No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Guide to Time Productivity and Sanity

“If you don’t know what your time is worth, you can’t expect the world to know it either.”

No one gets in eight productive hours each day. The workday hour is one thing, the productive hour (the billable hour) is another. We can only collect on genuinely productive hours.

One-third of your time is productive, and two-thirds are otherwise consumed (commuting, filling out paperwork, etc.).

To make $200,000 a year, you have to make $113.64 an hour, assuming you work eight hours a day. However, since only one-third of your working hours are productive, you have to earn $340.92 an hour to get to $200,000 a year.

Have that number on your mind constantly: Is what you're doing worth $340.92/hour? 

This puts a meter on others' consumption of your time. An unnecessary 12 min phone conversation now costs you $68.18. 

Think in terms of "investment" and "expenses."

Charge more if you have to travel, as you're losing time—work from home. Condition yourself to go directly from bed to shower to work in 15 min. Don't commute.

Have a base earning target. Don’t just get paid with “whatever’s left.” Decide how much money you want to get from your business every year.

Surround yourself with people who understand the value of your time and behave accordingly. Get rid of people that do not respect it.

Eliminate or delegate tasks that don't match up with the value of your time. Deciding what you shouldn’t be doing is as important as deciding what to do.

Every one of your waking hours is worth a certain amount of money. Do everything you can to create and protect that value.

“Time Vampires will suck as much blood out of you as your permit. If you're drained dry at day's end, it's your own fault.”

Time vampires suck up your time and energy. Recognize them, protect and free yourself from them.

Some common time vampires:

• Someone asks for “a minute” a dozen times every day. It feels rude to refuse him.
• "Mr. Meeting." Meetings are seductive. They make you feel important, but they make a business unproductive and slow.
• "Mr. Trivia." He doesn't differentiate between important/unimportant or minor/major. He tries to get you off your priority list by constantly interrupting you.

Some people react emotionally and magnify the importance of everything. They make you feel bad if you don't have the time to put them back together. Get rid of them in your organization. Cut the bullshit and tell them what to do. They don't want to hear it, so they'll find someone else to share the drama. Or tell a long, boring story. Turn into a vampire yourself.

Don't have an open-door policy in your office. 

If time vampires suck on you, it's your own fault.

“If they can't find you, they can't interrupt you.”

Put a stop to interruptions and multiply your productivity. 

Don't let people come and interrupt you. There are many reasons for these interruptions, and almost none of them have to do with necessity.

Time-defense tactics:  

• Get lost. Be inaccessible: People function the same or better with your absence.
  • People will only get in touch with you about the important things and will figure out the rest on their own.
• Don't answer the phone: Phones are Peak Productivity Enemy No. 1.
  • People think they always have to answer the phone. You have no legal or moral responsibility to answer the phone unless you want to. There's nothing that can't wait a few hours.
  • If you take inbound calls as they come, you are stopping work on a task of known priority in favor of something of an unknown priority.
  • Refuse to own a mobile phone. They are the worst attention interrupters.
  • Your receptionist is your steel curtain defense. Have a tough screening process.
• Fix the fax and email: This machine enhances your productivity.
  • Train others to communicate with you via fax.
    • It increases productivity and gets information in an organized way.
    • People put more thought into faxes. They are more inclined to resolve some things themselves.
    • The dark side of fax: People think you'll read it immediately. But you might only read it days later.
  • Avoid email. With easier, faster communication, the quantity of dumb communication has multiplied. People send emails any time they have a brain fart. E-Mails are time vampires.
• Set the timer on the bomb: set up an exit.
  • Conversations have a way of stretching to fill whatever amount of time is available to them. "Set a timer for the bomb" before starting.
  • This trains people to be more purposeful and efficient with you.
• Be busy and be obvious about it.
  • Busy people are interrupted less than unbusy people. Be visibly busy.

“Self-discipline is the magic power that makes you virtually unstoppable. Self-discipline is magnetic.”

Punctuality is about being where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there, as promised, without exception, without excuse, every time, all the time. It gives you the right to expect and demand that others treat your time with respect. So if you want your staff to be punctual, be punctual yourself.

The connection between punctuality and integrity is that if someone can't keep scheduled commitments, they can't be trusted in other ways. A person reveals a lot about himself by his punctuality. A lack of punctuality also tells you that someone lacks self-esteem.

All successful people (you want to deal with) have their own little "systems" for judging people. Don't be so naive and think they don't. You're judged for worthiness for business on your punctuality. Judge others by the same.

Regimen, ritual, commitment, and discipline are important for achievement. Don't let yourself be derailed. If you're in good physical shape, clients will have more confidence in you and trust you. They will give you their money if you appear to have self-esteem, self-control, and self-discipline.

If you want people's respect, show that you have earned it. These days people think they don't have to earn anything. They feel entitled.

Meeting deadlines and commitments makes you stand out. Apply and aim your self-discipline at one particular thing. It'll work like magic.

