Category: Tech In My Life

How often do you try to do everything on your to-do list? Frankly, if you ever try to do everything on your to-do list, you’re making a big mistake. But you’re in good company. It’s a mistake made by almost everyone — especially entrepreneurs.

You’re used to doing everything on your own. I get that. I lived that! But no more. My time is valuable. I can put an actual dollar amount on it. That means that it can cost me money — in the form of lost time — to do certain tasks.

The trick, the biggest trick, to reclaiming your time, is to learn what tasks you do that can be handled by someone else. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you’re the only person who can possibly do the job right. You’re thinking that only you understand exactly how it needs to be done. You must do everything yourself!

You are wrong.

It can take a little bit of ramp-up time to get to the point where you can delegate some of your tasks. It will definitely require you to think differently about how you do things. But you can — and should — invest this time, because it will pay off wildly in the long run.

Start small, but think big

When you first start delegating, it’s nice to start with a general rule. For example, you could decide that you will delegate all phone calls that are not directly related to making you money. So, for example, let’s say that today, you need to call a realtor about that office space you drove past the other day, plus you need to reschedule the dentist appointment you forgot about, and you’re also supposed to get in touch with your son’s teacher about the playground incident, and you have to call Netflix to figure out why they decided the gift certificate you bought for your father is valid only in Canada.

Enter FancyHands, one of my favorite cheats and hacks for startups. For one ridiculously low monthly fee, you get a team of US-based assistants (that’s important here, because there’s no language barrier, you don’t have to explain what Netflix is, and their time zone difference won’t be more than 3 hours) who can handle all sorts of tasks for you, including (but most definitely not limited to) making phone calls.

With a couple of quick emails, you can get your assistants working on these calls. They’ll get the information about the office space and set up a time for you to view it. They’ll schedule your dentist appointment — and put it right on your calendar so you don’t forget again. They’ll track down your son’s teacher and set up a conference call for the two of you, and they’ll get ahold of Netflix and get dad watching movies in no time. And you? You’ll get your actual work done.

The next step: outsourcing actual work

Outsourcing non-work tasks is a great start. It lets you get your feet wet and gets you in the delegating mindset, but we’re just getting started. You’ve probably noticed, for example, that a lot of pre-work goes into work. Maybe every time you start a new project, there are contracts that need to be drawn up and a budget template that needs to be filled out. Ask yourself: Are you really the only person who can handle that task?

Try this: the very next time you sit down to do a task that you know you will have to do again at some point, document the process. Write down what you’re doing every step of the way. The next time the task needs to be done, you can hand it off, along with the documentation, and let someone else do the work.

And here’s where it gets really exciting, because you’ll quickly realize that there are whole parts of your actual work that you can outsource. You may need to break it down into the components of the work — and that’s actually a good thing. It forces you to think in terms of next actions. What actually needs to be done?

Let’s take a closer look. “Start a company blog” is on your to-do list. Big task. And when you look at it like that, it’d be pretty hard to outsource. But if you start thinking of the various tasks involved, here’s what you come up with:

• research various blogging platforms
• decide on a platform
• install the blogging platform
• create a design for the blog
• write 3 posts per week on topic x
• review and respond to comments daily

And suddenly you have a list of tasks that you can outsource to professionals — via oDesk or a similar site — who can do them even more efficiently than you can do them yourself. The really exciting part is that you can have the designer create mockups of the layout while your researcher is gathering information for you on platforms. And at the very same time, you can have a writer drafting up a dozen posts to get you going. So by the time you’ve chosen your platform and hired someone to install it, the design will be signed off on, and the posts will be ready to go — and all of this can happen very, very quickly.

Once you get used to handing off your tasks, you’ll wonder how you ever managed before. It’s a life changing moment. And change, while terrifying, can be a great thing.

In Part I of this post, we talked about how you likely work fewer hours — and get less done — than you think. Now it’s time to take a closer look at how you can reclaim your time. Here’s the thing: my advice probably flies in the face of everything you’ve been told. It might even sound a little crazy at first. That’s because the biggest piece of advice I can give you is to lose the startup mindset.

