Can Entrepreneurs Master Time Management?

How do successful entrepreneurs get the most out of their time management?  How can you get more out of your day? How you manage your time is critical to your life and to your business. I was recently given a book by Dan S. Kennedy called NO BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs, 2^nd edition. You can find it at GKIC’s Website

I can’t recommend it highly enough.  I thought I’d share several great ideas from the book and then you can get yourself a copy to help you manage your time better.

Dan shares several ideas on time management that get you thinking about how you use your time and, more importantly, what you shouldn’t be doing.  For those who aren’t familiar with Dan, you quickly discover why he created a series of bestselling No BS books.  He understands what an entrepreneur’s life is about because he lives it every day.

He kicks off the book off with a calculation on what your time is worth and why it’s so critical to get a handle on your time. This single calculation can change the way you run your life. You can find it on page 8 of the book.  Every entrepreneur I do the exercise with gets serious about the way they invest their time. You can do this exercise in no time and quickly see why you should invest $15.95 for the book.

I’ve chosen to share several secrets out of chapter 6.  Dan calls this chapter The Ten Time Management Techniques Really Worth Using. I’ve chosen four that I think get you on your way to becoming an excellent time manager.

The first secret of time management is to tame the interruptions. In today’s connected world, an entrepreneur must be willing to use technology as a tool, not the driver of his daily activity. If you hope to be successful, you must be in control of your day.  You should not allow all these productivity tools to take control of your time. How many times a day do you check your email? How many times per day do you react to a phone call or text? If you want to leverage your time you must learn how to manage these tools.

The second secret of time management is to minimize your meetings. More accurately, avoid doing so many. In your role, you are overwhelmed by the volume of meetings you must attend. Take time to understand if you really need to spend so much time in meetings. Take a hard look at why you’re still attending certain meetings. To be effective, you must focus on the activities that only you can do. You may be surprised by how much time you free up by attending only the meetings you must attend.

The third secret of time management is to block your time. How much time do you schedule a day for critical activities? If you’re the best sales person on your team, why do you spend so little time selling? I added an hour per day doing sales and I tripled my pipeline in less than a month. As an added bonus, I feel recharged at the end of my hour selling. So how might you block your time to get your biggest results? Another advantage I discovered is time blocking allows me to coach people better because I’m able to focus on them during their time block.

The fourth secret of time management is to create to-do lists.  I find that writing out lists allows me to become more productive and creative when putting together projects. I am able to see progress on my list and remove items that I shouldn’t be doing. Once an item is on my list, I don’t have to keep it in my head or stress that I might forget something. My wife is a big fan of lists and she helped me begin writing out lists before I finish for the day. This way I can get off to a fast start the following morning.  It also allows me to let good ideas come to the surface more quickly than it does without a list.  I find my productivity has been increasing as I get better at writing my list. Many times the list comes out in the right order and they help me prioritize my efforts when working on multiple projects.

I hope this blog has got you thinking about how time management can make you more productive.

If you want to learn more about time management, I would recommend getting a copy of Dan S. Kennedy’s NO BS Time Management for Entrepreneurs, 2^nd edition. Then get started.

See you here next week.

Originally Posted at Developing Serving Leaders