How to Protect the Highest & Best Use of Your Time

All of us have the same 24 hours in a day, but we each spend those hours differently. We say “yes” and “no” to different things – some of which are income producing and life-fulfilling – and others which are not.

What are you doing with the 24 hours of your day? Is each hour being used to its full potential?

Its important to remember that every hour, every minute of your day counts into the overall value of your life and productivity for your business.

Are you considering every second, minute, and hour of your time as priceless?

Its important to consider how we are currently spending each hour of our time so that we can assess from a business perspective what the highest & best use of our time is and how to protect it effectively.

Key Performance Indicators and Income Producing Activities

No matter what your career is, every career has key performance indicators (KPI) and levels of income producing activities (IPA) that help determine how effectively time is being spent toward achieving goals.

Let’s take a minute to view time in terms of money so that we can take a better look at what these KPIs and IPAs are for your business. Do you know what your time is worth by the hour? Take a quick minute to calculate what 1 hour of your time is worth (unless you currently receive hourly pay). You can figure up your actual rate per hour based on a typical 40 hour week by taking your yearly pay and dividing that by 2,080 (which is equivalent to 52 weeks of 40 hours per week).

Quick note: regardless of this number, remember what I mentioned above. Your time is priceless…whatever this hourly rate is, value the work that you do and complete your work diligently as unto the Lord and not men!

So let’s say that you calculated your hourly pay the amount of $100. This is such an important step! Now you can begin to leverage your time to work on more specific income producing activities that are worth your time, and less activities that are worth less than $100 an hour.

So how can you determine what the key performance indicators and income producing activities are for your business? Well, we have to look at what keeps the business moving forward and the clients coming back.

Is this prospecting, making phone calls, or setting appointments? Is this negotiating, coordination, or problem solving customer service situations? Is this making videos and social media posts to maintain a heavy footprint for your business?

You can also consider what keeps the business from moving forward so that you can alternatively move these items off of your plate and onto someone else’s. Or so that you can proactively keep these non-income producing activities from creeping their way into your schedule. These could include scrolling on social media (a time vacuum!) or participating in office chatter that doesn’t add any value to your life or business. (Public service announcement…this also includes how you speak to yourself! Speak positively and you’ll see positive results!) Procrastination is also a killer for your productivity – make sure this doesn’t steal your valuable time away by prolonging an important task.

Whatever you decide here for your business that keeps the business moving forward – are you currently building these activities into your block schedule? (A block schedule is a valuable tool for leveraging your time! Click here to see my blog post “Leveraging is Everything.”)

Now consider, what trains you for completing these tasks and how do you complete these tasks well?

Does your productivity depend on your work environment or the time of day? Does your success depend on the level of training you give yourself every week? Does your diet affect your performance? Does your performance vary depending on what time you wake up in the morning? Whatever the indicators are that increase your performance in these areas, you need to build those into your schedule as well.

Protecting the highest & best use of your time means spending your time like you would spend your money.

You need to figure out what you need to do to increase (not decrease!) the value of your life while working towards achieving your business goals, then build these values into your schedule and stick to them.

If you calculated your hourly wages at $100 for the sake of an example, then stop getting caught up in paperwork and tasks that are not a $100 an hour activity, and delegate those activities to a trained employee who will complete those tasks better than you would anyway. Then spend the hour that you would have spent doing that task on something else that would help push the business forward. Now the business has saved $80 an hour by having the trained employee complete the task instead of you, and you are freed up to complete the income producing activity you need to.

If you are currently making an hourly wage or are unable to delegate tasks to someone else, then you want to focus more on efficiency and priority for your tasks… and stick to your job description! Don’t begin to do the work of someone else. You set the standard for the behavior you want repeated, so you must hold yourself strictly to these boundaries. Create a block schedule as referenced above, then maintain strong boundaries around that schedule. What helps you complete a task with efficiency so that you are maintaining the highest and best use of your time? Can you simplify a process? Can you make email templates that you can use to increase the speed of your communication? Can you turn off your phone and notifications for a few hours to limit distractions? Take a few minutes to think about how you can make your job easier to spend your time like you would spend your money. Don’t waste your time on things, people, or tasks that don’t add value to yourself or the business.

Be wise & invest in what is important for your business and personal life. And avoid everything which keeps you from wasting your time on non-income producing activities.

Stop trying to find more hours in the day and instead try to work more efficiently with the time you have. This will help you leverage your time wisely and avoid the time thieves that try to take away the highest and best use of your time.

Stay tuned for more posts on similar topics that will help you launch your administrative expertise to the next level…In the meantime, go be a game-changer!

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