time management Archives - Page 2 of 5 - Your Chief Simplicity Officer

Creating Your Ideal Life

The poet Robinson Jeffers built Tor House in 1916 on a cliff in Carmel, CA. It absolutely enchanted me when I toured it a decade ago. The guide mentioned that every morning Mrs. Jeffers (Una) would sit at her desk in a corner of the peaceful living room and write letters to friends and family. Something about that connected with me on a visceral level, and it became my ideal to create the same habit.

That is still my (as yet unmet) ideal – but it occurred to me today that Facebook has become a viable substitute. Yes, it is possible to get distracted by cat video posts, but, at heart, Facebook is a way to stay connected with friends and extended family – and take a lot less time than 4 hours every morning to do so – especially if you ignore the animal videos.

I’ve heard people vilify Facebook as nothing but a time suck, but is it really such a bad compromise to substitute less than an hour on Facebook daily for the 4 hours Una Jeffers would schedule to write letters? I don’t think so, especially since I still need to find time for the work that brings in income.

Creating your ideal life is a balancing act. Facebook is part of that balance for me. So is scheduling regular vacation time and hiking time, and one day a week to spend with my elderly mother. I enjoy my work, and I do it better when I honor, and allow time for, all aspects of my life. You do too.

Your weekend is before you; schedule time in it for one aspect of your life you’ve been neglecting.

Filed Under: KEEP, time management Tagged With: Facebook, Robinson Jeffers, Tor House, Una Jeffers, work-life balance

Small Business Systems Development

By Maura Raffensperger Leave a Comment

Don’t you love systems where you get other people to do the work for you? Whatever the setting, that makes for effective delegation. I’m always impressed when I see well executed examples. Let me share one with you.

I’m just back from a lovely weekend retreat with 19 other women. At the conclusion of your stay, you are asked to do two things:

make your bed with the linen you will find in the bottom drawer of the dresser in your room
deposit your used linen in bins under the staircase

You can see the bins in the photo. Very clear labels instruct you where to deposit your pillow case, fitted sheet, flat sheet and towels. Imagine the time saved in housekeeping by having the linen from 17 rooms stripped, in one place, and pre-sorted. No wasting time sorting it again when it leaves the dryer, either, since all the fitted sheets, for example, will be in the same load. And let’s assume 5 minutes to make a bed – having each retreat participant make their own bed saves the housekeeper an easy hour and a half.

This is especially important because only four (religious) brothers run the retreat house. They have a very small staff that includes a cook, a dishwasher, and housekeeper. They need to run a lean operation, both to keep costs reasonable, and also to allow them time to focus on their priority: their religious life. See how this is starting to relate to your small business?

Effective delegation demands you have a clear and easy-to-follow system in place. Let’s analyze what was done right in this example, so you can apply to your own small business systems development:

Tell people what you expect in advance: We were given a short orientation talk the first night of our stay, which included a reminder to make the beds before we left, and the location of the dirty linen receptacles.
Use pictures: A picture is worth 1000 words – 1000 words you don’t need to write. In your business, don’t forget the power of videos to capture each step you use to do something on the computer. You can use apps like Jing to easily create a screen capture video.
Use the power of many to reduce the work of a few: It did not take much time for each individual to strip and make their bed – but may have saved paying for an extra staff member.

Filed Under: Delegation, System Development, time management Tagged With: retreat

Giveaway

By Maura Raffensperger 3 Comments

Win the Make More, Work Less Power Package – a $300 value!

I’m happy to announce the winners of the giveaway!

Grand Prize Power Package Winner: Maria Vences: Check out Maria’s Business

Second Prize Winner: Joseph Gannaban: Check out Joseph’s Blog

This Power Package includes 3 of the most recommended books on entrepreneurial success ever published. All are best-sellers – I’ve included links to a review of each book below.

And the books are just the tip of the iceberg. The grand prize winner will also receive an in-depth business analysis from yours truly – you’ll walk away with a detailed, custom plan for your business that has identified ways for you to work fewer hours, make more money, and grow with less stress.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review of The 4-Hour Workweek

E-Myth Book Review

Think and Grow Rich Review

Filed Under: business management, entrepreneurial mindset, System Development, time management Tagged With: giveaway, Michael E. Gerber, Napoleon Hill, the 4 hour work week, The E-Myth, Think and Grow Rich, Tim Ferriss

Make a Difference

By Maura Raffensperger 2 Comments

If you had to pick one quote that best reflected who you are, or what you represent, what would it be?

