Today I wanted to share with you an exercise I myself have just done again. You see, I’ve been noticing that I have been getting busier and busier, yet not achieving everything I set out to do.
BIG problem for someone who is a Business Coach and helps people get their shit together in business!!!
So for the last couple of weeks I have been doing my own Smart Time Sheet that I give people in my programs. Hola. Talk about being hit over the head with a hammer. I have been spending some time doing some shit or what!
When you are in your A Game, Time Management is a breeze.
When you have a great team, Time Management is a breeze.
When you are adding a few extra things to your To Do List, Time Management becomes a drama.
So how does this happen? Not that I’m giving excuses here, but someone in my team has been off having a baby (congratulations Nehal!!) and we have had lots of projects on the go, so everyone has had a bit more to do. Slowly but surely it has meant that things I wouldn’t normally do were getting added to my list. I was telling myself that old chestnut ‘it will just be quicker for you to do it’. Bullshit!!!
After doing my Smart Time Sheet I discovered I had blown out my ‘non A Game work’ to a massive 10 hours last week. No wonder my content writing, and lead follow up suffered…..arghhghg. So I’ve gone back into the wonderful world of O Desk and hired a couple of people to do some specialised tasks for me……let’s face the truth. I really do not want to learn how to do SEO, and my Social Media could really do with a shake up….and the list goes on.
So why is it important to stay in your A Game? Well for starters, working in your A Game keeps you in love with your business!!!
Your A Game makes you money.
Your A Game keeps you in flow.
Your A Game is what your clients love.
Your A Game is efficient.
Your A Game is what you were born to do.
Ask yourself – if Beyonce was busy trying to learn how to look after her fan database, do you think we would have had that amazing performance at the Super Bowl, or the last album with it’s incredible release on iTunes??? Hell to the No. She is doing what she was put on this planet to do.
So why is it, when we aren’t super famous pop stars, athletes, directors blah blah blah – and we have our own business, we think we have to be Jill (or Jack) of all trades? It’s just not right I tell you…..and I fell into the trap again!!!!
I think partly as a business owner we think we need to be across everything so we know what’s going on, so we don’t miss something – or simply for some people so they can micro manage the hell out of it all. It doesn’t work long term, I promise you.
So what is Love It or Loathe It? It’s a simple tool to work out where you are spending your time. Below is an example.
| Time | Task | Love / Loathe | Money | Time |
| 9 – 10 | Redesigning Business Cards | Loathe | Cost | Cost |
| 10 – 11 | Love | Cost | Cost | |
| 11 – 1 | Coaching | Love | Made | Cost |
You need to mark out your time, all day every day for at least a week. Write down every task you do, ask yourself if you Love It or Loathe It and then if it Cost or Made you Time and Money. The example above – Pinterest……now I don’t really do any Pinterest Marketing and I should (according to Melanie Duncan and The Power of Pinning), but I do love it. So I can spend time on there but it’s not making me money. So the reality is I’m SPENDING TIME AND MONEY on it. Now whilst this can be fun sometimes, and we all need a little down time and distraction – it’s not an effective use of my time, especially coming up to a launch.
Once you’ve worked out where you are wasting time (especially the Loathe It tasks) it’s time to bring someone on to your team to look after that for you, or assign it to someone already on your team. Your team members will love stepping up and doing some more work – if it’s the stuff that’s in their A Game (but more of that in another post) – you owe it to yourself, your team and your clients to have everyone doing what they were put on this earth to do.
The other trick to working in your A Game is to schedule it baby. Know when you are on fire. For me it’s the morning. Get me to 8pm and I can barely form a sentence let alone write a module for the Smart Not Hard Academy. However I’m writing this post at 5:15am (after my first coffee) and loving it.
Boundaries play a big part in this. I very rarely work when I am with my daughter – that’s mummy and Elodie time. I’m happy to make up for it working when she is at her dads – oh and scheduling in some fun then too.
I’ve added my Smart Time Sheet here, so you can have a play with it for a week. Go for it. I’d love to hear what you found after a week – and what you’re going to do to fix it!!!
If you’re still not sure what your A Game is – it will become clear one day, I promise. Sometimes you need a little help to get there though – and if I can help you, I’d love to…..see that’s one of the things in my A Game.
Once you know what it is that fits into your A Game, here are my Top 5 Tips for Task Management:-
- Schedule it
- Keep time sheets (Love It or Loathe It)
- Outsource as much as you can that’s in the Loathe It pile
- Outsource whatever you can pay someone less than you would earn in the same amount of time.
- Prioritise your tasks, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yes – yearly.
Remember you started your business because of what you loved – so don’t waste time doing the stuff you hate.