How to Use Tell Your Time in Your Business

By Melissa Batai

A few weeks ago, I read and reviewed Tell Your Time by Amy Lynn Andrews.  This book completely changed my way of thinking about time management.  Rather than trying to find a way to fit everything in my day, this book first urged me to take out all of the unnecessary things I was doing and decide on the five most important areas in my life.  Only after I did that did I start working on a schedule.

After using this strategy in my personal life, I realized this could also be used in my professional life.  If you’re looking to be more focused and productive in your work, here’s how to use Tell Your Time in your business.

How to Use Tell Your Time in Your Business

If you use Andrews’ strategy, you’ll likely become more productive and feel less stressed about your work. 

Work Backwards

The first step is to work backwards.  In ten years, what do you want for your business?  What are you doing?  How successful is your business?  What do you want to accomplish?  Use these questions to create a vision for your business.

Create Five Roles for Your Current Business

Can you narrow down your role in your business to five roles?  For instance, some roles may be public speaker, social media influencer, blogger or vlogger, etc. if your job is a blogger.  Regardless of what field you’re in, think of the five most important roles in your business.  These are roles that hopefully will help you achieve your business goals in the next five to ten years.

Look at Where You’re at Now

Do a quick inventory of all of the tasks you currently complete as part of your normal workday.  How many of those fit within your five priority roles that you chose?  How many of them will help you meet your five or ten-year goals?

If you’re like me, you may be surprised to find that as much as 25 to 50% of what your currently doing does not fit within the five roles you defined or does not help you achieve the goals you set for your business.

Outsource or Drop Extra Items

So, what do you do with the 25 to 50% of tasks that do not fit your goals?

 

If they’re still necessary for your business, consider outsourcing them to someone, perhaps a virtual assistant.

But also look hard at what items you may be working on that are not necessary for your business.  What would happen if you just dropped those items?  Would your business be negatively impacted, or would business go on, mostly as normal?  Drop the extraneous that does not match your goals.

Decide How to Schedule Your Day

Only after doing all of this hard, preliminary work can you finally sit down and determine which tasks you will keep and how to fit them into your day.

Final Thoughts

In some ways, applying Tell Your Time to your business is like doing a deep cleaning and decluttering through your business.  This isn’t a quick process, but when you’re done, you will likely be more efficient and more satisfied with the way you run your business.

Don't already own Tell Your Time? Buy it here from Amazon! (or read our review for more info!)