If you could buy anything in the world what would it be? The most valuable thing in the world is time. If you had all the money in the world to buy anything you wanted you would buy time if it was available. You can’t buy more time and add it onto the end of your life, but you can definitely buy time right now. In order to do that you need to start looking at your life in closer detail. When you run a small business the time seems to disappear quicker than you’d like it to. You want to buy back that time so you can spend more of it with the family.
Unfortunately for you, the working day doesn’t seem to end until it’s already dark outside and the kids are nearly in bed. What would you say if I told you it was because you were wasting your time at work? You would probably tell me I’m crazy, but I’m not. If you can find ways to speed up your working day it means you can get home quicker. It means you’ve bought yourself some time. If you have no idea how to buy time we can look at some ways now, so please try them out and see how early you can finish work tomorrow.
Know what you want to do
How many people actually know what they want to do in the morning by the time they sit down at their desk? Once you start planning stuff in the morning it’s nearly lunchtime. You maybe don’t think it’s that bad, but it’s bad enough. Tonight I’d like for you to write down everything you want to get done on a piece of paper and take it with you tomorrow. As soon as you sit down you should work your way through the tasks before you even think and see how much you get done.
Stop wasting time
Most people procrastinate and that’s fine, but there’s lots of ways you can start taking it to the extreme and that’s when it gets detrimental. The Internet is a huge problem for the people who love knowing what others are doing on Facebook. People they probably went to school with but don’t even know. If you use Firefox you can download an add-on called LeechBlock and it will let you block certain websites until lunch or after work.
Eat when you’re hungry
If you haven’t always had your own business you’ll probably be used to having lunch at a certain time. I’m sure you now realize you can have lunch whenever you want, but are you really taking advantage of it? When you are hungry you should eat something straight away. If you sit there thinking about food you’ll be wasting a lot of time, whereas if you ate your lunch straight away you would be working hard again within 30 minutes.
Sending mail much quicker
If you don’t usually send much mail you won’t have a process in place, never mind your own mail department. You’ll still need to have envelopes lying around and you can’t forget stamps. There’s easier options available online and they will save you lots of time. You can use an online mailing service that will let you type a letter up and press submit. They then print off and mail the letter for you and it gives you plenty of time to be getting on with real work.
Can you use two monitors?
There’s something strange about people not using two monitors. I’ve heard all the arguments against it and the one that always pops up is people only have one set of eyes. Apparently a second monitor is useless because people can only look at one at a time. That’s totally getting the wrong idea of what it’s actually for. It’s meant to stop you from switching between windows every few minutes, so think about that carefully before you dismiss the idea.