Business coaching clients will be the first to tell you, one of the main keys for success in their business was learning effective time management.
One of the most effective skills you can cultivate in life is effective time management. Let’s face it, if you’re not managing your time well, there’s no way you’re going to reach your goals in your business and the life outside of it. Sure, you might make some progress. But your time management will be an uphill battle if you don’t take your time seriously. For people who squander and waste the precious little time they do have, they know all too well how difficult achieving even mildly difficult goals can be.
The truth is that time is the greatest equaliser in life. No matter who you are, when it comes to time you are allotted the same amount of time as the next person. And more importantly it’s not about how much time you have, but how effectively you manage your time.
Let’s face it, time is a challenge for most business owners. Whether your a small business or run a decent size company, and especially when you’re wearing a lot of different hats and taking on different roles.
So here are 21 business coaching strategies that will get you going in the right direction when it comes to time management.
1. Learn to be decisive.
2. Always set clear goals using the 5 SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely).
3. Always set a daily work plan (the night before).
4. Prioritise tasks using A,B,C,D,E (consider the consequences in setting priorities). Re-prioritise A tasks using 1,2,3 to identify the most important A tasks and so on.
5. Separate the urgent from the important (what are the long term potential consequences of doing or not doing tasks?).
6. Use the law of forced efficiency (what is the highest value use of your time, right now?).
7. Use the 80/20 rule to identify the 20% of tasks that will have the greatest benefit and just do those.
8. Develop stamina and high energy through proper exercise, diet and rest.
9. Multi-tasking is a lie! Develop single-handling skills to concentrate on one task at a time.
10. Eat that Frog (do the hardest task of the day first – don’t sit and look at it or procrastinate – just DO IT!).
11. Organise your work workspace (don’t work in a mess). Use the acronym TRAF – Toss, Refer (delegate), Action, File to help you.
12. Use travel time effectively (listen to CDs, prepare a work schedule for flights/rail journeys).
13. Develop expertise in key tasks through practice and repetition.
14. Work in ‘real’ time (pick up the tempo, develop a sense of urgency, do it NOW!).
15. Learn to make decisions quickly; don’t carry ifs, buts, and maybes around.
16. Re-engineer work processes: map them out and identify what needs to be done to reduce the number of steps by 30% minimum.
17. Reinvent yourself at least once a year: identify what you need to do to become more productive, because everything changes (90 day plan).
18. Ask yourself this on a regular basis: knowing what I know right now, would I be doing this/be in this relationship/working with this client etc.
19. Identify what tasks to procrastinate on, i.e. the lower priorities that can wait, the 80% of tasks that have less value and only contribute 20% of the output.
20. Decide to work to live, not live to work. This means working towards a balanced life. It’s the quantity of time on downtime and the quality of time at work to aim for.
21. Be Intensely Action Orientated. It’s acting and executing that generates real results.
Want to learn more?
Talk to a business coach today or if your interested in business coaching, try a free no obligation business coaching session to find out if business coaching is for you.
