Have you ever found yourself in a position where you have taken on too much at once and sense that like a plate juggler, one wrong move and the entire load could come crashing down beside you? Mari Smith, Facebook Guru, recently did a survey which she sent out to her ginormous list of more than 65000 people and surprisingly enough the biggest frustration experienced by most business owners is the inability to utilize time effectively. Here are a few of the comments she got back from her survey – Thank you Mari Smith, for sharing this info with us, you rock. “Time Management – maintaining my site, list building, self training and social media are very time consuming and it’s hard to manage it all especially when first starting out.” – P.K. “Time to do it all…ahh, the life of an internet entrepreneur in 2012! 😉“ – C.G. “Just don’t have the time to keep up with all the social media platforms.” – I.N.  

As you can see by the comments above this seems to be a common challenge that most business owners face. So what can we as busy business owners, solopreneurs, coaches, copy writers, authors etc. do to keep that clutter from eroding into valuable income producing, creative or me time?

These are 3 simple ideas that are easy to implement and suggested by some pretty impressive people.

Laura Stack, author of Find More Time says that getting rid of that ghastly “TO DO LIST”  is a good place to start, what she means is that instead of that long tedious and ever so never ending to do list you make yourself a separate shorter daily list with only 3 -4 important point that need to be completed.

Ask yourself this question  “ If I get nothing else accomplished tomorrow, what would 2 -3 things be that I absolutely have to complete to make me feel as if it were a productive day Works for me. Action Step : Get out your long long long to do list and shorten it, create your daily list of very important things that move you forward and have to be completed.

The rest goes on a separate longer term to do list. Clear out the mental crap .Oh yes, how many of you walk around like I do with 100’s of idea’s and thoughts in your head thinking that you will remember it all, write it down later or save it in your internal filing cabinet for another dayOnly this doesn’t’ happen – you see our wonderfully designed minds will keep those thoughts floating and fizzing around until you do something about them.

So why not create non essential lists like;

Reading lists,Birthday lists,Holidays I would like to go on lists,Movies I want to watch list and so forth,This way you are not holding on to or filling up mental space that could be used for something a little non essential – keep these lists handy though, like in a notebook in your bag and if you do happen to pop into town, you could quickly flick through your list and perhaps in passing the book store – drop in and purchase the book on your reading list.Easy Peasy .. I love the idea.

Lastly – Multi-taskers (this is a biggie for me) – quit switching from one thing to another. This can be mentally depleting according to David Strayer, professor at the University of Utah and expert on the relationship between productivity and technology. In other words, choose to do one thing at a time.  mmm.. I might need to take my own advice (after I check on the tumble dryer,  load the washer, call the office … oops there I go again )  

As you can see there are ways to turn wasted time into productive time by changing a few habit (even checking emails can take up time – so schedule checking emails once or twice daily Full on – So lets get short listing!

To improved time management