Forget about Face Time

Yes, really. There’s this idea in the world of high tech startups that working longer is better. That it means you are more committed to your work and hence will be more successful. Actually, not so much. Study after study shows that you shouldn’t work long hours and that the most productive workers are those who leave after 8 hours. If you’re working for a big company, you’re familiar with the ridiculous idea that you have to put in face time at the office. The joy of being an entrepreneur is that you can make your own rules and get more done. Forget about face time and concentrate on working harder, not longer.

You’ve heard it before – it takes time to get into a groove at work, to get into a state of flow. But once you’re there, you can get some great work done in a relatively short period of time. Give yourself the opportunity to get and stay in that state. As I tell my daughter, you have to set yourself up for success. For starters, schedule a several hour block where you can work completely uninterrupted – by others or yourself.

The Enemy of Good is You…

Often, we consciously interrupt ourselves. Yes, sometimes we are our own greatest enemies. How often have you jumped up for a cup of coffee right after starting to work? Or answered a call that isn’t urgent  but you know will take at least 20 minutes? It’s an easy way to procrastinate, partly because it’s easy to convince yourself that it’s not really your fault. You had to take that call, right? And work without coffee? Please. That’s just silly.

But sometimes, our crafty brains are even more sinister. They trick us into wasting time with out us even realizing it. It usually goes something like this: you’re looking up a stat you need for a report when you click over to a linked article on flash storage, which reminds you that you really need to clear out some space on your hard drive. Before you know it, you’re out of your seat and looking for a backup drive. This exact moment is why you end up working late every night.

Train yourself to pay attention when you switch tasks so you can stop yourself and refocus on the job at hand. If you consistently forget and wander away from your desk, consider using a physical reminder, like a book in your lap you have to remove to stand up. If you tend to wander around virtually consider apps like Self-Control (for Macs) or Freedom (for Windows) that keep your browser offline for a specific period of time — in the case of Self-Control, even if you restart your computer. You can also whitelist specific sites if they’re crucial to your work. Alternatively, you can set the app to run constantly and blacklist your time suckers completely for eight hours a day.

…Except When it’s Someone Else

Another crucial step is to anticipate outside interruptions and head them off. Does your spouse/boss/direct report/best friend call you every morning to check in? Make that call before you start working and cross the check-in off your list. If you usually show up in the break room for coffee at 10, let your buddies know you’re working straight through today. Likewise, don’t plan to start a 4-hour work session fifteen minutes before lunch when you haven’t eaten all day. Take 20 minutes before you start to take care of other tasks so you can focus on the job at hand.

If sitting at your desk makes you antsy, then try standing. A standing desk is great for your health, and it can be fantastic for your concentration as well. Most workers find they focus better almost immediately when standing. And if standing still isn’t enough for you, maybe it’s time to consider a treadmill desk. You can find plenty to read on the topic — and building one doesn’t have to break the bank. You’ll save time by being more productive, and you can probably even skip the evening workout.

Try implementing some of these changes. I think you’ll be surprised how quickly you get a grip on your time and productivity. In Part III of this post, we’ll look at how to delegate and outsource the time consuming tasks you shouldn’t be doing.

One of my favorite questions to ask people is, “How many hours a week do you work?” The answers tell us a lot about ourselves.

First, hardly anyone it seems, works a 40-hour week. We are all putting in a minimum, an absolute bare minimum, of 60 hours. The start-up folks? Oh, they’re working 80-hour weeks. Entrepreneurs? Yeah, 90, for sure. At least. Maybe 100.

You’re probably nodding your head right now. Yeah, you’re thinking. That’s right. I work around 90 hours a week.

Actually, if you’re reading this, I’m pretty sure you don’t work 90 hours a week. How can I be so sure? Well, if you’re working five days a week, that means you’re putting in at least 18 hours every day. You also have to sleep — I’ll give you at least 5 hours — eat, shower, get dressed, use the bathroom, and so on, so there’s no way you’d have time to read this post. We haven’t even figured in the time it takes you to get to and from work.

Maybe you’re super-committed to your job, and you somehow prioritize working weekends over living life. Even so, you’d still need to be working a minimum of 13 hours every day of the week to hit that 90-hour mark. Really? Seven days a week, you’re putting in 13 hours? Every day? Dude, I don’t even want to know what your marriage looks like.

