You have heard it many times. Time is your scarcest resource! Time is your most perishable resource!

 

Its true, and I believe before you can take advantage of leveraging other resources and assets, you first have to learn how to leverage your time more effectively.

 

Most business owners spend their time on a great number of activities, some important that only they can do, some trivial that shouldn’t be done at all and some that are important but that could easily be delegated. If you are one of these people, I can almost guarantee you are busy and very probably broke. You may not be destitute, but you are definitely not earning what you deserve. The people who understand leverage quickly figure out how to work less and earn more.

 

If you are spending time on anything that doesn’t directly move you toward your goals and dreams, you are not leveraging your time as effectively as you could. If you know there are important tasks you should be getting done but are not, you are not leveraging your time. By the way don’t feel guilty, we all do it.

 

Here is a simple exercise. List down everything you did yesterday. Put it down in great detail. Now rate every activity as one of the following:

  1. Key strategic priority. i.e. an action leading you directly to your strategic goals.
  2. Important work that only you can do, but not necessarily work that advances you to your goals.
  3. Work that could be delegated to others
  4. Busy work. This stuff feels like work but really does not advance the business.

Next calculate the percentage of your time on each category. Unless you are spending the vast majority of your time on 1 & 2, i.e.70-80%, you are not leveraging your time effectively.

 

We’ll spend more time on how to leverage your time in a later issue of StreetSmart Marketer