This was my challenge last week. I’ve been honored with an award*, and was asked to provide a bio and short quote for a poster the organization is preparing for the ceremony.

I recommend that everyone have a pre-written bio [see why in my blog post Four Ways to Use Your Qualifying Conversation], but it never occurred to me to have a quote ready.

It’s a handy exercise. In the end it came down to four choices.

This one gives me great solace and hope:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
-Margaret Mead

This is the one that tells you the most about me:

The mountains are calling and I must go.
-John Muir

I like this one for its pragmatism:

You can have it all, just not all at the same time.
―Betty Friedan

Because it needed to be short, and I wanted something more hopeful than the previous quote, this is the one I chose:

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-Mahatma Gandhi

I like it because it helps reinforce my message that one of the benefits of managing your time is having time for yourself, your family, friends, and hobbies.

Do you have a favorite quote? Share it below in a comment. What do you think it says about you?

*I am honored to receive the 2014 Ventura County Volunteer of the Year Award from Women’s Economic Ventures [WEV] . WEV helps Santa Barbara and Ventura County residents start and grow small businesses through training, loans and consulting. It has been a joy to provide guest lectures on Time Management to WEV’s Self-Employment Training classes beginning in 2000, and consulting to their ‘Thrive in 5’ clients.

Filed Under: KEEP, time management Tagged With: Ventura County Volunteer of the Year Award, WEV, Women's Economic Ventures

Simple Time Management Ideas from Great Teachers

By Maura Raffensperger 3 Comments

It’s common for clients to tell me “It doesn’t take long” when we are discussing time management. If you ever wonder how much difference streamlining a few seconds from a process can make, here’s an example from the book Teach Like a Champion:

I often start my workshops with a great video of a teacher named Doug McCurry, teaching his students to pass out papers. And he has them pass them back and forth, and when they pass them out in 10 seconds, he says: Pretty good – back in in eight. And one of the interesting things about this is the kids are so happy. They’re really enjoying this. They love the challenge.

But people often respond to that video negatively at first, and they say, well, shouldn’t he why is he doing that in the classroom? Shouldn’t he be teaching the causes of the Civil War or adding fractions with unlike denominators?

And then you do the math on it. I ask them: How long does it take, in a typical classroom, for a group of kids to pass out, pass in or receive papers passed out from a teacher? And ordinarily, a group of teachers will say a minute, a minute and a half. Sometimes the numbers are higher.

So if Doug can do that in 20 seconds or 30 seconds and save a minute every time, and you pass out and collect papers 10 times a day in a typical student’s life, for 190 school days, 1,900 minutes, you know, divided by, let’s say, a seven-hour school day, it’s something like four-and-a-half days of additional instruction with which Doug can use to address the causes of a Civil War or adding fractions with unlike denominators.

Read the full transcript (or listen to a recording) of the interview with the author, Doug Lemov.

Filed Under: System Development, time management

Small Business Hiring Tips: Employee, Contractor, or VA?

By Maura Raffensperger 4 Comments

When you start to think about hiring help for your small business, you may ask ‘What is the difference between an employee, independent contractor and a virtual assistant (VA)?’. There are websites that give you a legal and IRS definition, but I want to give you a different perspective: What would help you the most?

First, let’s define the terms.

An employee takes direction from you. You tell them what hours to work , and may even train them. You pay them either hourly or a salary, and are also responsible for payroll taxes and worker’s compensation insurance. If you require them to work from your office, they are most likely an employee.

An independent contractor does work you request, but set their own hours, and use their own tools. You can give them a deadline and work specs, but they decide how to get the work done. They set their own rates and bill you.

A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent contractor who does their work for you remotely. I differentiate VA’s because I think of independent contractors as often being hired per project, whereas a VA is usually hired to work on an ongoing basis, typically in increments of 5 hours a month.

Many solopreneurs start by hiring independent contractors on a project basis, like an accountant or graphic designer. As the business owner’s workload grows, they often hire a VA to take care of repetitive tasks.

Hiring a VA can be more cost-effective than hiring an employee. I remember considering hiring a part-time employee for office help, then finding out that, even though I only wanted someone 2-4 hours/week, the worker’s comp insurance had a hefty minimum and it was non-refundable; even if my one employee quit, I had to pay a year’s premium. It would have been fine if I needed someone for 20 hours a week or more, and knew I would replace that person if they left, but I was ‘testing the waters’, so a VA was a much better choice for me.

