trying to run 3 businesses and I am snowed under. Help withTime Management

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I am currently trying to run 3 businesses and I am snowed under. I need help with my time management as it is seriously getting on top of me on all fronts.

I need to work smarter, fire a few clients who are wasting time and basically get systems in place.

Is there a person out there who can help or a book or anything?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance
 
I find 'the 4 hour work week' by Tim Ferriss very good for time management and focus. Some of the concepts and ideas I will never use but I find it good for those areas.
 
Years ago I did the one day Franklin Covey "What Matters Most" course. So named because you can't change the number of minutes in any day and so cannot manage any more time out of a day but rather need to work on setting priorities. I found it very interesting and still use some of the techniques we went through. Without buying all of the expensive kit that comes with it, that is. Stephen Covey also wrote the 7 habits of effective people, haven't read that but might be worth a read. If you have the money and the time (a day) you could find out if those courses are still on offer. It was organised through work for me so I don't know what firm did it.

The main thing I use from that course is the organisation of my to-do lists. Top thing I remember is to always end your day by writing your to-do list for tomorrow. Starting the morning by writing a to-do list doesn't work because you'll already have forgotten half of what was going on yesterday. Write a list of everything that needs to be done and then mark every task A, B, C, D where A is stuff that must be done, B would be good to get done today, C needs to be done but could wait, D can wait (I'm paraphrasing). Then, for each category, mark the tasks in order 1 to 10 (or whatever). Then start with A1, move to A2 and so on. If you get through all the As move on to the Bs. Things that are category C today will make it up to category A in a few days if you haven't gotten around to them, for example.

Hope that helps.
 
I am currently trying to run 3 businesses and I am snowed under. I need help with my time management as it is seriously getting on top of me on all fronts.

I need to work smarter, fire a few clients who are wasting time and basically get systems in place.

Is there a person out there who can help or a book or anything?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance


  1. Are you attempting to do all the priority tasks that only you can do for all three businesses? Why can't you outsource the mundane repetitive tasks?
  2. Do you know what you spend most of your time doing in relation to these three businesses?if not, can you find out so you can put a plan in place to spend your time more efficiently?
  3. Do you know what tasks can be automated or can you find out? For other more manual tasks that you are doing, can someone be trained to do them competently?
  4. What type of client do you have? What 20% of your clients bring in 80% of your business income?
 
Commercial - have a look at Lean fundamentals and processes. There are loads of books about LEAN - I like "The Lean StartUp - Eric Ries"


Kanban boards also help to prioritize tasks , focus your energy correctly, reduce context switching (this is where most time is lost).
A simple kanban board could be a section of wall/whiteboard split into 3 vertical divisions - Label them "TO DO", "DOING", "DONE" and then use coloured post-its (maybe 4 colours - LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, CRITICAL) to assign priority to tasks.

Write each task name (also a date) on the appropriate coloured post-it and stick it in the TO-DO lane. Only move it into DOING lane when you can actually work on it - then move to DONE when complete. Work on CRITICAL & HIGH items first and then lower level ones. Try to keep only 3-5 items in your DOING lane at any one time.

If you are working with a team you could use the same process - just add horizontal divisions to assign tasks to people. If you want to go for online Kanban boards accessible from any device - LEANKIT.COM provides good free online resources.

Depending on your business size I work with a couple of Lean Practitioners who work with companies in relation to Business Process Transformation that I could recommend. Just let me know if you want their details and I will share - perhaps even a 1 day workshop may assist greatly in changing your operational routines.
 
Thanks very much everyone for your help. Great suggestions.

Nai, I would definitely be interested in the 1 day workshop.
They are a customer service business and 2 retail businesses. However, I have taken on someone who should help me as well.
 
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