96: Stop Wasting Time On This Whether You Are Starting A Business, Self-Employed, A Solopreneur
96: Stop Wasting Time On This Whether You Are Starting A Business, Self-Employed, A Solopreneur, Entrepreneur, Mompreneur, Business Owner, Side Hustler, Freelancer, Bookkeeper, Virtual Assistant, Or VA
We are all given the same amount of time each and every day, and what you do with it is ultimately your decision, but if you are wasting your time on something that isn’t helping you reach your goals or the level of success you are looking for in your business, it’s time to really take a look at where your time is being spent and make some changes. In today’s podcast episode, I will not only point out some of the biggest things that cause us to waste time in businesses but also how you can quickly fix these issues if you find that you are guilty of these in your business. Identifying and being aware of any of these issues is the first step to overcoming the time you may be wasting. Whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA, and you feel like time slips away from you each day, listen in and start making a change. You might be surprised to find where you are wasting time in your business. Most business owners feel that the tasks they are doing are necessary, but this episode will have you taking steps to make sure if the task is indeed necessary, you are performing at your highest potential. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
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Show Notes:
We are all given the same amount of time each and every day, and what you do with it is ultimately your decision, but if you are wasting your time on something that isn’t helping you reach your goals or the level of success you are looking for in your business, it’s time to really take a look at where your time is being spent and make some changes. In today’s podcast episode, I will not only point out some of the biggest things that cause us to waste time in businesses but also how you can quickly fix these issues if you find that you are guilty of these in your business. Identifying and being aware of any of these issues is the first step to overcoming the time you may be wasting. Whether you are a self-employed individual, a solopreneur, entrepreneur, mompreneur, freelancer, small business owner, a remote, virtual, online, or in-house bookkeeper, or a virtual assistant or VA, and you feel like time slips away from you each day, listen in and start making a change. You might be surprised to find where you are wasting time in your business. Most business owners feel that the tasks they are doing are necessary, but this episode will have you taking steps to make sure if the task is indeed necessary, you are performing at your highest potential. These tips are essential whether you are using a computerized software system like QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, or FreshBooks for your business finances; or doing your bookkeeping manually with an Excel spreadsheet or even a Google Document…
Welcome Back…When you are wasting your time, you are throwing away a valuable resource that you could be allocating to a task that could potentially bring additional profit to your business. As business owners, we are always looking for ways to increase our profits, and time is money, so essentially wasting time in your business is truly wasting money. The first thing you should do in your business is to identify any time wasters that may be happening and do whatever you can to avoid them or transition them so that you are more productive if it is truly something you cannot simply avoid.
As I talk about some of the biggest time wasters in business, I want you to think about your business and how you utilize your time. If you feel you could improve your efficiencies and increase your productivity by making a few slight changes, please listen to the solutions I give for each one and try to incorporate them into your business.
We’ll start off with one of the biggest time wasters that I hear my clients talk about all the time, and it isn’t something we can just do away with, unfortunately. I’m talking about email. Every day we all get plenty of emails in our inbox to keep us busy, but we all know that every email isn’t as important as the next. When you are bombarded with spam or junk emails, and you have to sift through them to find the emails that actually need your attention, this takes time, but I want you to start setting up an email system so that you don’t find yourself stopping the task you are currently working on to tackle each email as it comes into your inbox. This is for sure a productivity killer. Ultimately you will want to set up a few times during the day when you will focus on your emails and work through each one so that you are on top of them all and don’t find that you are letting them pile up and become an even bigger mess to clean up. One suggestion that I have for you if you find you are consistently checking and responding to your emails as each one comes in, is to set aside a few minutes each hour to check on your emails. At this time, you’ll get rid of the junk and spam emails, file your informational only emails and rank the others by importance and priority and take care of them right away. When you feel like you have a good handle on doing this once an hour, try expanding the time to once every two hours and so on until you feel you have reached a suitable time and you are in control of your email rather than it controlling your time.
