Time is one of the things that business owners never seem to have enough of, and one of the consequences of this is that they make a choice between their business and their families, one of which normally ends up suffering. As a business owner, if you had more time, you could make better choices. Perhaps you could be there with your family for evening meals, or spend more time planning the future growth of your business. Maybe you’d prefer to squeeze in an extra hour in the gym, go to the golf course or head out on your bike?
People often talk about ‘Time Management’, so I want to get one thing clear from the outset; there’s no such thing. Time will continue to march on, regardless of your stress, worry or activity levels, so there’s no point in imagining otherwise. What does change, however, is how you use that time; I call this ‘self mastery’ rather than time management. Successful business owners manage themselves so carefully that they wouldn’t dream of wasting any of their precious time on something that wasn’t directly linked to the success of their business.
One good way to look at your time is using the ActionCOACH ‘Time Target’
The Time Target is based on Stephen Covey’s work in his amazing book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ and gets to the very heart of how business owners use their time. If you find yourself in the outer zone, doing work that is neither urgent nor important, you are distracted and not likely to be achieving great success.
If you find yourself doing many urgent but not important things, you’re in the delusion zone. The best way out of this is to delegate those tasks – as a business owner you don’t want to be ordering office supplies or sweeping the warehouse floor, even if these things need to be done urgently.
It’s likely you’ll be spending plenty of time in demand, the zone where you’ll do work that is both urgent and important. You’re the heartbeat and engine-room of the business – it’s your skills that will be brought to bear in this zone and perhaps as much as 60% of your time will be spent here.
What is absolutely vital, though, is that you find time to operate in the centre of the target, where you can do work that is important (very important) but not necessarily urgent. Here, you’ll plan the future of your business, work on your budget, do some training and, yes, maybe you’ll spend some time in the garden with your kids over the summer holidays.
So, although time marches on, the way you use it will define your success. Think carefully about where you are on the Time Target and don’t spend too much time in distraction or delusion; your business will suffer and you won’t have the time to do the really important work that will result in long term growth.
