Thu 10 Apr 2008
Welcome back! Here we go with Part 4c of Personal Money Management for Wealth Builders.
This section continues with Part 4b’s theme: Manage Your Time Effectively. Here are some more tips:
Tip #4: Learn To Delegate
This is an important time management tip - not just for entrepreneurial/business activities, but for home tasks and “busywork” too! Let’s look at the Entrepreneur’s Example:
Entrepreneurs with consistently growing businesses usually have to start outsourcing tasks and/or hiring employees. This happens because a growing business often reaches a point where there is too much work for one person (the founder) to handle.
It also happens because all good entrepreneurs recognize that they have specific strengths, and it would benefit both them and their business to focus on applying those strengths and contract/hire others to perform other tasks. In other words, they delegate.
Successful entrepreneurs - even, and often especially, multi-millionaires and billionaires - recognize this and use it to their advantage. To paraquote many of the most successful and wealthy people in the world, past and present:
“Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.”
This is absolutely true. When you delegate, you give others the opportunity to shine in their specific areas of talent, and you get more time to apply yours. Those you delegate to get to do what they’re good at, and you get to spend more time doing the things you’re good at. You free yourself to work on your business, rather than getting stuck working in it.
This works in day-to-day life too. You can delegate typical domestic tasks, even numerous errands and other busywork. Consider the following example:
Perhaps you spend two hours per week cleaning your house. But say you paid a cleaner to do it for you - the typical rate for a cleaning service is around $50-$75 for a 3 bedroom/2 bath house, and you can often find self-employed cleaners that will work for less than that.
For another example, you can pay a gardener/landscaper roughly the same amount for a couple of hours’ lawn cutting and garden maintenance. If you enjoy working in your garden, that’s fine - just schedule it as part of your leisure time. But even then, you could have someone cut your lawn, which – depending on the size of your lawn – could give you upwards of 1 extra hour per week. As it is, many of us would prefer to have someone do our basic garden maintenance for us.
For this example, let’s say that you pay someone $60 to spend two hours per week to either clean your house or maintain your yard. With either arrangement, they get to add you to their client list - which benefits their business and increases their income - and you now have 2 extra hours that you can apply to other activities more suited to your talents… such as wealth building. If you like, you can still enjoy “fun” gardening (or even “fun” cleaning if you enjoy it) in your leisure time… but you won’t be spending potentially productive time on it.
Instead you can use those 2 extra hours per week more effectively, and they can easily be worth the $60 cleaning/gardening bill, plus more – often a lot more. For example:
If you’re running an online business, 2 hours is time to write several short articles, blog or forum posts that link back to your money-making blog or website. It’s time to create and upload more content for your money-making blog or website. It’s time to make a short YouTube video with a link to your site. It’s time to perform numerous other social networking activities as well: adding content to your Squidoo lens, HubPage or MySpace for example. All of these activities will send significant traffic back to your site… and if you’ve set things up properly, you will make additional sales and/or affiliate commissions as a result.
If you have a bricks-and-mortar business, you can spend that 2 hours prospecting for clients. You can create ads for your business, either online or in print. You can spend it on customer/client care and follow-up, building relationships and referrals that will bring you increased and repeat business. You can use it to perform management, inspections, paperwork or general maintenance tasks, all of which will help your business run more effectively. Then, as your business grows, you can start outsourcing or hiring for those tasks, leaving you with even more time to network, expand and promote your business.
If you work for someone else, that 2 hours’ cleaning time will be added to your down-time outside of your work hours. You can use it to learn more about areas you’re interested in – like wealth building. You can spend time on self-empowerment and self-improvement. If you don’t mind “taking you work home with you”, you can spend it working on projects, generating ideas, prepping for meetings or anything else that helps you perform your job more effectively. If your goal is to become self-employed, you can use the 2 hours to work on your business.
There are many more things you could do with that 2 hours, and that’s just one example of delegating a simple task (house cleaning). Once you’ve prioritized your tasks using the ABC System (see Tip #2 above), look at all your low-priority tasks and decide which ones you could delegate.