The downside is that I had to let go of some tasks I would like done by someone else. I would love for someone else to enter and update my contacts. Easy to direct an onsite employee to do this, but not worth the time it would take for me to scan cards or put them in an envelope and mail them to a VA, with directions. At that point, it is the same effort as me just doing it myself. Luckily social media & automation tools (see my post Keep Your Contacts Up-to-Date Without Ever Entering a Business Card Again) make keeping track of contacts much easier now. And sharing information and files already on your computer is a breeze.

What frustrations have you faced in outsourcing work? I’m working on an e-book to help solopreneurs hire smart, and would love your comments.

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With: small business hiring tips

E Myth Book Review [Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work]

By Maura Raffensperger 4 Comments

Here’s the premise: most entrepreneurs work more and more as their business grows, and end up burnt out and out of love with their business. If you can relate (or want to make sure that doesn’t happen to you), this is the book for you.

The E-Myth Revisited is my favorite business book, and the one I recommend over and over. The subtitle promises “Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It”, and the book delivers answers.

Gerber starts by recognizing the three roles every entrepreneur plays:

The technician, who provides the product or service
The manager, who supplies the order and systems (like scheduling and invoicing)
The entrepreneur, who supplies the vision for the company

You may recognize the problem most entrepreneurs face: staying stuck in the technician role, where you end up working to burnout.

Gerber’s solution: treat your business like a franchise – even if you have no plans to eventually sell or franchise your business. What this does is force you to think about creating a ‘turn-key’ business, i.e. systemizing your business so anyone can follow your processes. That allows you to hire other people to do at least some of your work, freeing you to work in the higher level entrepreneur role your company needs.

Unlike Tim Ferriss in The 4-hour Workweek, Gerber does not give his readers an unrealistic promise that they can do this in 4 hours a week. Gerber also expects that you love what you do (or you did before you hit burnout, and you can again). Gerber does promise, if you follow his advice, that you can reduce the hours you work in your business; avoid burnout; spend less time in the technician and manager roles, and more in the Entrepreneur role. (Or, as I would put it, be the CEO, rather than the secretary, of your business.)

This book gives you a sound foundation to begin this process.

What may be the best part for a busy entrepreneur is that you can read The E-Myth Revisited in a night. Implementation will take longer, of course. If breaking down your processes to figure out what can be systemized does not come naturally to you, it does to me. If you need more help, call me to discuss how I can help support you with telephone or Skype coaching.

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, System Development, time management Tagged With: The E Myth Revisited, The E-Myth

The 4-Hour Workweek Book Review

By Maura Raffensperger 6 Comments

Who isn’t enticed with the promise of the 4-hour workweek? The book has sold more than 1,350,000 copies worldwide [Wikipedia], and has remained on the Amazon Best Seller’s list from the year it was first published. Just for the marketing savvy of the title alone, this book deserves a read.*

And the book does have good points entrepreneurs can implement about outsourcing and automating, making it worth a read. The problem comes from Ferriss’s definition of ‘work’. It’s obvious from any article written about him that he works almost non-stop. As this The New York Times article noted, Ferriss spends far more than 4 hours per week in blogging, speaking and self-promotion, which Ferriss describes as “evangelizing.”

‘Work’, to Ferriss, is doing something you don’t like to do, solely for the purpose of making money. While it is perfectly reasonable that you would want to minimize the time you spend on disagreeable tasks (and certainly something I train my clients to do), the entrepreneurs I work with like their business, in much the same way Ferriss must like the blogging, speaking and self-promotion he refuses to call ‘work’.

And those regular “mini retirements,” ideally a month off for every two months of work, that Ferriss touts in The 4-Hour Workweek are alluring. But evidently more of a goal than a reality; a 2013 Inc. article reports that Ferriss hadn’t had ‘a proper mini retirement in more than a year now.’ [Inc. April 2013]

What you can take away from The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich is the basic idea of creating some form of passive income to serve as a base for the things you enjoy doing in your business and life, and outsourcing the things you don’t like to do.

On a personal note: His policy on outsourcing felt a bit ‘icky’ to me. Not because there is anything wrong with outsourcing to someone in another country, but because his motivation seemed to be to take advantage of their financial insecurity and pay them a pittance. Reminded me of a WalMart mentality – and that’s not how I want to run my business. I have outsourced work occasionally (through ODesk, now called Upwork) to other countries, but I paid what I felt was a competitive rate. The majority of my outsourced work now is to a Virtual Assistant in the United States.

