IIP074: How To Manage Your Time Like An Entrepreneur Super Hero!

Episode Highlights: Time Management And Becoming An Effective Entrepreneur

  • Why time management won’t solve your time management problems
  • Why being productive or efficient doesn’t necessarily make you effective
  • Why the biggest difference between you and the most successful entrepreneurs is effectiveness — and how can you become an effective entrepreneur by spending 10 minutes a day (the right way)
  • The 10-Minute Get Clarity And Take Control Over Your Time Exercise — the only time management system you’ll ever need
  • Why doesn’t time management work and how time hacking solves it

Why Time Management Is An Entrepreneur’s Biggest Problem

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur, a side hustler, or even only an aspiring entrepreneur, there are two resources that determine your chances of success. Running out of any of the two would mean the failure of your entrepreneurial business.

Can you guess the resources I’m talking about?

If you guessed time and money, you are correct.

Since money is what puts food on the table, it’s kind of obvious why running out of it would spell “game over” to your business. Time, on the other hand — is a pretty interesting resource.

The thing about time, especially for entrepreneurs, is that we always seem to be running out of it. No matter how much time we have it never seems to be enough to fit all the projects, tasks, errands, and obligations that we have.

Running out of time means we don’t get our projects done when they should be done, we don’t get them done to the quality want, we miss out on business opportunities, and then — when we finally have time for them — it’s too late.

Running out of time means we don’t sleep enough, we don’t function as well as we could, we can’t afford spending time with our loved ones and doing the things that actually matter to us the most.

While business acumen, marketing strategies, sales page theory, and social media marketing are indeed important for a business to succeed, when a business is run as successfully as possible in all of the above except time, the owner has no way to actually enjoy it.

This is why today, we tackle the biggest question entrepreneurs have been struggling throughout entire history: How do I make it happen with the time that I have?

From Time Management To Time Hacking

Time management is generally the title of all the systems, processes, and methods that aim at shaping the way you run your business, your calendar, your projects, and your tasks into a rigid structure that will supposedly would fix all of your problems, reduce stress, eliminate confusion, give you focus, and make you a master of your own time.

The only problem with that concept is that we are all adults. Whether you are 25, 35 or 55, it’s probably too late for you to change your habits and their triggers to fall into place with someone else’s system.

Let’s face it — most time management strategies were born because someone was doing something that worked for him, and when asked how they do that, they try to teach others to replicate the same.

Srini Rao and I discussed this on IIP023: Confessions Of A Corporate Misfit — the problem with spreading best practices starts when people follow them blindly instead of learning from them and customizing.

This is where time management comes into play. Instead of reshaping the way you manage everything in your life, time hacking is all about getting clarity, about what needs to be done, and then reshaping time to fit your goals, aspirations, and lifestyle.

At its very core, time hacking is inherently customizable. In fact, time hacking is more of an ideology or a framework rather than a method. And from New York Times bestseller to some of the internet leading entrepreneurs, it’s making huge waves right now.

Today’s Guest

Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast
Julie Sheranosher of The Time Hackers Podcast

Today we are joined by Julie Sheranosher; entrepreneur, author, ex-captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, and the creator of time hacking.

For full disclosure and in order to make sure I don’t annoy my friends in the Federal Trading Committee, I will also mention that she’s my personal time coach as well as my girlfriend for the last five years.

When Julie and I started dating, she was a captain in the Israeli Defense Forces, in-charge of systems that are crucial to the nation’s safety. She had a good dozen of subordinates that sought her guidance not only in their professional lives in the army, but also in everything else. As you could guess, she was quite busy.

The “I’m Busy” Syndrome

work desk

In fact, she was suffering from a severe case of the “I’m Busy” Syndrome.

We’ve all been there; we have so much work to do, whether it’s for our full-time business, our side hustle, or our corporate job — that we run around like headless chickens.

We don’t have time to answer e-mails, we don’t have time to spend with our families and friends, we don’t have time to take care of ourselves, to do sports, to eat right or to unwind. But the worse part of it is that we take great pride at being so busy (at least I did).

Being busy makes us feel important. In the western world, being busy makes us feel fulfilled. It’s not surprising that the being busy syndrome is the number one enemy of time hacking. As I mentioned above, in time hacking, there’s an emphasis between productivity, being efficient and being effective:

  • Productivity: The art of scratching things off of your to-do list, with no specific regard to their importance or urgency. Often the most practised skill of time management/time hacking as it simply makes us feel great.
  • Being efficient: Being efficient takes productivity to the next level, and basically means that not only we are crossing things off our to-do list, but we are actually doing it as quickly as possible while completing each task within the best context to get it done (for instance, using our commute time to answer e-mails, make calls, etc.).
  • Being effective: Being effective is the holy grail of time hacking and the one thing truly missing out of most “time management” systems.
    Being effective means you’re not only crossing stuff out of your to-do list, and doing that in the best context possible and in the shortest amount of time, but you are also doing only the right things (something James Schramko mentioned as one of the three key things to becoming a successful entrepreneur and running a successful business).