“Measure twice”- so you know exactly what to cut

I believe you work a lot. Just not as much — maybe not nearly as much — as you think you do. You’re probably at work 10-12 hours a day, 5 days a week. So that’s 50 – 60 hours that you’re in the office… but how much of that time is actually being spent on productive work?

I use a Fitbit to track how active I am during the day. When I first got it, I was sure I was walking the recommended 10,000 steps a day. I was wrong. The Fitbit device gave me a reality check: I was walking about 3500 steps daily. But once I started tracking my steps, I changed my behavior. I’d take twenty minutes to hit the treadmill, or take a walk outside to clear my head. I stopped hunting for close parking spaces and started walking to meetings whenever possible. I also found that walking during phone meetings and conference calls were easy ways to add a few thousands steps with almost no effort.

If you’re not measuring the work you do, you’re guessing at how much you’re doing. And you’re probably wildly overestimating. Yes, even though you are thinking to yourself that even if everybody else in the world guesses wrong, you personally don’t, because you are awesome. You know that you put in 90 hours of solid work a week. You are certain.

You are wrong.

Why reading productivity blogs isn’t productive

Let’s start by defining work. Sitting in front of a screen is not work. What you’re doing now, reading this post, is not work. You are not making money for your company by reading this post. You are not moving closer to your goals by reading this post. (Unless, of course, you goal is to read every word I’ve ever written. But I still don’t think that you can actually make money from that. Feel free to send me a detailed business plan to prove me wrong.)

Start using tools to track your work, and you’ll quickly see how much of your time is spent being productive — and how much is spent simply sitting in front of a screen. There’s a fantastic app that can track everything you do at your computer, and it’s called RescueTime. You can set it up in under two minutes, and you don’t have to do anything else — it just does its thing, quietly in the background. And then, once a week, the magic happens: RescueTime sends you a report that shows how you spent your time, how productive you were, and how you compare to other users.

Prepare to be horrified. You will undoubtedly discover that you work far, far less than you think. You may even find that you are at the office significantly less than you thought. You leave home at 8, get to the office by 9, sit down at your desk at 9:30 (well, you have to grab coffee from the cart, check in with your project team, say hi to Joe and ask when you’ll be reimbursed for that trip you took last month… it all takes time), and leave for the day at 7. So that’s… Well, technically, that’s 10 hours in the office. But there was lunch. (That was a business lunch!) And on Thursday you had to go to your kid’s school thing, so you were out of the office for 3 hours. But that hardly ever happens. Except that last week, you had that dentist appointment, and that was as hour. Maybe an hour and a half. And the week before, the contractor came to review the plans for the kitchen demo.

The point isn’t to say that you shouldn’t do those things. Rather, the point is to make you aware of the time you spend at work, and the time you spend working (two different things, remember), and how much you get done in that time. If you’re consistently hitting deadlines and you’re actually only putting in 6 hours of work daily, maybe start planning your day around 6 hours of focused work. On the other hand, if schedules are constantly slipping, this exercise could show you why.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step

Once you’re tracking your time, you can start to change your habits. Because, at the end of the day, it’s what you do with this information that matters. If you choose to simply explain to me why you absolutely have to spend 18 hours a week on social media, you’re not going to make any real progress. As Neil Patel says, work on making improvements to get ahead.

Here are a few quick ideas:

Do you lose an hour and a half of work time every time you take a 30-minute lunch break (waiting for elevators, waiting in lines, getting back into the swing of things, and so on)? Make it a habit to eat lunch at your desk twice a week.
Some middle of the day meetings are unavoidable — for example, your children’s school activities. But try moving other meetings to first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon so that you don’t have to interrupt yourself twice.
Can’t figure out how to fit in a workout and work? Switch to a treadmill desk — at least for part of the day.
If you’re losing time to simple, repeatable tasks that don’t require your expertise, learn to delegate and outsource effectively.

We’ll talk more in-depth about these ideas to recapture your time, your focus and perhaps your sanity– in a Part II to this post.

It’s been a long while since I’ve written anything here. Thinking about putting some posts up. Mostly just common questions people ask me or things I feel may be of some use. If you didn’t see it take a look at my first post in a long time. It’s a guest post over at SEJ called: “Look Ma, no pager!” Scaling a WordPress Media Network Without Losing Your Sanity