Bottom line: Read The 4-Hour Workweek, use it as an inspiration for what you can outsource, and consider what you can do to create passive income as an income base.

* Ferriss used Facebook polls to test title ideas

Filed Under: business management, Delegation, Getting Stuff Done, personal organization, System Development, time management, working with a virtual assistant Tagged With: the 4 hour work week, The 4-hour workweek

MileIQ Review – Can it Really Track Your Mileage Automatically?

By Maura Raffensperger 19 Comments

I’ve been testing this app since Sunday, with high hopes. MileIQ promises to catch every drive automatically – no stop or start required. Especially appealing to me right now as the only thing holding up our tax return for 2013 is that I need to add up my mileage from my mileage log, which is very tedious. The idea of having this done for me for 2014 makes my heart sing!

What is my MileIQ review? I really like that you don’t need to open the app for it to work – as long as you have your cell phone with you, it’s supposed to track your mileage. I also like how easy it is to categorize your trips – just open the app and swipe left to categorize the trip as personal, and right to categorize as business. It’s also easy to add tolls or parking fees manually to your trips.

Unfortunately, I can’t give it a thumbs up just yet. While it is amazingly accurate on the drives it catches, for some reason it misses some of my drives, so I still have to keep my paper mileage log. However, my MileIQ review may change as I continue to tweak a few things. The directions indicate the app becomes more accurate with wi-fi turned on, and my wi-fi has been off this week, so my next step is to see if turning it on makes a difference. I also have an older iPhone (4s), so upgrading to a newer model may help. I’m hoping the glitch is not because I drive a Prius; that would be a bit more difficult to fix! I’ll keep you updated.

Give it a try – the MileIQ app is free for up to 40 trips a month. You do have the ability to pause the app – a nice feature to turn on for the weekend, for instance, if you are concerned you will run over 40 trips a month.

Want more time- and sanity-saving tools and strategies for small business owners? Check out my latest recommendations here.

Filed Under: business travel, time management Tagged With: mileIQ review

The Email Time Suck – It’s Not What you Think

By Maura Raffensperger 2 Comments

The plan was to hike Sunday morning, but instead I waited several hours while my husband tried to compose an email to his 3 siblings. I heard lots of clicking on the keyboard, many sighs, and even a few oaths before he threw in the towel and declared it an ‘impossible’ task. That’s when I looked him in the eye and said (in my best exasperated wife voice) “Why don’t you just pick up the phone?”.

The reality is that the issue was too complicated for an email – and there were too many people involved. They are selling their father’s house, and they all needed to agree on how to handle the contents of the house, how to best invest the proceeds for their father’s benefit, and who will be responsible for what.

Anything that is going to require a back and forth discussion is NOT an effective use of email. You will spend much more time than you would with a phone (or face-to-face) discussion.

Instead I suggested he set up a conference call, so they could all participate in an open discussion. The four siblings spent one hour on the phone and accomplished more in that one hour than they had in several months of back and forth emailing. If there was a question, it was clarified right away; no waiting for an email response. When the call concluded, my husband came out and thanked me profusely; not only had they agreed on many specifics, but they all felt the discussion had made them feel close again – something that had been lost in all the emailing.

As for me, I was happy we were finally able to leave on our hike. And, as an added benefit, have more time to spend with my husband – the siblings agreed to schedule a monthly conference call to stay current on the house and other filial issues, which should significantly cut down on the emails that were taking up his time on weekends.

If you are unsure how to create a conference call (or are interested in some new options), here are a few resources:

iPhone – In the U.S., the iPhone can support up to 5 calls at once on AT&T and up to 2 calls simultaneously on Verizon.
Skype – You can share a group call with up to 25 people, anywhere in the world, and if everyone’s on Skype it’s completely free.
GUnify – Free unlimited conference calling service for 38 Countries that integrates with Google Apps
FreeConferenceCall.com – another popular choice.
InstantTeleseminar – is the service we used for the Biz Summit. Lots of unique features & they offer a 21-day, $1 trial.

Your call to action is to remember that is often faster to get up from your desk and walk down the hall for a face-to-face discussion, or pick up the phone, whenever an email is likely to require more than a simple confirmation or response.

Filed Under: time management Tagged With: conference call, effective email, effective use of email, email, work-life balance