Mission Impossible

So as I mentioned, when Julie and I started dating she was a very very busy person. Working for 16, sometimes 18, hours a day, she couldn’t imagine herself leading her life differently. For her, she was doing everything right. Being honest, I wasn’t much different: I was running my software development business and probably working the same hours as her if not more.

Until one Friday, the accumulated stress of being over-worked for so many years in the army, being in a sedentary job with no time to take care of herself, broke Julie. Literally.

She herniated a disc, and instead of going to her soldiers on Sunday, she had to go and see an orthopedic. Taking a look at her x-rays and CAT-scan, the doctor had a simple piece of advice for her: “You need to start working four hours a day.”

For Julie, and probably for you too, switching from a full-time job (or an over-time job like Julie had) to four hours per day is simply impossible. She thought the doctor used four hours as a figure of speech. “I thought he meant I need to work like all the normal people, like nine hours per day.”

And so Julie started working only nine hours a day and trying all the time management techniques she could find to try and fit her 18-hour workday into 9. It didn’t quite work.

Time Management Not Working

clock

Trying as hard as she could, it didn’t work. Julie started failing on deadlines, on projects, feeling she’s failing her subordinates and her commanders. For almost any workaholic that I know this is a terrible hit to the ego and to the self-confidence. Unfortunately, she would have to fall even lower before she’d find a solution.

Mission Impossible II

Three months after her first injury, Julie herniated two more discs. By then she needed help to get off the sofa and into the shower. She was in constant pain, unable to enjoy neither time at home and especially not at work.

Back at the doctor’s office, he told her: “You might have misunderstood me. When I told you you need to work four hours a day I meant no more than four hours a day. That is, unless you want to reach the age of thirty in a wheelchair.”

Working 4- hour shifts are completely unheard of in the Israeli Army, and probably in any major corporate around the world. Suddenly Julie became the ugly duckling, the one that people talk about behind their back, whispering and pitying. And she felt that she was failing more than ever. If she couldn’t get eighteen hours of work done in nine, how can she ever get them done in four?

Giving Up

Frustrated with failing and facing the impossible, Julie just gave up.

She gave up on her dream of becoming a great, acknowledged and respected commander. She gave up her dreams of promotion and prizes. She gave up everything she thought she had to offer.

Out of complete frustration, and trying not to lose herself, she decided to toss aside everything she knew about managing her time, her job, and her life, and focus on one simple thing:

Choose the one thing that has the biggest impact every day and do only that.

Understanding she’ll never get the job done, Julie put aside the to-do list and started living by this new mantra. She would get to the office, do the one thing that was most important for her that day, the one thing that she felt would put a dent in the universe, and only after that try to do anything else.

Suddenly things were changing: A few weeks later, she was sitting in front of a computer on a Tuesday morning, realizing that she completed all of the tasks that she planned for that week. For her that was the beginning of time hacking. For us this is the beginning of becoming an effective entrepreneur.

Finding Success Through Failure

Following the surprising finding, Julie started documenting everything she was doing: What kind of tasks was she completing, at what times were those tasks, working the best for her, what was her attention span, what stuff was she getting far time quicker in the morning rather than in the afternoon. Slowly but surely she figured out her personal time hacking framework.

This is why time hacking is nothing like any time management framework you’ve seen. It’s 100% customized to the time you actually have to the way you work and with what’s available to you. It builds upon your strengths rather than having you fighting yourself around your weaknesses.

In today’s episode Julie shared the first step you need to take to become a time hacker and your own master of time. It’s a 10-minute exercise that will help you get clarity and learn how to prioritize your goals, project, and obligations and make time work around them instead of you chasing after time.

Listen to today’s episode for the full story of how to make it happen, or simply check out Julie’s Daily Planning Toolkit on her website.

Mentioned Resources

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IIP033: The Flea Circus, And Making $100,000 A Month!

Inspiring Innovation Podcast
Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode 33  Get it on iTunes

From Physician to Appreneur: What made David Janner, an Australian physician, travel across the ocean and become an AppPreneur in a country like Israel?

What does it take to leave a profession, which is highly regarded and financially rewarding in most countries, and become an entrepreneur?

More than that – the first entrepreneur in your close family.

What limiting beliefs and glass ceilings do you need to challenge, conquer and shatter in order to reach your new monetary goal: Making $100,000 a month!