Organization or lack of it is the next time waster I’d like to talk about. Lack of organization in your processes, workflows or filing systems can all cause you to waste your precious time. Tell me, how many times have you found yourself frantically searching for an important document that you know you just saw in your office? Maybe you find yourself sifting through that stack of paperwork on your desk two, three, or maybe even four times a day, looking for a missing invoice, bill, or contract. Maybe you have a paperless office, but you still are searching through files on your computer looking for documents. Spending some time to ensure your processes, workflows, and filing systems are organized, and you are able to find what you are looking for will help you immensely. By decluttering your office, you will not only save the time you are currently spending searching for these lost items, but your stress level will also decrease. Just think how much more enjoyable it would be to come to work with an organized desk. Whenever you have clutter in your office, it is more than likely coming from an unfinished project or process. Make sure that everything you are working on gets finished and avoid clutter in your office.
Next, I am going to talk about multitasking. I know I personally thought I would be much more efficient when multitasking in the past, but the truth was that I was usually doing two things at a level that wasn’t my best work. It’s a fact that most people who multitask have higher mistake rates, and their quality of work is much less than if they didn’t multitask. You can never do a task 100% when you are multitasking. If you currently think you are able to get more work done by multitasking, take a good look at the work you are doing, and be honest with yourself…could you have done a better job if you devoted all of your attention and focus to just one thing? Could you have finished each project in less time? If you are currently multitasking, it may take a bit to train yourself to just work on one thing at a time, but you’ll soon see how much more you can get done in a day and feel much better about the output you have as well.
Another big time waster is interruptions you get throughout the day. Similar to multitasking, if you are able to keep your focus on your tasks and not get interrupted, your productivity level will be increased as well. Think about how you get interrupted throughout the day. Do you have phone calls, texts, or employees that are breaking your focus? Do you check your phone a hundred times a day? Do you find yourself lost in internet searches, or even worse, scrolling through social media? These are all distractions that interrupt our day. When you take control of how you manage these interruptions, you will simultaneously take control of your time. My recommendation to you on these interruptions is to set times when you will focus on them individually. Set specific times during the day to answer phone calls, retrieve messages, and return calls. Have an open door policy with your employees, but let them know the best times to talk with you. Save your online searches or social media for breaks that you take during the day, and make sure that you stick to your time limit. If you don’t think you have interruptions during your day, I would invite you to take a few weeks and log your time. Capture what you are doing at all times, whether good or bad, so that you can see exactly where you might be losing valuable time to interruptions.
Perfectionism is another way that I hear my clients wasting time. Now don’t get me wrong here, I suffer from perfectionism from time to time myself, but ultimately when I see that my perfectionism is starting to waste my time, I need to make sure that I am taking action and not just using time as an excuse not to finish a project. If you feel like you are struggling with perfectionism and you hold on to projects because you still need to put a few final touches on them, I want you to remember that done is better than perfect. If you feel it is good enough, let it go, or at least let it be a start and let yourself perfect it over time.
I feel like we have all dealt with some sort of procrastination at some point in our businesses. Whenever you are procrastinating about something, ask yourself why it is important to get this done. How will it impact your business? Why are you procrastinating working on it? Think about how much time you spend putting off tasks, only to worry about getting them done, rescheduling them, and trying to find time to work on them over and over again. I want you to start identifying tasks that you are procrastinating on and start taking care of these items as they come in. Schedule them, and don’t push them off. Over time, it does get easier, and you’ll procrastinate less in the future. I feel that procrastination sometimes happens when you feel like you need to do everything yourself or you have the DIY mentality. When you notice you are procrastinating on something, ask yourself if you could hire someone else to help you do it. Could it be done much faster and maybe even more accurately? This is often the case if the task is something you are not good at or you don’t know enough about. Identify which areas of your business are your weakness and if there is someone else who could do them better than you. These may be the areas where you find yourself procrastinating, and you might even be holding off making a decision about what you would like to do about it. Don’t procrastinate on the decision, decide on your options and ask yourself what you will do if you decide on one or the other option and go with the option that feels the best to you. Many of my clients have this issue with doing their business finances and bookkeeping. I help them see this is an issue and work through their procrastination by either helping them learn what they need to do to stay up to date on their bookkeeping and how to understand their financial reports, or I help them find a bookkeeper who can deliver them accurate and timely financial statements. Either way, it is a win for the business owner and one less thing they need to waste their time on when procrastinating. Another tip I have for you to beat procrastination if you decide to keep doing the task is to find the task you are putting off and make a decision to do that task first thing in the morning or at your most productive time of the day. Break down big projects into smaller tasks, so they don’t seem so overwhelming. Make sure that you are prioritizing these tasks and that they are aligning with the goals of your business. You shouldn’t be wasting your time on tasks that are not moving your business forward. Your business will not become the success you are striving for if you are just staying busy with tasks that are not moving the needle.
