Take Control of Your Time

We hear it all the time: “I just don’t have enough time to do everything”. And it’s true! So here are some management models to help you take control of your time and therefore your life.

1. The 45 Minute Solution
Add 45 minutes to your work day; this adds half a day to your work week! Add the time to the start of the day or the end of the day or a combination of both. Come in on a Saturday morning. BUT, and this is a big but, don’t fill that time up with more of the “urgent” activities. Use it to do the “important” things that will bring success to your company. Remember the model: Important Versus Urgent.

2. The Procrastination Solution
Yes you heard it here first; procrastination is a good thing (as long as it is done right)! So you have your to do list and you know darn well that there is no way you will complete everything on the list. So procrastinate …. on some. Mark each item on the list either a Must do or a Should do or a Nice to do. Immediately cross out anything you consider Nice to do; you are never going to get to them anyway so get rid of them. The Should do’s are the candidates for procrastination. Leave them for another day until they become Must’s or Nice’s. Remember the model: Must Should Nice.

3. The No Interrupt Solution
Our days are made up of a long series of interruptions. Studies have shown that the smallest interrupt, like 30 seconds, takes us 10 minutes away from what we are doing. Suffer just 12 small interruptions in a day and you have been diverted from your work for 2 hours! If you have an office close the door for 1 hour a day; your staff won’t die and it is unlikely the building will burn down. If you don’t have an office go to a coffee shop or sit by the lake and think. Wouldn’t that be incredible? One hour of thinking about your business without any interruptions! Turn off your emails; turn off your cell. This must be focused think time. Remember the model (with thanks to IBM): Think!

4. The Meetings Management Solution
If you are plagued by meetings after meetings take control. Manage the meetings. This can be simply done by following these rules:

• Have an agenda
• Start on time (regular late comers will soon learn to arrive on time)
• Have an end time for the meeting and keep to it
• Deal with the decision items first followed by information items
• Only invite those who really MUST be there
• If you are invited decide if it is really necessary to be there
• Control the conversation ~ keep to the topic

Remember the model: Manage Meetings.

It doesn’t matter which way you look at it there are only seven days in a week. Take charge of your time if you want to build a successful business that one day you can sell. Don’t let you become the barrier to your business’s success. Take charge of your time.

Be sure to visit our website at  yourplanningpartners.com

One Step At A Time

When you plan to execute a large project or campaign it is very easy to become overwhelmed. Overwhelm leads to procrastination (see last month’s blogs on procrastination) and so nothing happens. When you find this happening to you it is time to call in a modest little management tool called One Step At A Time. This tool causes you to break the project into smaller bite size chunks. Here is an example.

Our client wanted to communicate with her past colleagues and contacts to let them know that she was now a business owner and would appreciate any referrals (“friends in your corner” letter).  She was putting this off until she had all their current emails; a formidable task to say the least. And so we changed the strategy to One Step At A Time.  We set a target of finding five emails a week and sending those five the announcement. Next week another five …. and so on and so on. An overwhelming project had become manageable. And more important it got done!

So next time you find yourself overwhelmed by the enormity of a project take a deep breath and say to yourself: “One Step At A Time.”

And remember what the old Chinese proverb taught us: “A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.”

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Last Thoughts on Procrastination

Going by the response from our blogs, procrastination resonates with lots of people. Amy from our office brought in a wonderful cartoon a friend had given her. We share it here with permission from the artist.

Ann Patterson of Wood Green Community Services wrote:

Good afternoon.  I thought I would let you know that you must have mental telepathy!  I have been trying forseveral days to write a cover letter to Queen’s University (I am planning on returning to school in the fall to get my MBA, and Queen’s is one of the schools I have applied to).  My application advisor in Kingston told me to write what is in my heart, but there are lots of days when my heart feels empty. I am going to read your attachment, and hopefully I will get some bright ideas so I can finish the cover letter tomorrow before work.

I’m glad to report that Ann completed the cover letter on time!

As we leave our monthly theme of procrastination and move into springtime April I leave the last words to Ellen DeGeneres. Click here to view

How to turn a tax liability into a tax refund? Procrastinate!

Our guest blogger, who wants to remain anonymous, writes:

I am a master procrastinator, so well-practiced that the date of my eventual shuffle off this mortal coil is continually being extended.

I am an accountant by training (if not by disposition) and I prepare the family taxes. Usually I prepare what I call the first draft at the beginning of March, once the majority of the slips are in, then sit and wait to ensure I have all the income declared and have taken advantage of all the generous opportunities for tax minimization our bureaucrats have provided.  A few years ago my wife disposed of some stock in order to fund the business and faced a daunting multiple six figure tax bill. I knew something could be done, but what? So I waited, and waited.

As time wore on I tried to avoid sleep because my nightmares consisted of giant, suit wearing, six legged ants from the CRA. I was getting punchy.