In today’s fascinating and inspiring episode, we have David Jenner, an entrepreneur and appreneur best known for his digital magazine — Make App Magazine.

Although his magazine is in the front, most of his work today surrounds something called ‘app skinning’, which we already covered on our interview with Benny Hsu. Aiming at having 200 apps in the Apple AppStore by 2014, David now has tens of contractors working for him day and night.

How did he make this career and life shift? Get valuable lessons from his entrepreneurial journey on today’s episode, including:

  • How effective goal-settings made all the difference for David
  • Where his entrepreneurial education came from (and why it made him stay in his room for his entire vacation in Thailand!)
  • Why he left the medical world
  • How meditation keeps him focused on his short-term and long-term goals
  • How he manages his time effectively and productively
  • How he handles fear and stress
  • And more!

Get your dose of inspiration, amazing advice and business tips in today’s Inspiring Innovation Podcast episode – your weekly backstage pass to success.

Items mentioned in this episode include:

Make App Magazine Cover 1

Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen

Good To Great by Jim Collins

Get Some Headspace by Andy Puddicombe

1 FREE Audiobook Credit RISK-FREE from Audible.com

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Stay awesome,
Meron

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above are affiliate links. There is no additional cost to you, and I will earn a commission if you decide to make a purchase.

Transcript

Continue reading IIP033: The Flea Circus, And Making $100,000 A Month!

IIP 003 – How To Do More, Work Less, And Help A Food-Poisoned Girlfriend: Learn How To Outsource

click here to get Inspiring Innovation podcast on iTunes
Inspiring Innovation Podcast Episode 003 Get it on iTunes

With #1 Outsourcing Expert – Chris Ducker

In today’s episode you will find out how you can successfully become more productive and achieve more in less time by outsourcing. Does outsourcing really work? Well; I was able to switch from running a digital magazine as a full-time job, to running a digital magazine, this podcast, the Digital Publishing Business Podcast, and several other projects that I still can’t tell you about — all at the same time, while working less.

The secret? Understand how outsourcing works. The pros and cons. Understand how to utilize it correctly and most importantly – find GOOD VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS! Which is exactly why it seemed appropriate to summon Chris Ducker for today’s episode.

Chris Ducker
Chris Ducker – Founder of Virtual Staff Finder and Live2Sell

Chris is one of the coolest entrepreneurs out there (and he’s British!). He stumbled upon the opportunity of creating Virtual Staff Finder (a clever match-making company that bridges the gap between entrepreneurs and VA’s) by chance, but took the bull by the horn and made it an amazing brand. For most professionals today, when they think ‘outsourcing to the Philippines’ — they think ‘Chris Ducker’.

21 Questions You MUST Ask Your VA

This episode is not only about the inspirational success story; it’s also very practical. We will discuss the 21 questions you NEED to ask a VA when you interview them for a job. We will talk about the different types of VA’s, the different salaries, the pitfalls, misconceptions and common mistakes. By the end of this episode, you’ll be ready to hire your first VA (or second, or third… :-))

In this episode you’ll discover:

  • Chris Ducker’s success story – how he went from working for the worst micro-managing boss ever, to starting a call centre business in the Philippines
  • How The 4 Hour Work Week movement (Tim Ferriss’s bestseller book) created an amazing gap in the market, and how Chris solved this burning need
  • Entrepreneurial lessons from Chris – how to handle failure, manage time and invest it well
  • What makes Filippino VA’s superior to others
  • How can a VA help you RIGHT NOW!
  • The actual costs of hiring a Filippino VA
  • How to easily find a great VA
  • The 21 questions you must ask when you interview a new VA
  • The kind of tasks can they VA’s can help you with
  • How to avoid the common pitfalls of outsourcing

Items mentioned in this episode include:

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I Need Your Help!

Thank you all for checking out this episode of the Inspiring Innovation podcast!

If you haven’t already, I would love if you could be awesome and take a minute to leave a quick rating and review of the podcast on iTunes by clicking on the link below! It’s the most amazing way to help the show grow and reach more people!

Leave a review for Meron’s podcast!

Thank you again for your ongoing support.

Stay awesome 🙂

Meron

Show transcript

Continue reading IIP 003 – How To Do More, Work Less, And Help A Food-Poisoned Girlfriend: Learn How To Outsource

My 2013 New Year’s Resolutions [OKRs Included]

My new year's resolution
My new year’s resolutions?
The time has come. After mapping the mistakes I made in 2012 and creating a checklist for better new year’s resolutions, the time has come to reveal the plans for the coming year. So without further ado – here we go:

Magazine

 Inspiring Innovation Magazine

Objective: I’m making the Inspiring Innovation magazine an even bigger success in 2013. (Notice the positivity + present progressive tense.)

