Emergency Time Management For One-Man Entrepreneurs

I think I dug my own grave two months back. And I had to pay the price.

Mega Red Packet support was very time consuming. I just moved into a new place on my own. Everyone around wanted a piece of my time. And I wanted to do everything I wrote in my idea bucket. To boot, I should have known better than to get clients instead of customers.

I got very stressed out, frustrated and haven’t had time for a proper, worry-free vacation since my trip to Sydney back in February. My revisit to Japan was kept postponed.

All in all, I had to say… I really deserved it.

So I had to do an urgent fire control. I’m glad I bailed out of the mess I created for myself, and the bigger mess I almost created in the process. If my situation sounds anything like yours right now, here are some useful tips for emergency time management especially if you are a one-man entrepreneur.

1. Do only 2-3 important things in your to-do list that matter. If you are overloaded with a lot of work and to-do’s, you have to make a decision to accomplish only 2 to 3 most urgent and most important things for the day. These are the things that (a) are urgent (e.g. meeting a deadline for a client) (b) will make a difference to your business tomorrow (e.g. doing an email promotion) An interesting thing I found from doing this is that after a while, of the 10 things I have in my to-do list, only 2-3 are the most important and brings in the biggest impact to my business. Pareto’s Principle applies here whereby you do 20% of the things that bring in 80% of the results. On the other hand, the other 80% of the items in my to-do list would matter only 20%, or can be done away with.

2. Check your Inbox and reply emails only once or twice a day: one in the morning and the second time in the late evening. Like many other people, I have an addiction to check my Inbox regularly. I was afraid I would ‘miss out’ – important helpdesk tickets, latest promotions and so on. But I kept to my discipline to check my Inbox only twice a day for the time being in favor of increased productivity.

3. There are always great opportunities everyday If you are bombarded with a lot of good deals, it’s easy to get over excited. TOO EASY. The problem with trying to take advantage of all the opportunities coming your way is that you have only 24 hours in a day. Whether you work alone or have a team of people working for you, this still holds true. The good news is that great opportunities will always come so if you miss out on some today, there will be another card for you to draw from the deals deck tomorrow. Which leads to…

4. Stay focused and keep the fire on. Reading Donald Trump’s predicaments during the 90′s brought me back to reality. He wasn’t focused and took things too easy, convinced that 20 years of business experience entitled him such luxury. And the results were 900 million dollars… plunged. I would definitely hate to lose everything I’ve worked for up until now and this really got me to set my priorities straight once again. I stayed to walking on the straight path in my business rather than try to be ‘omni present’ in my business. And I remind myself that no matter how successful I become, I will keep the fire and perseverance on because my past success and hard work doesn’t mean I am entitled to slacking off.

5. Don’t make promises you cannot keep. I wanted to work with as many people as I can. And many people wanted to work with me. I had never, and still don’t, like to say ‘no’. But I had to do it this time. I can only promote a few Joint Venture partners in a week. And in order to stay focused, I work with only one partnership at a time. It wasn’t easy but I had to say ‘no’ to new JVs in favor of putting my top JV Partners from my past promotions on the priority list. Then, I also spared them the alternative: disappointing further by not being able to keep my promise.

6. Outsource more. Whether you work alone or in a team, trusting the best people in other areas of your business is a skill you must develop over time. I had always preferred working alone but I cannot be stubborn if I want the greater good of my business and free my time.

7. Respect your own time and be selective with who you meet and hang out with. This is rarely discussed in Productivity and Time Management articles and books but I found that who you hang out with influences the quality of your time. A friend once said to me that “you are the summary of the 5 people you spend most of your time with”. If you hang out with positive thinking people, you will lead a more quality life. If you hang out with negative thinking people, you will be at the mercy of your friends’ approval that will prevent you from being greater in what you do. I make it clear to the people I know that my time is precious and have little tolerance for “Malaysian timing” (e.g. coming in 30 minutes late after a set appointment). Where possible, I get things done by email. Saves time from driving out and I am not a believer in making many appointments and meetings.

Hope my insight helps. Now it’s time for me to take my long awaited vacation!

P.S. Don’t make the same mistake I did two months ago. It can happen to just anyone, successful or not!