Time Management Scrutiny First and absolutely foremost our task is to efficiently use and spend the precious time that we have. Time is the one commodity that you can never replace. Money can be lost and regained and people can be lost and replaced but time cannot be re spent if you discover later that it was ineffective. Where you spend it, on what and with whom are supreme questions when the pressure is on to perform at a slightly higher level. You MUST question why you are doing what you are about to do and ensure that it fits all of the immediate needs. If there is a tightening of people’s belts and a slowing down in spending, it may well mean that you and your business need to meet with more people before the required amount of them say Yes…and so fitting more people in takes more time which needs to be ‘made’. Thus when it might previously have been good enough to not question your activity, right now it is vital. Also ask questions that direct your thoughts toward achieving an immediate return. Yes, some strategic activity must be included in any ‘correct use of time’ overview, but right now when the pressure is on try looking a little more immediate. Tackle strategic, but tackle the strategic that is likely to also carry some immediate advantage. So, for example, where you might have scheduled a meeting to discuss the new computer system or the new website make-over maybe you might schedule instead a call to 5 of your top clients to see if there might be add-on sales just begging to be picked up. Or you might deliberately schedule some time on the telephone making telephone calls to all of those people who you have met when networking and promised to ring but then never got around to…and this time is taken from time that was merely set to one side as ‘time in the office’. As a possible ‘slow down effects the market confidence, and as this reduced confidence leads some to reduce their spending, it might well be that you feel ‘the pinch’ and the ripple effect is likely to impact your business significantly – thus making those extra calls and deliberately using the time in a much more ‘direct sales approach’ way becomes the difference between survival and death. Asking really tough questions where you might not even like the answer is a powerful skill. Question yourself: Is this going to generate me income now? If I don’t do this, what will happen? If I could guarantee income, what might I do? Who could I contact right now that might lead to immediate (this month) business? What might I produce or create that attracts business in now? Where might be really useful to go so that I might ‘bump into’ warm leads or hot prospects? A really terrific idea as an exercise for you to do right now is to look at next weeks diary (the next 5 working days from today) and simply question each and every diarised activity. And then to look harshly at the space between diarised activity!! (This is usually where the largest improvements can be found.) The time between diarised activities is where the gap is, and this is the gap that swallows whole many businesses. Along the same lines as this discipline, I strongly suggest enforcing a more rigid accountability for the time that you have spent or are planning to spend by using a clear diary system. If you currently hardly use a diary because most of your time is spent in one location, then I simply promise that using a diary will have a profound improvement on your time consciousness and thus usage of time.. Even when you are in the office and ‘doing the things that need to be done’ try making an appointment with yourself to separate tasks into time frames and then allocate time in a block for a certain task. Keep the task to that time as if it were actually physically a meeting. This might at first sound a little crazy and be a little challenging…but I assure you it is a most powerful habit. Accounting for your time makes you feel responsible for it…and you will not like the feeling when you can clearly see to yourself that you are wasting time and no one else is to blame for your position - especially when at the end of the month your haven’t got the cash that you need! Indeed to help you still further try making appointments with someone else to call you at the time when you have agreed with yourself to finish. Ask a colleague to call you and drag you out to another activity to keep the pressure on you whilst on your appointment with yourself. I.E if you have allotted time for some organisation internally and allowed yourself 2 hours between 1pm and 3pm then ask a colleague to call you at 3.30pm and you will have to have been finished by that time. Viewing time as simply the most precious commodity ever will also help you look at the time spent when on the phone and in the car. Very, very often we see time consumed over the telephone when frankly much of the call was just chat. Now I’m not saying be miserable and never talk to friends or clients about anything other than work, but I am saying that a discipline not to be distracted will help. Try saying things to yourself and the person who you are calling such as “I can only speak for a few moments as I have a lot to do and indeed I am sure that time too is challenging for you…so I’d like to talk with you about xyz…”. This type of approach will make certain that your call is brief and to the point and your client feels appreciative that you also didn’t waste his time. As with so many things, the simple stuff is the most profound. Like, for example, when people come into your office and ask if you have a minute! Never ever is it simply 1 minute long when they then download their problem or ask your advice on something. So, try immediately telling them that “I do not believe you!!! One Minute is never all that you want! If you have a challenge that you’d like my input on, please firstly go away and consider what you might do to overcome this challenge and then come back to me with two of your best solutions”. This type of management approach is not new but rarely adopted. Sending the enquirer away to figure out for themselves the challenge is the only way to break the time drain in future months. The employee will most likely already have a good idea as to what to do so when they tell you the two solutions you merely say “and which one do you think is the best?” Again probably they will have a favourite and indeed usually they will in fact have sorted out the challenge and come up with the best solution. You can listen and quickly then confirm that they have made the right choice…but this listening took a moment – probably actually the minute they first asked for…and the employee has learned that they can find answers for themselves. This type of technique is professional management and this type of discipline makes you feel like you have more time…and as we‘ve said, more time to make more money is what is needed when less people are buying. Finally on the time consumption subject look carefully at your drive time. Today’s traffic challenges are legendary! Even the simplest of journeys can become a hurdle and any city based journey ridiculously draining. Personally I do not drive into a city unless there really is no other choice or that the meeting is absolutely vital ‘face to face’. My challenge to you is to challenge yourself along the same lines. Just because you have always gone to a meeting and it is a comfortable habit to say “I’ll pop over and we can talk it through” question whether that is in fat the best possible option. I might suggest that much of what you can talk through can in fact can be talked through…and a telephone is all that is needed to talk things through with! You might even recognise that technology is amazing these days and visual telephone calls using such wonders as Skype and a web cam are not only possible but excellent and really do help you still make contact without the huge traffic drain. Honestly, most of the time we are our own worst enemies as we stick rigidly to the ‘way we have always done it’, the way we have always operated – it’s us that we don’t want to move forward. Many, many times a Skype or similar video call can be actioned and no impact lost. So, consider please the resource of time and how it’s usage might be impacting our potential for business success. The No1 habit to be refined and focussed upon is managing you and your time. Along with this, the habit of skilful questioning to ascertain quickly the exact situation and then based on the correct information make a more informed choice as to what to do... these will help you get more done in less or similar time frames. Especially when the going gets a little tougher this will save your commercial life.