Whether you’re delegating business tasks or “busywork”, don’t be afraid to let others do them. Often we have trouble getting rid of the “if you want something done right, do it yourself” attitude, but once you learn to trust in the abilities and competence of others – and always expect to find competent people – you’ll find that not only will your life get easier, but the people you delegate to will often find ways of doing things even more effectively.
If you want to learn how to delegate and prioritize effectively, I highly recommend these products. Remember: learn as much as you can, surround yourself with people who are smarter than you in areas outside of your particular talents and passions, and focus on applying your own talents and passions. Everyone wins as a result!
Tip #5: Be Sure To Schedule “Me-Time”
You need to leave time for you! This is vital for success in wealth building and life in general.
At work or in your business, schedule some down-time for yourself each day, without interruptions. If that means closing your office door and letting your voicemail take phone messages, then that’s what you need to do. This down-time between work tasks allows you to take a breather and focus more effectively on your “up-time”. Let go of the “I’ve got too much to do” attitude. The truth is that if you take careful stock of your tasks and focus on performing them efficiently, you will create the time for breaks. Believe it and you’ll achieve it.
Outside of work, schedule time to do things that you love, enjoy and find relaxing. Go for a walk, run or hike; paint a picture; play a sport you enjoy; work out; play music; go out for dinner, a movie, dancing, or other activities with friends and partners; meditate or do Yoga, Tai Chi or other spiritual activities; do anything that you find relaxing, beneficial and enjoyable! Sometimes, when we’re caught up in the “do-do-do” rush-around rat-race, we never do anything for ourselves, but leisure time is extremely important, and it helps us become more effective and less stressed.
Tip #6: Un-Clutter Your Life!
This is only semi-related to time management, but it’s a very important part of organizing your life, so it’s worthy of mention here. Clutter, both physical (in the form of junk and rubbish that we hang on to for no good reason) and mental (in the form of old fears, memories, traumas and disempowering beliefs) slows us down massively and prevents us from managing our lives effectively.
One of the best things you can do is eliminate clutter and spend a few minutes each week to keep your life free of it. Clutter holds us back tremendously, often much more than we realize. A disorganized living and working space contributes to, and is also a symptom of, “internal” clutter. Clear your physical space and you help to clear your mental space – which empowers you tremendously. Again, these products contain some great methods for eliminating clutter and empowering yourself as a result. Check them out!
To eliminate mental clutter, focus on any disempowering beliefs, fears or bad memories you have and learn to let go of them. It can help to make a list and then go through it progressively, doing whatever’s needed to let go of each item or change it to something positive. There are many resources to help you with this – too many to list here. I suggest you visit my self-empowerment website, www.Creating-Life-Abundance.com, for lots of great information and resources. I also suggest my e-book, Your Passion Point. This is a must-read e-book that includes a complete system for letting go of things that are holding you back, and creating anything you want!
There are many other great e-books and books available as well. Check out the CLA (Creating Life Abundance) Recommended Books page here.
To eliminate physical clutter, let go of any old items you don’t need. If you’re a pack-rat then work on breaking the habit. Although we often tend to hang on to things because we “think we might need them someday”, most of the time we never use them at all – and they just gather dust and take up space. The truth is, even if you think you might need something someday, you’re much better off getting rid of it. If you do this consistently you will empower yourself tremendously, and if you ever do need what you got rid of, you can always find another – or something to take its place.
So clear your work and living space of clutter: junk mail, old papers, unused items that you’ve been storing, and other accumulated clutter. Eliminate behaviors that lead to clutter, and keep your internal (mental) and external (physical) world free of it. To get a bit philosophical and metaphysical: when you keep your mental and physical world free of clutter, you allow more of what you want – things of true value, wealth and abundance – to manifest in it. And to relate this to time management, the less time you spend dealing with clutter, the more time you have to focus on things that matter!
Now you have some great information to get started with!
The next moves are up to you! As we mentioned, nothing happens until you take action. Whether you choose to get more information on time management, or use the tips we’ve already provided, you need to jump in with both feet and apply it!
Once you do, you’ll be astonished at how much extra time you can create, how much you can reduce stress, and how much more you’ll be able to focus on wealth building and doing things you love and enjoy! Now go for it - we’ll talk again soon!
In Health, Wealth and Harmony,
Robin Bhattacharyya
