Spend Less Time Working

The simple answer we hear to the question of why someone was successful is "hard work". This is nonsense. Of course they have had to work hard but then so do a lot of unsuccessful people. The key to being successful is to work smart - focus on the important things and work on them. This means that you will not wasted time focusing on things that are not worth your time & effort.

Two important maxims to bear in mind as you work are:

• Doing something unimportant well does not make it important. 
• Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important

Pareto's Law is simple:

• 80% of the results come from 20% of the time 
• 80% of profits come from 20% of customers/services

In our lives we get a sense that this is true. Some customers pay a large amount of money and do not present problems, others don't pay and moan all the time. Should you sack your clients? Who can tell but perhaps you might consider the time you spend dealing with a client as well as the income they bring. This is not just the time doing the work but time chasing them for payment, time responding to their requests & complaints etc. It is a useful plan to split clients into 4 groups:

• High Maintenance, High Income 
• High Maintenance, Low Income 
• Low Maintenance, High Income 
• Low Maintenance, Low Income

If you can use this to see which of your clients are high maintenance & high income then you can make some decisions as to whether to fire them or to raise your prices for them to make the work you do for them worthwhile. This won't save you time but it will mean the time you do spend is more worthwhile. By and large, you'll find that 20% of your clients are low-hassle & pay you a lot. Knowing which ones they re means you can profile them & try to find more of them. You might consider asking a few interesting questions such as:

• How much revenue to my top 20% of clients bring?
• How much would I lose if I dropped the other 80%?

I challenge you to come up with some life-shattering decisions.

Simply stated, Parkinson's Law is that: Work expands to fill the time available 

Armed with this knowledge, we can make judgements about how to cut out the unnecessary from our lives. This means:

• Only do important tasks to limit your work time 
• Limit work time to limit yourself to important tasks

If emailing doesn't make you money, don't do it. If you're spending 8 hours at work & 6 of those are spent on the Internet then only work for 2 hours a day. This will help you to bring focus to what you do & the limited time will ensure that you get things done & don't waste time.

In everything you do, ask yourself:

• “If this is the only thing I can accomplish today, would I be happy?” 

• “What will happen if I don’t do this & is it worth putting off the important to do it?” 

As a rule, you should only communicate once you have something worth communicating. If you spend all of your time communicating, you will lose focus and won't be able to get into the rythym of work.

Because of the ease with which we can communicate, we do it a lot. When we recieve calls, emails & messages, we feel compelled to answer them as quickly as possible even thoughwe do not have to. Look at your inbox - how many emails has the sender marked urgent?

By having a 'phone on our desk & email open on our PC it's like we've opened 2 new doors to our office but these doors can let anyone in from anywhere around thw world. 

In order to ensure that we can work in a focused manner, we need to cut ourselves off from these media at most times & train our clients to get in touch when they need us but to not communicate anything that is not urgent.

Consider the following idea for an email auto-responder - the same wll work with a telephone message:

Due to a high workload, I am currently checking & responding to my email 12pm & 4pm each day.

If need me urgently (please ensure it is urgent) and cannot wait, please call me on my mobile 'phone. 

Thank you for understanding this move to more efficiency & effectiveness. It helps me serve you better. 

Who can argue with that? You're staying out of contact to work hard and to work for your clients. Give it a try.