subject: The Four Hour Work Week and Time Management for Entrepreneurs [print this page] The Four Hour Work Week and Time Management for Entrepreneurs
A short time ago, I finished a book called "The Four Hour Workweek" (TFHWW) by Timothy Ferris. If you are having trouble with time management, I recommend you take a serious look at this book.
While I was doing very well with my online business, I was in a growth phase with the business that I found difficult to manage. I was still working a very demanding full time job, while trying to grow my business - and I was not sure if I could do both.
While TFHWW provides some solid advice for those just getting started, it also has some great time management tips. One of the most important of Mr Ferris' tips is concerning an information diet.
The modern world is fillted with interuptions. Cell phones, TVs, the internet and especially email are constantly disrupting our workflow, making it impossible to do meaningful work. Even at my full time job, I rarely had 15-20 minutes of uninterrupted time to focus on any issue.
What he advocates is taking an information diet. Turn off the TV, radio, email programs, mute the phone and focus on doing one task at a time. Don't multitask, but do focused single tasking instead. He even recommends you consider turning off news altogether.
The other key piece of time advice he provides is to ruthlessly simplify to eliminate the unnecessary. For email, use filters and colors in your email application to automatically file emails that are routine. In your personal life, eliminate activities that don't contribute to your happiness or success.
These few tips helped me to free up a large amount of my time both at work and in my internet business, making it possible for me to manage growth. Over time I extended these principles to outsource and automate many tasks to free up my time to focus on the important.
Are you starved for time in your business? Try an information diet and spend your time automating and outsourcing routine tasks rather than just blindly plowing through them.
