How Are You Investing Yours?

I wanted to share this image with you that I found when I
was surfing the web last week while feeling a bit under the weather… you may
have already seen it on my Facebook page?

 

You see, it really got me thinking. Just as the message
says; if your bank account was credited with £86,400 every day, and you had to
spend it wisely on the day you received the money… you’d make darned sure you
did wouldn’t you?

Yet we begin each day with 86,400 seconds… but how many of
us truly value time and invest it wisely?

If we set aside the average 8 hours sleep that adults need
each day, we’re still left with 57.6k seconds… not an inconsiderable number
is it?

And then when you start to think about it some more… every
single one of us is given the same number of seconds at the beginning of their
day. Yet some people seem to milk the absolute max out of their time… others
get very little done.

Consider this… your day consists of exactly the same
amount of time as the most successful business owner you can think of. But do
they invest their 86.4k seconds in the same way that you do?

How do you think they invest their time? What could you do
differently?

Focus:

Knowing what you have to get done today… and creating
yourself a timetable that you stick to, is one way of ensuring you invest your
time wisely.

Start with your big rocks… stuff that you absolutely have
to get done today… and work backwards from there. Plan out your day and don’t
allow yourself to deviate from the schedule without a VERY good reason.

Deadlines:

As business owners, we have nobody to account to
except ourselves… so if we miss a self-imposed deadline, it doesn’t matter
does it?

It does if you value your time.

If you know you need some personal accountability to meet
your own deadlines, share them with others. Publicly declaring you will have a
project completed by a certain date will make you accountable to your network =
more responsibility for you to ensure you don’t lose focus.

Boundaries:

Allowing other people to steal time from you is
an unwise investment. If you allow a one-hour meeting to run over to two
hours… there’s 3,600 seconds you’ve wasted of your allowance.

 Be firm with distractions and stick to agreed timescales…
or consider a more efficient way to conduct the meeting that could save you
time instead?

 If you work from home, banish those time vampires who don’t
respect that you are WORKING from home!

 Delegate:

Successful business owners know they can’t do
everything themselves… they build solid teams around them and delegate
responsibility elsewhere.

If you’re spending your precious seconds each day doing
anything other than what you do best, you’re investing your time unwisely.

As we head towards a new year, I invite you to spend some
time thinking about this… are you truly making the best use out of your
allocated time each day? You can’t carry it over, and there are no refunds for
any time you waste… so it is up to you to take the responsibility of  living each day to the max.

Make a commitment to yourself that the bad habit you have of
allowing time to fritter away from you stops here. That when you start the new
year, you’ll stop allowing the time suckers to dictate how you spend your valuable
time. 

For every 3,600 seconds that you allow to pass by unrecognised…
that’s another hour you could have invested into your business… or spending
time with the people you love.

 
So, how have you invested your 86.4k seconds today?