Productivity & Entrepreneurial Time
There may come a time when you feel that you are not as productive as you feel you should be in your business. You wonder where the time has gone at the end of the day. While the clock says that you have a certain number of minutes per hour, a certain number of hours per day and so on, the key to managing your level of productivity does not have to do with how you manage the passage of time. The key is to spend more time doing what gives you the most results.
Let’s say that you know that for every 10 potential people you contact, you will get one new client. You need two clients per month. You can measure your results by making contact with a potential client every day. One time management technique is to ask yourself “What action can I take today so that I can contact a potential client?” While that question is in the back of your mind, take a moment to engage in the following exercise.
Here are some items that you will need:
1 blank sheet of paper
1 blue marker
1 green marker
1 red marker
On one side of your blank sheet of paper, write the answers to following questions:
What is the big result you provide to your client?
How do you deliver your result?
How much money are you making per year?
On the other side of your paper, make 7 columns – one for each day of the week. Using the colored markers, you are going to fill each column to reveal how much time you spend on each category during a 24-hour period. The colors represent how you spend your time.
White – no work related activity; allows you to disconnect from work and enables you to approach your work with more focus (sleeping, playing, exercising, spending time with family).
Blue – time where you prepare for work activities (travel, paying bills, administrative work, research, doing taxes).
Green – actual results; work time where you provide results to clients (interacting with clients, delivering work to clients). This includes consulting with client.
Red – time where you are not effective, nominal results (disruptions, time spent procrastinating, being distracted).
While the amount of color that you use for each time category will be different from what you see in the example presented below, your paper will look something like this:
Add up how many hours per week you spend on white time, blue time, green time, and red time and write the totals for each on the right hand side of your paper. To calculate the monetary value for each of the colors, divide the amount you make per year by the number of work hours per year (4200 work hours per year).
By looking at how you spend your time, consider what your ideal time mixture can be. You may find that you need to increase or decrease your white time, your blue time and your green time. White time and green time are essential to your ability to create new ideas and support the processes of running your business. You may also think of ways to reduce as much of your red time as possible.
Here are some tips that can help you to be more productive:
Stick to a strategy of having regular work hours.
Allow for productivity cycles – up time as wel as down time.
Organize your time in order to increase your profits.
Don't try to eliminate your white time. It enables you to come to work with renewed energy and focus.
Turn red time into white time and you will be able to come to your green and blue time fully present and fully recharged.
By looking at how you utilize your time, you may decide that you would like to increase your profit without increasing time. You can accomplish this by
Charging more for your products or services,
Freeing up your time to allow you to do more profitable things,
Serving more people in a group setting rather than one-to-one, or
Becoming more efficient at doing whatever you need to do to get clients (better, faster, provide more results).
Conversely, you may find that your goal is to reduce the amount of time your spend working while maintaining your current income. You can accomplish this in the following ways:
Outsource part of your work,
Spend time to create a strategy with your client,
Specialize in a fast-growing industry, or
Increase your value within one industry,
The challenge with being self-employed is that it is possible to get pulled in different directions while dealing with interruptions in your day. Look at where you spend your daily energy and you will see just where your time is going and remember to ask yourself what action you will need to take on a daily basis to achieve your goals.
Jeff Moore is a business strategist, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor. He helps business owners who are stuck transform themselves and their companies. Contact Jeff to learn about Puzzle Thinking and get Moore Impact for your business today.