“Just file the damned thing” was the opinion of my other half, who was risking a rather large penalty if I did not file on time; but still I felt unsure. I consulted my handy-dandy tax act that I keep on my bedside table (accountants have needs, “… read me about roll-over provisions…. Section 69 – inadequate consideration…” ) to see if I could come up with my brilliant idea.

Bingo! The income Tax Act has a special section for loss provisions on loans to Canadian Corporations – the allowable business investment loss. Unlike ordinary allowable capital losses, an allowable business investment loss for a taxation year may be deducted from all sources of income for that year. To me, this was more exciting than reading Penthouse Forum.

Thank you Section 50, where the holder of debt in a Canadian corporation can deem a disposition of that debt at nil proceeds immediately prior to the end of the year and reacquire that debt at a cost of nil immediately after the beginning of the following year. I carefully counted the commas and re-read the section for the umpteenth time. The key word here is “deemed” – all we needed to do was to declare that the debt was deemed disposed of under the provisions of the section of the act to be able to write off a truck load of money. “To the Bat Poles!” I rushed downstairs.

I documented the flow of funds into the corporation, including dates and amounts. I identified the source of those funds and provided the company balance sheet indicating that the company did not have the capacity to repay the funds advanced and was, in essence, insolvent. I drafted a document declaring the loss as fitting under this special rule, identifying the chapter, section and subsection. Audit worthy.

My wife came down to breakfast to find me sitting at the table wearing my bath robe and a large blue wizard hat which we had picked up in Disney Land.

“Success?” she asked.

“Success” I replied.

“Will you get them in on time?”

“Already filed on line; here are the receipts.”

“Dare I ask?” she asked anyway.

“You get a refund.” I replied.

“You have got to be kidding!”

It was April 30^th, 8:30 AM – I still had 15 ½ hours to go.

Thank you to our anonymous accountant for sharing your story!\

Be sure to visit our website at  yourplanningpartners.com

How to Overcome Procrastination

Not doing something that should be done is called procrastination. While procrastination can be good, for example we end up not doing something that isn’t important, it can also be harmful to our businesses as described in last week’s blog. There are many causes for us to procrastinate. Fear, overwhelm, distractions, laziness to name just a few.

There are tools and techniques to help overcome procrastination. This week I am sharing our favourite seven. Not all of these will work for everyone. Pick out the one(s) that best suit your personality and your way of working.

 1.  Just Get Started

Many times for me the procrastination door slams shut when I must start writing something like this blog. The very thought of staring at a blank screen trying to get my thoughts in order is enough to stop me from starting. But once I start the words just flow out of my fingers. So Just Get Started!

 2.  Ask For Help

Asking for help is a most positive human trait. So ask someone to make you accountable to them. Not for completing an activity but FOR STARTING AN ACTIVITY! Then be accountable to them for completing it.  Ask someone to work with you, or delegate the entire job to someone else who you know will do it.

 3.  Start Small

The old Chinese proverb states: A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  So when you are faced with a large endeavour stop thinking of the enormity of the task ahead and instead break it into small steps. Some experts in this field suggest breaking the task into small chunks of no more than 10 minutes each.

 4.  Remove Distractions

Have you ever clicked a link to a YouTube video and found yourself 3 hours later clicking through to hundreds of related videos? Before you feel procrastination sneaking up on you remove all potential distractions. Some examples:

• Don’t click the link to a YouTube video
• Close your email program
• Switch off the phone
• Shut down the computer game

 5.  How Will I Feel

While procrastination has its good points more often than not it causes stress. By not doing something that should be done just weighs on our minds, waking us up in the middle of the night. So when faced with this sit quietly in the corner and paint a picture of how you will feel when the task is done. For example, stress will be gone, the task will be complete and all will be well with the world. The picture will be so motivating you will throw procrastination out the window.

 6.  Must. Should. Nice

They say we are attracted to water because our early creepy crawly ancestors crawled their way out of the sea. If that is the case then our ancestors must have been huge fans of “To Do Lists” because we love them! These lists, instead of helping us achieve our plans usually cause procrastination because they are so long. When this happens go through the list and mark each item as either Must, Should or Nice. Cross out the Nices, leave the Shoulds for another day and start working on the Musts.

 7.  The Too Tired Syndrome

Procrastination loves tired people. They sit at their desks, staring absently into the distance and bemoan how tired they are. Too tired to write the blog. Too tired to call the client. Too tired to read the report. Too tired to make coffee. When there are days when tiredness takes over don’t stress yourself. Go to your to do list and find some fun tasks that may not be Musts but will still move your business forward.

Make sure you tune in next week for our first ever Reality Blog. We asked for examples of procrastination in your life and we got a wonderful example. Our guest blogger will describe how procrastination turned a huge tax liability into a tax refund!