By identifying these time wasters in your business, you can easily make changes to either avoid them or improve your processes and strategies to increase your productivity, especially if you are not satisfied with the amount of work you are currently getting done in your business. It’s easy to get off track, and this can happen quickly, causing you to spend even more hours in your business. By being more productive in your business, you’ll have more time to enjoy your life without working late at night, on weekends, or bringing your work home with you. By creating a work environment you enjoy being in, you’ll be able to work at your highest potential. Stay on track with the goals you set for the day. Select your top three tasks each day that will help you reach the success you want to achieve in your business and have a checklist to get you there. Block off a few minutes each morning to decide on your plan of action for the day, or use the last few minutes of the day to decide how your next day will look. Either way, you will get more done when you prioritize what you want to accomplish and stick to your plan.
If you need help identifying your time wasters, what is holding you back from achieving your goals, or the vision you have for your business, you can sign up for one of my free consultation sessions, and we’ll dig into where you are in your business and where you’d like to see yourself in the future. Sometimes you just need someone from outside your business to look inside and help you see where you could take steps to improve. I’m excited to announce that my 100th podcast episode is coming up in the next few weeks. To celebrate, I am giving away a four-week business strategy and coaching package to one of my lucky podcast listeners. My one-on-one business strategy and coaching sessions really help clients get specific about what they need to work on to reach the next level in their business. In each session, we work together to make plans specific to your business and create a plan to follow through on your intentions. As a CPA, Business Strategist, and Coach, I help business owners just like you to push through and stop limiting yourself with the success you could be achieving in your business. Whether you are unsure of the next steps you need to make, you want to get more sales but are unsure how to do it, or you need to gain a deeper understanding of your business finances so that you can be more profitable, I can help. Clients come to me because they know that I am knowledgeable in both the financial aspect of business as well as how important it is to have a strategy and work through your mindset and whatever is holding you back from reaching the highest vision you have for yourself and your business. By helping you make the right decisions and holding you accountable so that you follow through with your plans, you get to see your results much faster. You could be seeing success like this in your business. If you’d like to be entered in the drawing for the four-week one-on-one coaching package I am giving away; you need to sign up for one of my free consultation sessions by September 3rd, 2022. I always offer these free consultation sessions, but when you sign up for one of my free consultation sessions from now through September 3rd, 2022, you could also be the winner of the four-week business strategy and coaching package I’m giving away. You can go to www.FinancialAdventure.com/Contact-Us to schedule your session. During this consultation, we’ll spend up to one hour together going over where you currently are in your business, where you’d like to see yourself and your business in the future, and take action to get you started on the path to success. You’ll walk away with action steps so that you can start moving forward in your business right away. If you are already a one-on-one client of mine, that’s not a problem. Just let me know that you’d like to be entered into the drawing on our next call, and you’ll also have a chance to win. I’ve been helping business owners and bookkeepers achieve their goals for over 25 years, and it’s the best feeling when I see the joy it brings my clients when they follow through with their aspirations. I am looking forward to meeting you in a consultation session soon. I’ll post links to this and other valuable resources for business owners and bookkeepers where you are listening to this podcast and in the show notes.
And, you know I’m going to ask…what’s at least one thing you will take away from this episode that will help your business succeed and grow your bottom line? If you need some accountability, join our PRIVATE Facebook community and post your action item, we’d love to support you.
