3 Ways To Grow Your Business and Reclaim Your Time: Part 2

Control Your Time

This is Part 2 of a three-part series on how to grow your business and reclaim your time.

If you missed Part 1, you can click here to view it.

Self-Service Scheduling

Self-service scheduling makes it easy for people to do business with you by eliminating inefficiencies.

Instead of doing the “which day and time are you available?” dance with each person you need to schedule, a self-service scheduling tool allows you to provide a link to your calendar so people can self-schedule.

If you’ve not used one of these scheduling tools, trust me, it’s a game-changer. It’s a low-cost, highly efficient way to book your appointments.

The tool I use is called Calendly and I’ve written about it previously here and here.

Implement Time Blocking

You can learn about this technique in The ONE Thing, another book in my “reference regularly” collection.

Basically, what you’re going to do is increase your productivity by creating an opportunity for your brain to operate at its highest efficiency.

You’ll do this by dedicating blocks of time on your schedule to working on a single large task or a set of similar tasks. This allows you to make progress on chopping down the big tree by dedicating hours at a time to the task.

Or by grouping similar tasks (batching), you allow your brain to “get in the zone” and operate at high efficiency. 

Think of it like shopping efficiently at the grocery store

When you’re in the produce section, you get whatever fruits and vegetables you need while you’re there.

You don’t get apples, then go to the frozen food section at the other end of the store, and come back to produce to get fresh broccoli, then go to the bakery section, then come back to produce to get some carrots.

It’s much more efficient to get the apples, the broccoli, and the carrots all in one trip to the produce section.

You can and should achieve that same efficiency in your workday. Plan your week and put all your produce-shopping together in the same time block.

Regulate Your Internet Use

This is going to sound radical because of how we’ve come to use the Internet.

At one time, our Internet use was regulated by the phone system. You had to dial up, which tied up the phone line and you didn’t have a cell phone, so you couldn’t make or receive phone calls.

Also, you had hourly limits on your dial-up plan.

Those things combined to keep you from spending too much time on the Internet. There was also nowhere near as much stuff online for you to consume anyway.

So everything is much better these days with unlimited Internet, right?

Maybe not.

Ever wonder where all your time has gone?

Youtube, social media, Netflix and other streaming services…even Google is deceptively dangerous when it comes to stealing your time.

How many times has Google led you down a rabbit hole for twenty or thirty minutes…or an hour.

Seriously, think about how much of your time disappears into the Internet through the course of a day, a few minutes at a time.

Audit Your Internet Use

Despite all the wonderful advances the Internet has brought us, you still only get 24 hours in a day.

If you audit your time and look at how much of it you spend online in various internet time vacuums, you may find a big part of the answer to “where does all my time go?”

The Internet is a great tool, but if not used responsibly, it can be as dangerous as a drug addiction with regard to how much of your time (aka your life) it can take from you without you realizing it.

The more hours you spend online, the less hours you spend doing things out in the real world, like spending time with the people you care about.

I’ve come to believe that Internet limits make sense for adults for all the same reasons they’re good for children.

But when you’re grown, you have to regulate yourself.

Consider Treating The Internet Like Alcohol

When you turn 21, there’s no limit to how much alcohol you are allowed to consume, as long as you don’t operate a vehicle.

That doesn’t mean, however, that it’s a good idea for you to consume alcohol all day every day as long as you don’t drive.

The Internet is no different. Just because you can spend hours of your time on it each day, one video or Google search or social media scroll at a time, doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for you to do so.

Audit how much time the Internet steals from your day and what you’re getting in return for it and you might view the Internet differently.

That’s what I did and I now view the Internet as a wonderful tool that I must heavily regulate.

I’ve come to realize that getting sucked into the Internet for hours (cumulatively each day) has seriously curtailed my ability to be creative and deliver value to the world.

No Drinking Before Noon

I no longer start my day by checking email or reading articles.

I don’t consume anything on the Internet before noon.

I will create and publish things, but I won’t consume anything before noon and my ability to generate content has gone through the roof.

It’s scary seeing how much creative potential I have on a daily basis that was completely muted by too much Internet consumption.

It’s like I was sedated.

And now, with a clear mind, so much content (like this series of articles) just flows out of me.

I’m much more valuable to the world as a content creator than as a content consumer.

Create or Consume

You can’t create content that benefits the world if you’re spending too much of your 24 hours consuming all that the Internet has to offer.

The Internet is an all-you-can-eat buffet. If you spend your time in all-you-can-eat buffets every day, what’s the predictable impact of that on your life?

Again, this is about goals.

Look at where you are and look at where you want to be in life and realize that what you do on a daily basis is what’s moving you forward, moving you backward, or keeping you in place (which is really the same as moving backward since time does not stand still). 

Audit your 24 hours and make sure you’re not wasting them on things that are not moving you towards where you want to be.

Who Are Your Heroes?

Pick your favorite successful people and ask yourself if you think they’re spending as much time consuming content on the Internet as you are?

If spending hours each day consuming various content delivered via the Internet is not how they got where they are, how is it going to get you there?

Binge-watching, for example, may be one of the most dangerous activities you can engage in on the Internet. “Netflix and chill” is the blue pill from The Matrix.

The world keeps turning and you’re getting older the entire time you’re hanging out in The Matrix.

Hanging out in The Matrix now is not going to put a roof over your head and food on the table when you’re in your seventies and eighties.

If having plenty of money to live on when you’re a senior citizen is important to you, what I’m saying about auditing your Internet usage might not sound so radical anymore.

You are not going to always have the income that you have right now.

If you’re wasting too many of your peak earning years, one hour at a time (you’ll learn about the power that each hour holds in Part 3), that toll will eventually come due in your life…likely when you’re least able to afford to pay it.

I’m not suggesting you give up the Internet and your streaming services and just work 24/7.

What I am suggesting is that it might be a good idea to audit your usage for a week to see just how much time you’re spending in The Matrix and assess whether or not you feel like that’s what you should have been doing with that time.

We all get the same 24 hours each day…

Reclaiming Your Time Part 3: Clone Yourself

In Part 3, I share some strategies for how you can use the Internet to pursue your dream life, rather than derail that pursuit.

Share this page with someone who would benefit, then use the button below to check out Part 3.