Are you always looking for a better system for managing your time?
All the things, all at once, all you. The majority of entrepreneurs are starved for time. When you are wearing all the hats, there’s always something else to do to get closer to your business goals. And there are definitely time management techniques that will help you increase your productivity.
But they only work if you define success as taking action on plans that move you closer to those goals.
Some entrepreneurs spend days and weeks searching for that perfect app, the perfect journal, that elusive nugget of time management information that’s going to keep them organized and on task. But they’re never going to find it. Because they define success by how busy they are. And they’re busy doing the wrong things.
What do successful entrepreneurs do all day?
They take actions that advance a well-defined plan for achieving their goals.
I think there’s an archetypal image of the “successful entrepreneur” as someone who is multi-tasking, working 24/7, taking calls in the car and always in demand. But for me that image doesn’t invoke feelings of success. Instead it creates feelings of exhaustion.
Today our phones are our most constant companions, our days are filled with a never ending deluge of emails and our FOMO is fueled by the barrage of social media. So it’s not surprising that taking every meeting request, responding to slack, replying to email and relentlessly posting on social media passes for a productive entrepreneurial day.
But is that approach to time management helping you achieve your business goals?
The question to ask is whether or not that digitally fueled frenzy is helping you meet your business goals.
What about your personal goals? If you started your own business to get more flexibility and freedom is this working for you? Do you feel more energized at the end of the day than you did when you were at your 9-5?
I’m going to guess no. It’s not working. Here are two reasons why it’s not:
- All of that busy-ness is almost entirely reactive. If you spend all day just reacting to things how are you going to create new value?
- You’re actually adding to your Overwhelm. There’s some part of you that knows what you need to be doing to make your business successful, and you’re feeling out of control because you can’t get it done. Then that Overwhelm feeds on itself and makes you even less productive. So you start searching for a time management system and the cycle repeats.
So Why Do We Get Stuck In the Busy Habit Instead of the Productivity Habit?
Because it’s easier. And because we get rewarded for it.
Starting a business requires a lot of work that’s likely outside your zone of genius. Think about it this way, if you run a marketing agency, promoting your business on social media is going to be fun and energizing, but if you are a pharmacy owner, that same social media promotion might be the worst part of your week.
Your brain likes to take the easy path. And the path of least resistance is responding to what is right in front of you. The reward is that you feel productive. But what you’ve been working on isn’t going to enable you to grow your business.
In order to get to the real work, you’re going to have to be intentional about how you spend your time and block off significant (3-4 hours) chunks of time to immerse yourself in the strategy and production of your product or service. This is where time management techniques can be incredibly helpful.
Two Books To Help You Trade Busy For Productivity
I’ve got two books that back me up on this idea that being busy is our default mode but that working intentionally increases our chances of success.
The first is called Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. In it he talks about “System 1” thinking that’s fast, instinctive and emotional, and “System 2” thinking that’s slower, deliberative and logical. It turns out that the fast thinking is easier which is why we often default to posting on social media or answering email — something that’s familiar and intellectually benign — instead of embarking on a big, complex project that requires us to stretch the limits of our knowledge.
There’s another book, Deep Work by Georgetown professor, Cal Newport. His book is about the the work that happens when we use Kahneman’s “Slow Thinking,” and “focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task.” He argues that these efforts are the ones that create new value.
Here’s my take. Busy to the point of overwhelm might be making you feel successful. It might be making you feel important. But there’s no way you can grow or sustain your business long term until you invest in the uninterrupted time you need to plan, create and build.
MORE TIME MANAGEMENT RESOURCES
If time management is a challenge for you, download my FREE learning guide: 3 Things You Can Do RIGHT NOW to Feel Less Overwhelm Tomorrow.
If it’s systems you’re looking for, you might explore the Pomodoro Technique or David Allen’s Getting Things Done. A side note on GTD – it was works best for software programmers and people who have digital first work. People who have a more diverse set of responsibilities will need to modify it, but there are definitely some helpful concepts within the system that can be lifted out and applied to anyone.
