Are you working hard or smart?

Average business people feel comfortable working about 2500 hours per year (50 hours per week for 50 weeks, everyone needs two weeks vacation!). This number represents the total number of hours worked including all tasks. Yet, in a small business, most have difficulty “selling” 5 hours a day out of the 10 hours at work. The reason is a seemingly endless supply of non-”selling” distractions with which business people in large companies don't have to deal. Among these are:

Relentless customer calls (no associate to insulate the businessperson)
Clerical duties handled directly by the businessperson (insufficient clerical help)
Preparing bills (no accounts receivable clerk)
Screening potential customers (insufficient clerical help)
Accounting (no accounting department)
Paying bills (no accounts payable clerk)
Landlord/tenant issues (no managing partner)
Computer and office equipment maintenance (no office manager)

And you can take it from here!

By the end of the day, you know you have been working hard, but you have no idea why you only worked on revenue generating items for three hours out of the ten you were there. This is a common problem faced by businesspeople in small businesses who are working hard but not smart.

Setting Priorities – Key Skill

With so many tasks, the natural thing to do is to try to handle them in the order in which they come. Then, as tasks begin to back up, most people do the tasks they find least aversive first, and keep working in least aversive priority until an urgent (but not necessarily important) distraction presents itself.

This "squeaky wheel gets the grease" method begins to produce crises since the matters that demand the most attention are not necessarily the most important things the businessperson has to do. The longer important matters are crowded out by urgent distractions, the more likely there is to be a crisis. After a while, so many important matters get neglected that the businessperson is forced to shift into "fire-fighter" mode. Customer inquiries about their work are added to the distractions that keep the businessperson from getting the work done. Before long, staccato interruptions riddle his/her office like machine gun fire and the businessperson doesn't know whether to stand and fight or run screaming from the room. Sound familiar?

The key to getting control of your day is to set clear priorities:

Make a list of common activities in which you engage daily (including all the non revenue distractions) and prioritize that list according to importance (revenue generators and marketing your business will be at the top of this list).

This is not a specific "to-do" list, but rather a general list of daily tasks.