Why Entrepreneurs Need To Invent Their Own Time Management Systems
This is a guest post by Blog Mastermind graduate student, Francis Wade, who you may recognize as the time management expert with the Jamaican accent from his testimonial video. You can read about Francis and find more of his time management tips at his blog – http://2time-sys.com.
Managing your time = Managing your money
This simple equation has driven entrepreneurs from one time management class to another in search of tips that will transform them into ultra-productive professionals.
Most courses on time management run for two days, where you learn a new system of habits developed by someone who has invented a way to be more productive. The new system works so well for the inventor that he/she decides to package the approach into a detailed prescription to be followed by everyone.
The problem is, why should a time management system that works for the “expert” in their New York corporate world work for your internet business run out of your bedroom in Hawaii? You live a different life, with a need for flexible hours (i.e. midnight shifts included), and you don’t have the luxury of a secretary, IT support and real vacations away from email.
Plus there’s that habit that you have of taking a mid-afternoon nap… which you are sure helps you…to say nothing of the difference between the culture of Honolulu and Wall Street!
Instead of telling you to “follow me,” why can’t they tell you how to do something similar to what they did, so that you can also invent a time management system of your own? Did they follow some kind of method that you could use, and is there a process to follow, or were they just very smart or extremely lucky? You are a different animal, and you know that your habits are different from theirs, so why should you be expected to be successful following their system?
The fact is that most people who take time management courses have a hard time implementing a whole bunch of new, foreign habits all at once. Habits are hard to break, and the 101 new habits and 66 new tips in the new system they are learning are just impossible to learn overnight.
But, you give it a good try and it works – for a while – until the first crisis hits and you do what we all do — go back to what’s familiar. We feel bad, and we wonder how something that seemed so easy in class could be so hard to do in reality.
But in the back of our minds, we still want to be more productive and need to find a way to harness the insights that exist in all the programs out there… but who has time to attend them all?
