In this business, it is so easy to fall into the trap of being a work-o-holic. I know, I’ve been one for most of my career. For many of us, if we were given more hours in a day, we would simply work longer hours.
In the first three years of growing my business I went from $0 assets to managing $25 million dollars of client assets. I worked very hard and very long hours to make that happen. I was on the path to burnout. I stopped working out and started bad habits like eating fast food more often.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day activities of running a business. Unfortunately so much of that is reactive. How many of you have started the day with your list of things to do and before the morning is over, you were taken over by phone calls, emails and putting out fires.
You’ve heard it before, it’s important to take a step back and look at your time management. Here are some tips to help you get organized and get rid of bad habits.
1. Schedule time for organization. One day a week, I try to take no appointments. It’s a day of the week, I can just try to get things done whether it’s paperwork, writing, cleaning my desk, organizing my projects, etc. At first I thought this was silly but I committed to trying it out. Today, I take no appointments on Mondays. I find this day excellent because it gives me time to prepare for my appointments that week and a day to ease into a busy schedule. It doesn’t matter which day of the week and it does not have to be a full day but I encourage each one of you to take some ‘planning’ time. Psychologically, I feel more prepared and ready for my week and that in itself helps me to be more productive.
2. Start your day with a workout. Health is so important and working out actually gives you fuel for the day. For many years, I would go for a workout in the evenings. On far too many days, the business started getting busy, I found it harder and harder to motivate myself to get a workout in after a hard day’s work. Anything left to the end of the day is most likely to be missed.
3. Delegate and trust. Being a bit of a control freak, I often had difficulty giving tasks to other people. I always thought in my head “no-one can do it as well as I can”, “I waste more time correcting peoples mistakes so I might as well do it myself”, and “I don’t have time to show someone else what I want”. Delegation is critical to success. Critical to delegation is building a team of people around you that you can delegate to. The secret to delegation is to know the strengths and weaknesses of your circle of resources and trust that they will get the job done. The minute you lose the trust and confidence, you must evaluate the value of that person. I believe delegation is one of the key issues of time management.
4. Invest in your personal time. We are often told to invest in our own business. I am a firm believer in investing in the business but I am also a believer in investing in your own time. Hiring an assistant or an extra assistant will likely provide financial returns but also consider the personal returns. For me, adding staff has not only helped with more business but also gives me more time to enjoy the fruits of financial success. And really, isn’t that what it is all about?
5. Planning for the business. I started talking about planning and I will end with planning. Consider that we preach to our clients about financial, retirement and investment planning. We have all heard that our clients spend more time planning vacations than they plan their financial future. We can learn from this because our financial future lies in our business. We must take the time to plan in our business: marketing, prospecting, fund selection, sales processes, servicing, client appreciation, etc. For me, planning is about reflection of the past and process for the future – what we have done right, what we can change and what we can do that is new?
Taking time out from the day to day activities that make us money can, in fact, help you to make more money. I know it sounds like a contradiction but you need time to re-fuel and re-focus.
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