Is not having enough free time holding you back from starting your own business? Why not frame the problem differently: how can I do what needs to get done for my business within the limited number of hours available each week? The reality is that with the right time-management mindset, starting a business takes a lot less time than you would think.
The amazing thing about constraints is that they force us to think differently. Remember when you left that assignment to the last minute, but then somehow still managed to finish it in one night when it should have taken you a week. This shows that if need be, we can actually do tasks much faster than they would otherwise take.
Parkinson’s Law establishes that tasks take the time allocated to them to get completed. So, adding a time constraint will force you to think of ways to complete your tasks more efficiently. One approach can be to think of ways how to personally complete the task faster. Eliminating distractions also does wonders to increase your productivity. Another approach is to see whether by investing in a tool, you can increase your productivity or reduce the amount of work to be completed.
For example, when designing a website, purchasing a $90 website template would likely substantially cut down the time required to get your website up and running.
I often say that there is nothing more expensive than being cheap.
Since your time is a scarce resource, you need to spend it wisely. You should also attribute an hourly rate to it. A good starting point is double your current pre-tax hourly rate which you receive from your job. On the basis of this hourly rate, you can now quantify the value of the time saved from making an investment in a particular tool. Using that value, you can easily figure out whether the cost of the tool is justified by the amount of time it will save you.
Let’s come back now to our website template example (for the record, I personally use Divi for my websites which comes built-in with roughly 350+ whole website templates. For more information on how to create a website, take a look at this post: Build and Set Up a Website (the Easy Way).) If your time hourly rate is $45/h, then as long as this website template saves you more than 2 hours of work, then it is absolutely worth it and a good investment.
Framed differently, imagine that using this template saved you 10 hours of your time. If you don’t buy the template and spend your time doing this work instead, your effective hourly rate for those 10 hours is $9/hour. Your time is worth more than that amount, so, in many ways, you are really wasting your time doing the work which could be spent instead on higher-value tasks.
Once you start approaching the hours that you devote to your business each week this way, suddenly a lot more can get done in each of those precious hours.
Another tactic is to hire one or more people to complete certain tasks to save you from having to to them yourself. Although this option can get expensive quickly, if used strategically, it is well worth it. In particular, if used for tasks for which you have little experience or knowledge, it can be a real time saver and result in a superior end result.
An alternative to hiring labour is to partner up with other people to share the time load between you. Instead of paying them in money, you are paying them through a stake in the venture. This also aligns their incentives with your own. If you feel that you don’t have the time to get your venture going, you have nothing to lose by sharing the pot to help it get off the ground and running.
Putting this all together, come up with a weekly time budget for your business. Something as little as 30 minutes a day totals to more than 3 hours a week, which is likely more than enough to get your business started. Instead of focusing on the amount of capital to be invested in your business and how to save every nickel and dime, focus on getting the required work done within your limited number of hours per week.
One way then to stay within your time budget is to schedule each week the tasks which you need to complete that week during your allocated “business hours”. Then, I personally use a buzzer countdown clock to force myself to complete the tasks within their scheduled, allotted times. I learned this trick in 15 Secrets Successful People know About Time Management by Kevin Kruse. My preference is the Time Timer since it visually shows me the amount of time remaining by a red disk that gets smaller and smaller over time. Although you could use your phone instead, I would strongly counsel against it and advise you to use something else. Phones are an endless source of distraction, so no need to add the use of one during your precious business hours.
Finally, you need to change your mindset to shy away from focusing on attaining perfection while completing your tasks since you don’t have the time budget to do so. Next, prioritize working on your most important tasks above everything else. Unfortunately, with your limited time budget, you likely won’t have the time to do everything you would like, so your time needs to be focused on your most essential tasks to make sure that they get completed. Everything else will just have to wait. Best of luck!
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