Successful people are secretly lazy and become exceptionally self-disciplined out of necessity. You have to force yourself. If you can't find a heroic, successful role model, look at what everybody else is doing and don't do that. The mediocre majority lacks self-discipline.

“With regard to time, I promise you, there's no secret magic pill you don't know about.”

These strategies aren't new. It's not about innovation but rather execution.

Make and use lists. Every single time management system revolves around lists. You CANNOT carry it all in your head. 

You cannot be productive without goals. 

Use tools and systems to substitute for memory. 

Plan your time in advance, so you don’t waste time. Reduce unplanned activity.

“I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is definitely better.”

Always lookout for ways to get more for less, invest fewer minutes of work, extract more dollars. One of the ways is to become an expert in your field, so you're not paid for what you do (physical labor) but for what you know (intellectual equity).

You see, money is only one part of wealth. The real wealthy is those individuals who get to use their time in ways that bring them great joy and fulfillment. They are the ones who get to work genuinely, personally interesting, get to choose their associates, and make some kind of contribution to their fellowmen–regardless of their bank balance.

“Throughout my peak travel years, I was inspired to be as efficient as possible about travel, as productive as possible while traveling.”

Jam as much into each business trip as possible (if you have to go on a business trip). Plan in more than one event.

Checking baggage is a giant time-waster. You should be able to go up to two weeks from a large carry-on.

Use your travel time efficiently.

“If you don't manage information, you can't profit from it.”

People are struggling to cope with the avalanche of information. 

It’s up to you to route all your incoming and in-bound through a screening process and method of organization. Keep in mind that just because it’s accessible online doesn’t mean you should access it online. It may be that somebody should be fetching, printing it out, or condensing it for you.

Specialize. But not too much. It’s better to know a lot about a few things than little about many things. However, too narrow a focus becomes myopia.

Choose and use some method for capturing every idea that comes to you, wherever and whenever it happens. If you read a book with only a few worthwhile pages, tear out the pages, file them, then throw out the book.

“Liberation is the ultimate entrepreneurial achievement.”

Entrepreneurs hate routine work. Divest yourself from the activities you don't do well or do happily. 

Use the time you liberate to have fun or learn more about marketing.

“You should learn to work faster. It makes you sharper.”

Sometimes, some days, you get "spurts" where you can do no wrong. You suddenly get into "a place" where there's magic. You can do no wrong, you can't fail. 

The phenomenon: When you accomplish more in 6 months than in the previous five years–it is often the payoff an entrepreneur gets from years of hard work, struggle, and sacrifice. You're in peak productivity; everything works, opportunities abound. Doors swing open easily, and income sows.

The phenomenon can't be just turned on, but there are a few factors present when it occurs:

1. It happens to hyper-productive people.

2. It comes to people already in hot pursuit of a worthwhile, well-defined goal.

3. It occurs to people who have "stepped up" in associating with other high-performance people

4. It often starts with a single "big break" - which you've got to be astute enough to recognize and massively exploit.

“Big time-saving tip: When in doubt, throw it out.”

Productivity is an inside-out game.

The Book Psycho-Cybernetics will help you get more value from your time. It will help you get into the state of mind that best facilitates achieving peak productivity:

• "Clear your calculator". Stop, store and clear one problem, before working on another one.
• "If you can't control your thoughts and manage your mind, you can't control or manage your time"

Feng Shui: The art of improving your productivity, creativity, etc. by making the relationships between objects in your environment and yourself more harmonious. 

The Militant Attitude: Be extremely tough towards unexpected time-wasters. If you already have something important to do, be committed to it and let others know that you don't wish to be interrupted.

“No one who is good at making excuses is also good at making money. The skills are mutually exclusive.”

Everybody thinks they are somehow entitled to something. Don't think you should get better results only because you have done something for 30 years. 

Here's the real deal: Nobody's entitled to anything but opportunity. Not even to a level playing field. Nothing. Nada. Just opportunity.

One reason why people fail year to year: They're busy whining and feeling sorry for themselves that they have no time to make anything happen.

Eric Hoffer: "There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement." An alibi stays with you all your life. With an achievement, you have to prove that you are as good today as you were yesterday.” 

Alibi-itis: "I'd do that, IF...” It's choosing a nifty alibi over a difficult path to achievement. That's why people have been in the same place for years.

Some people manage to focus their time, energy, and resources on everything but not the few vital things in their business that really make money.

“Time Vampires will suck as much blood out of you as your permit. If you're drained dry at day's end, it's your own fault.”

Goal setting is what most successful entrepreneurs do.

When you think you might fail to hit a goal, you have to "Do the right thing." Most of us know most of the time what the right thing is. We may not like it. We may not want to do it. But when we do it, we gain personal power.

Doing only what you like to do is a prescription for poverty. You can never eliminate doing some things you dislike or don't do well. Highly successful people do what they need to do, whether they like it or not, to get the results they want. 

Worst mistake related to productivity: Losing control. To anything or anybody.