Time is precious. Indeed, no matter who you are, time is running out… making it the most vital and sought after commodity available. Yet, we often waste time, take it for granted, and approach life as though there will always be a tomorrow.
When it comes to being more efficient, it’s important to note there are only 24 hours in each day, many of which are taken up with sleeping, meaning you must be as efficient as possible with how you use your time – whether this is to achieve a particular business outcome, or just to live a more fulfilling life.
It’s also important to realise that productivity isn’t just about getting work done for your business – it’s about being productive in order to squeeze the most from life and actually enjoy your life.
So many people focus on productivity as a means of making more money, yet in reality, time is a much more precious commodity than money and therefore productivity should be equally about making more time for your to enjoy life than it is about making money.
If an article takes an hour to write, then that hour cannot be spent doing anything other than writing. Whereas, if you can be more efficient and write that same article within just thirty minutes, you now have more time to enjoy your life.
There is, of course, the argument that it would be a better use of time to write two articles in the space of one hour and get double the reward, but remember productivity and efficiency isn’t just about making money; it’s about living a decent life.
Also, in business, we often end up doing things that take up a lot of time in order to save money, that aren’t efficient in the long run, for instance, let’s say you have to transport a vehicle between two cities.
On the one hand, it might be a little more expensive to arrange vehicle transport than driving it yourself (though often that’s not the case, as vehicle transport companies benefit from the economies of scale), yet on the other hand, the time involved is so much greater that one has to question whether in doing tasks such as these yourself if you are actually losing money rather than saving money.
Let’s now take a look at some of the ways in which you can be more efficient
- OUTSOURCE TIME CONSUMING TASK
There are many domestic tasks that are very time consuming, yet necessary, and often we find ourselves investing a lot of our precious time doing things such as cleaning the house or going to the supermarket.
If you consider that your time is worth, say $25 per hour, then it would make more sense to hire a cleaner for a couple of hours a week at $10 per hour – meaning your time was free to focus on exchanging your time for $25 per hour within your work or business.
A lot of people are reluctant to pay for things that they can do themselves, under the heading of frugality, yet, when you break down the economics of this – as above – it would appear to be more financially rewarding to pay someone to clean your property than for you to do it yourself.
- ORGANISE YOUR TIME
We often live in reaction rather than response. This means we have a feeling of running around, chasing our tail, sometimes like a headless chicken – putting fires out… rather than consciously creating our day and not letting ourselves get distracted.
Starting the day with a sense of purpose; working out what your highest goal and most significant task to achieve is can be a great way to organize your time, as this way, you can work backwards.
For instance, if you know that a particular aspect of content needs to be taken care of as your most important task, then you can focus on this – batting away distractions, such as emails and social media notifications. It’s like a ship with a destination in mind; you are moving toward the direction of your goal – rather than being steered off course by the tide.
Therefore, when it comes to organising your time, it’s about first working out what are your most important tasks for the day, then, what are the necessary tasks, that might not move you particularly close to your goal but are necessary. This way, it’s like defining the boulders of focus, the stones that are necessary, and seeing everything else as pebbles that must fit around the boulders and stones.
- RELY ON A TEAM
If you have a business, then it’s imperative you start relying on a team of competent people to help you achieve your goals. Today, this doesn’t need to be a physical team of people in a physical location – it can be virtual assistants that work remotely from all over the world. This way, you can also benefit from the difference in living costs, as hiring someone in India to do the same job as someone in Australia is likely to cost a lot less due to the difference in living costs.
- THE PARETO PRINCIPLE
The Pareto Principle suggests 20% of our activities will account for 80% of our desired outcome. This means that 20% of the tasks on your to-do list are worth a huge amount of your attention, as these produce the most significant results.
The first step, is to work out what these priority tasks are, and then focus on the 20% of tasks that generate 80% of the results – as this will move you much closer to your goals at a much greater speed.
- USE LISTS
The world’s most successful people tend to use lists for everything. There are a wide variety of apps available to help with this, such as Wunderlist, that can help you keep track of your most important tasks. There’s something psychologically rewarding about ticking items off of your to-do list as this builds momentum, in that if you’ve ticked 3 out of 5 of your items off that list for the day, then you feel very motivated to get the other two finished.