 

Be sure to visit our website at  yourplanningpartners.com

Procrastination – The Art of Avoidance

The blog theme for March is procrastination, which probably means it will never happen!

Procrastination is putting off doing something important to work on something trivial; or not work on anything at all. We are told this is a bad thing. But we are also told everyone procrastinates. So how can something that everyone does be bad? In fact procrastination could be good if it puts off doing something important for long enough that it ceases to be important anymore.

But procrastination does become bad when it hurts your business. Here are 7 such scenarios:

1. You avoid picking up the phone to call an upset client. You will do it later today. And then you realize that tomorrow becomes today. The result of your procrastination ~ you lose a client who tells 10 other people what an awful experience they had with your company.

2. You don’t deal with the employee whose performance is below standard. Time to procrastinate. You persuade yourself that as time passes his performance will improve. It doesn’t and things go from bad to worse. In frustration your star employee leaves.

3. You are having cash flow problems and are unable to make the HST payment this month. You know you should call HST and you will; tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes and the call is never made. The HST people get mad and start hounding you, which takes more of your time and energy than the telephone call would have done.

4. You meet an excellent prospect at a networking event. Her needs will be met perfectly by your product and the two of you get along like life long friends. You promise to call next day to set up a time to meet again. Back at the office life takes over and you put off making the call. A week goes by before the call is made only to discover she has gone with your competitor.

5. The company’s tax returns have come back from the accountant in plenty of time to meet the filing date. You could review them right now and if everything is in order mail them. But finishing the design of your new workshop is more important and much more fun. Procrastination kicks in and the tax returns are forgotten until well past the filing date. The result; a hefty and avoidable penalty from the tax department.

6. You are to be interviewed on a TV show that your ideal clients watch. This is a wonderful opportunity. To prepare for the interview you know you should read the articles you have written and familiarize yourself with past blog topics. But that takes time; lot’s of it. As the interview starts the questions are easy and you relax. Then the questions refer back to past articles. Articles you have long forgotten about. You start to stumble and the experience becomes horrible. An opportunity has been lost.

7. You know that processes should be documented to avoid errors. But documenting processes is boring and easily avoided. So you procrastinate and the inevitable happens. Your outsourced VA does your bank reconciliation and cash flow management.  The process is not documented and one month he makes a big mistake. A mistake that causes you to think there is more cash available than there actually is. Cheques start bouncing and irate people start calling.

Next week we will share 7 ways to overcome procrastination. In the meantime remember Robinson Crusoe always had everything done by Friday.

Be sure to visit our website at  yourplanningpartners.com

Never Enough Time

In the previous post I wrote about the seven barriers to business success and how one of them is us the Owner! Which is not surprising when you consider there is no schooling to train for this position and so we are left to train on the job. However the bigger hindrance is that there is never enough time to do everything that needs doing. So here are some solutions.

1. The 45 Minute Solution
Add 45 minutes to your work day; this adds half a day to your work week! Add the time to the start of the day or the end of the day or a combination of both. Come in on a Saturday morning. BUT, and this is a big but, don’t fill that time up with more of the “urgent” activities. Use it to do the “important” things that will bring success to your company. Remember the model: Important Versus Urgent.

2. The Procrastination Solution
Yes you heard it here first; procrastination is a good thing (as long as it is done right)! So you have your to do list and you know darn well that there is no way you will complete everything on the list. So procrastinate …. on some. Mark each item on the list either a Must do or a Should do or a Nice to do. Immediately cross out anything you consider Nice to do; you are never going to get to them anyway so get rid of them. The Should do’s are the candidates for procrastination. Leave them for another day until they become Must’s or Nice’s. Remember the model: Must Should Nice.

3. The No Interrupt Solution
Our days are made up of a long series of interruptions. Studies have shown that the smallest interrupt, like 30 seconds, takes us 10 minutes away from what we are doing. Suffer just 12 small interruptions in a day and you have been diverted from your work for 2 hours! If you have an office close the door for 1 hour a day; your staff won’t die and it is unlikely the building will burn down. If you don’t have an office go to a coffee shop or sit by the lake and think. Wouldn’t that be incredible? One hour of thinking about your business without any interruptions! Turn off your emails; turn off your cell. This must be focused think time. Remember the model (with thanks to IBM): Think!

4. The Meetings Management Solution
If you are plagued by meetings after meetings take control. Manage the meetings. This can be simply done by following these rules:

• Have an agenda
• Start on time (regular late comers will soon learn to arrive on time)
• Have an end time for the meeting and keep to it
• Deal with the decision items first followed by information items
• Only invite those who really MUST be there
• If you are invited decide if it is really necessary to be there
• Control the conversation ~ keep to the topic

Remember the model: Manage Meetings.

It doesn’t matter which way you look at it there are only seven days in a week. Take charge of your time if you want to build a successful business that one day you can sell. Don’t let you become the barrier to your business’s success. Take charge of your time.