Key Results:

  1. Grow my subscribers base to 30,000 (65% monthly growth rate).
  2. Interview all top 20 leaders of the solo-preneurship world.
  3. Get listed in Apple’s top #5 Business & Investment magazines ranking of the US Store (see how detailed that is?).
  4. Get 2-3 sponsorship deals summing to $100,000.

Personal Brand

new year's resolutions
Soon to be launched…

Objective: I’m creating my personal brand in 2013 by maintaining an active blog, two weekly podcasts and social media outlets.

Key Results:

  1. 50,000 podcast episode downloads for each podcast.
  2. 30,000 addresses in mailing list (including mag subscribers).
  3. 10,000 Twitter followers.
  4. 5,000 Facebook fans.

E-commerce Book series

Objective: I’m co-authoring an e-commerce how-to book series to help people create their first passive income stream while still working at their day job.

Key Results:

  1. Release at least one book each quarter.
  2. Reach a total of 50,000 book downloads from Amazon.
  3. Create an e-commerce business generating an income stream of $1000 per month as proof of concept for readers.

Inspirational App

Objective: I’m creating a social app that will encourage hundreds of thousands of users to take massive actions every day to reach their highest human potential (credit on the term goes to my friend Phil).

Key Results:

  1. Find a partner in crime for this project by the end of January.
  2. App should hit the App Store by June.
  3. Reach 200,000 users by the end of the year

Time management

Objective: I’m drastically improving my time management. This December I created a system to make sure I have a working process,  instead of just putting off fires all the time. It combines the pomodoro technique (to make sure I’m being efficient with my time), monthly planning, and simple measurement of the performance.

This also defines the actions that I’m taking throughout the week for all of my objectives, and guarantees I’ll always have an action plan.

Key Results:

  1. I will be held accountable by creating a section on the site that will be updated daily with my KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) results: How good was my time estimation, and how many pomodoro units have I completed.
  2. Complete an average of 70 pomodoro units per week.
  3. Have an average of -10% – 10% estimation error.
  4. Complete less than 300 pomodoro units on Fridays and Saturdays (that means working less than an hour and a half on weekends) — representing both sanity and successfully completing tasks during the week!

Gaining Health

Beautiful sunrise caught on my morning walk
This is what happens when I talk a walk during sunrise!

Objective: I’m gaining health by keeping better eating and living habits.

Note: Key results could be an improvement in heart rate or loss of weight, but I’m not doing this for a specific result. Instead of results, here are the actions I resolve to take:

Key Actions:

  1. Walk an average of 15,000 steps per day.
  2. Avoid white carbs (sugar, white flour, potatoes, etc.).
  3. Go through the 10 minutes daily invigorator routines every single day.
  4. Take a 1-hr walk outside every day.

Mindset

Objective: I’m maintaining my inspired, optimistic and positive massive-action-taking attitude this year.

Key actions (mindset is not measurable):

  1. Listen/watch/read inspiring & professional content every weekday.
  2. Attend 3 conventions and connect with similar minded people.
  3. I will not share my dreams too early (why not?)
  4. Take at least one massive action every day.
  5. Get a business coach by the end of Q1.

 

Julie

Julie

Objective: I’m dedicating more time to my loved one, Julie.

Key Actions:

1. Tuesday = date nights.
2. Go on a trip once a month.
3. Spend quality time together every day.

Experiences & Good Times

Photo of the Sydney harbor at Sydney Circular Quay

Objective: I’m making sure that I enjoy my life and not dedicate it solely to my hard work.

Key Actions:

1. Check 20 things off my bucket list this year.
2. Spend at least 1 weekend each month with friends and/or family.
3. See 3 great music performances.

 

So there you have it! These are my resolutions for 2013. What do you think?

What are your resolutions? Share some in the comments section. It’ll keep you accountable!

Whatever You’re Doing, It’s Probably Redicilous

One of the best articles I’ve read, and to the points it raises I’m guilty as charged.

The ‘Busy’ Trap

NYTimes.com

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day

(via Instapaper)

I’m going to make myself a nice cup o joe now, and wonder – what are the tasks that are actually important and vital for me to complete today?
What will happen if I don’t complete one of them today. Or tomorrow, or this year. Maybe never.
How much of an impact will that have on me?

 

We need to redefine words like Vital. Crucial. Necessary. Must.

 

We should allow ourselves to admit that many of our tasks are ridiculous, useless and unimportant. They won’t make a slightest dent in the universe, and so, we must let these tasks go.

 

Please share this with your friends if you feel the same.
Sent from my iPad