It’s September now and the start of Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, including Australia where I live. Can you believe it? Do you find that time seems to fly by so fast that you don’t get everything done on your list of goals. If this is the case, there are ways to get more done so that list can shrink and/or you can add more to it because you’ll have crossed many of the items off your list.
First you should reduce the amount of time you waste. “Waste,” you say, shocked and in disbelief. “Yes, Waste,” I say. Think of these time drainers and you’ll understand what I mean.
How much time do you spend on Facebook? Perhaps some of it is essential to your business or personal life BUT you probably browse and respond to a lot of messages that are simply time wasters. Sharing what people had for breakfast, where they went last night when they wanted to party, sharing posts and threads from others, etc. Over two billion people use Facebook, which equates to approx. one in three people on our planet.
YouTube. Another time waster. If you need a tutorial, that’s fine BUT if you’re spending time watching “those funny dog videos” or the “harsh hunters killing endangered species,” you’re only wasting your time that could be spent more wisely.
Others. Other social media sites can quickly suck the time off your clock. These include: Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Skype and so many more. They’re all capable of enticing you to waste your time. If you spent 30 minutes doing irrelevant things on just ONE social media site each day, that’s 210 minutes wasted each week that could have been used more productively.
ANOTHER SOLUTION.
Don’t you sometimes wish you could clone yourself if you’re genuinely so busy that you can’t get everything done AND you’re also not wasting time in social media sites?
Well, science isn’t that advanced YET!! But there’s good news. Let’s say you’re working from home as a writer (like I do) and you have so much work, you know you won’t meet all the deadlines you promised. You can’t afford to let your clients down and you don’t have to because you can OUTSOURCE some of the work. For example, one client may need 5 x 500 word articles on a relatively easy topic. You decide to look for somebody to handle that job for you.
Networking. It’s wise to network within your own industry because you may know somebody who would jump at the chance to do this job for you. It’s better than hiring someone you don’t know at all. So you hire a person from your pool to complete the job and you pay them from the money you get paid. Naturally you’ll check their work before handing it in but that’s a great way to ease your workload, meet deadlines and know your client will be satisfied with the end result.
The bottom line, when it comes to handling work, if you either don’t have time, or you waste too much of it on irrelevant activities. OUTSOURCING is your best solution in the majority of cases.