Like sand through the hourglass...
…it separates the men from the boys. For me and my two businesses, it is mission critical that I get a handle on mine.
Here are my three issues:
1. I have to cut down on some things I enjoy, but don’t have the time for.
2. I have to select carefully some NEW things I want to play with, but don’t have the time for.
3. I need to get MUCH more disciplined on blocking off concentrated chunks of creative work time.
I suck at all three. What about you?
So, for me, here is what I am eliminating (for now).
I have a minimalist blog that I’ve maintained on Tumblr for some time. I could spend hours messin’ around with Tumblr each day, if I had the time.
I also have started an Intrepid business page on Facebook, but don’t have enough time over the course of the day to do what I want to do there, so I am going to set it aside for now.
[editor's note: I am not suggesting Facebook isn't important. In fact, I get a lot of mileage from my personal account, much more so than my business account. So that is where I will focus.]
I hate to pull away from these, but they aren’t the most effective uses of my time, and they aren’t driving revenue to my businesses. So, we’ll see where things are in six months.
Here are three new toys that I want to play with, but will only allow myself small bits of time (if at all) to mess around and experiment with.
I’d love to spend more time playing around with Oink, Kevin Rose’s latest creation. Path looks to be a really fascinating way to build a tight community. And heck, Pinterest is all the rage these days, but I haven’t even opened an account, don’t want to get sucked in. Just. Not. Enough. Time.
And here’s the difficult thing: there will be something newer, shinier, and cooler to play with next month. We ALL have to do a better job managing our time spent on the latest shiny objects, and be sure that lost time isn’t taking away from our creative work. And yet, maintain the difficult balance because we also have to be cognizant that a new tool or app might have a direct benefit to our business growth. It is a tough call on where to draw the line. Problem is, most people haven’t drawn ANY line…
I can lose time playing around online with the best of ‘em. So here is what I am doing to better devote meaningful chunks of valuable time to doing creative customer work, and more intense focus on marketing my business.
I’ve talked about this before, and this is hardly a new concept, but I am going to get REALLY disciplined in blocking off chunks of concentrated work time to focus on client and marketing creative work.
Set a timer, remove ALL distractions, and focus on nothing else until that timer goes off. When I practice this discipline, it works wonders. I just don’t do it enough.
I will use an egg timer. No, not a real egg timer. This egg timer.
So, we’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and I have to say “NO” more often. I disengaged from a project I really wanted to participate on this quarter, but simply don’t have the time for. Any time invested there would take away from my clients and my own marketing creative work. And you have to fiercely guard your time. No one else will.
What hard choices will you make? Please share other time management strategies in the comments below.
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[photo from flickr]