOURS searching for the “perfect” template - even when we already have a perfectly good one! I just found myself creating additional tasks yesterday and about 15 minutes into it realized… BS - this is not necessary!
Building a business is kind of like what they taught in high school English class - write your story (essay/paper/report/etc) and then go back and cut half of it out.
When building a business we could probably cut out 80% of our original ideas of “perfection” execute the actions of the critical remaining 20% and be much better off for it.
Thanks for coming clean along with me about your own BS - I love it!
Christine
Awesome post and terrific comments. Thanks everyone.
cokelly’s comment about 80% is BS and 20% is cruitial actionable items is right up the 80/20 marketing rule. That is, 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.
Plan. Focus the plan. Cut out the fat. Move on it. Repeat. Thanks for the motivation.
Thanks 5691gerg! I used to work for an internet start up where EVERY time we started a project and felt we were ready to move ahead, we would “80/20 it.” Sometimes it seemed absurd to cut out so much “important” stuff. Sometimes they would “80/20″ what was already 80/20′d and that didn’t always turn out so great!
But that company moved faster than any other company I have ever seen and made tons of money in the process. Why am I not doing that with my own business?!? I think the reason is that I have gotten “comfortable” with my freelance situation. While I was growing it, it was fun, but now that I’m maintaining, I’m bored stiff. I need to reassess and do new things with the same fervor I had when I started my freelancing business.
I think writing these things and sharing stories with everyone is helping me to break out of this automatic pattern and start being more conscious about what I’m doing.
~ Christine
Somewhere out there is a study about how athletes at DIII colleges (the ones that don’t give athletic scholarships, mostly small liberal arts schools) actually get better grades during the semesters where their sports are “up” and it is for precisely this reason … the less time you have to do something, the more efficiently you will do it. Great post!
How cool Margie! I can absolutely see why this would be true. In my college senior year I took 7 classes while working 2 part time jobs. It was ROUGH and I didn’t nearly have the time I had in the past to dedicate to each class, but still managed to get an A in every one of those classes while spending less time (but more intense time) focused on each task. — Great point!
Great post. I just stumbled upon your site today - love it. I’ve signed on for your newsletter and feed. I tried to add it to my stumble upon favourites but there was an error. Just thought you might like to know. It gave me an error 404 - the page not found.
Thanks so much Julie! I’m going to look into that Stumble Upon error right now
Hi Christine I came across Tim Ferris’s 4 Hour Work Week blog and book earlier in April 2007. The key thing about the 4 hour work week is manage the outsourcing and implementing of a management system.
I also like the idea of his using the calculator on his blog to cost how much it really to enjoy the pleasures or experiences as a reward.
Christine , I work a similar niche , great tips on this post, definitely will be back ,
Hi Don - Great to meet you! I love connecting with others in similar industries. You’ve got an awesome blog and I just subscribed!