Recapture Your Time

Don’t just save your time—invest it

Michael Van Horn 
#6 in the series

“I don’t have enough hours in the day!” is one of the most common complaints of business owners.

Lack of time ranks far above lack of money as a barrier to growth. After all, you can borrow money, but your hours are fixed in number.

But this workbook is not about time management. You should focus not on “saving time” but on “investing time” strategically. Where can you get the highest return on each hour of your time? What should you be doing to focus on growing your business to the size and profitability you want? The exercises in this workbook help you answer those questions.

I give you a 4-tiered approach to recapturing your time and using it strategically:

  • Level 1. Triage Your Time.  Generate some "right-now" benefits. How can you stop the time hemorrhaging? Where can you recapture a small amount of time, to give you the space to focus on longer-term improvements in your time use?

  • Level 2. Recapture Your Time. Make some near-term improvements. Restructure the way you do things. How can you permanently change the demands on your time, so that you can focus on strategic priorities?

  • Level 3. Invest Your Time. Undertake longer-term restructuring. See how you can leverage your time and creativity. Over the next year or so, how can you restructure your business to help you make your greatest contribution to its success, have the workstyle you want, and achieve your long-term objectives?

  • Level 4. Leverage Your Time. Maximize the return on your creativity (ROC) by putting together products or services from your unique solutions to client problems, and building an ongoing revenue stream.

Topics covered

  • The business owner’s Strategic Time Killers.

  • What’s wrong with time management? “Saving time,” vs. “investing time.”

  • Time use habits of effective business owners.

  • Take care of yourself—the most important thing.

  • How “important” and “urgent” are the things you do?

  • How can you use your time strategically?

  • Triage your time to stop “time hemorrhaging.”

  • How can you recapture a little time right away?

  • Change the way you do things.

  • Why do you have a time crunch?

  • Invest your time, don’t spend it.

  • Getting the greatest return for each hour of your time.

  • Where is your time worth the most?

  • What is the value of your work to your customers?

  • Leverage your effort.

  • The enemies of leverage

  • Maximize your ROC (Return on Creativity)

  • The ladder of leverage

  • Guidelines to scheduling sanity

  • How to carve out time

  • Tricks to getting it done when you are really busy.

Warm up exercise

From the workbook

The Business Owner’s Strategic Time Killers

  • Go-fer.

    You cover the low-skilled tasks that don’t fall into any employee’s job description: delivering materials to the job site, making bank deposits, getting copies made, shopping for office supplies, emptying the trash.

  • Miser.

    Save a penny, lose a dollar. You act as your own administrative assistant. To avoid spending $15 an hour, you forego $100 an hour (or whatever your time is worth). You do your own bookkeeping, invoicing, and bill paying.

  • Gatekeeper.

    Only you can be trusted to open and close each day, so you have the longest hours.

  • Firefighter.

    There is always some fire to be put out; if not, you’ve been known to start one just to keep things interesting.

  • Leaf in a Storm.

    You are at the mercy of the winds of business fate. Your schedule is dictated by whatever comes along.

  • Comfort Zoner.

    You resist doing the things that will take you to the next level and you tend to stay with comfortable (for you!) tasks.

  • Worker Bee.

    You like being crew chief, tending to everyday jobs. It’s hard work, but you can see the results right away. It’s why you got into the business in the first place.

  • Pinch Hitter.

    You fill in for everyone. If an employee is absent, you do his or her job.

  • Mr. (or Ms.)  Accessible.

    Your door is always open. You take every phone call, answer every email, and you can be interrupted at any time.

  • Assistant.

    You hand over a job to someone. When that person comes back to ask for help, you end up doing part of the job that you just delegated to them.

  • Philanthropist.

    You subsidize your clients. You do work for them, but you don’t charge for all of it. You do this at the expense of your own strategic work.

  • Optimist.

    Your scheduling is overly optimistic and projects take longer than you expect. This eats into the time that you have allocated for other tasks and you always feel pressured.

  • Crammer.

    You overbook by cramming things into your schedule, which leads to inevitable slippage. Strategic tasks get bumped.

  • Ms. (or Mr.) Essential.

    Only you can do the task. That means that, every time it must be done, you must be there—and you must interrupt whatever else you are doing.

  • Unimportant.

    You break appointments with yourself—the most important person in the business—even though you would never break appointments with a client.