How to get the momentum in your business you need for success?

You've probably heard the saying, 'Success Loves Speed,' and it is totally true.

To have success within your business there has to be a speed, a momentum, that pushes you past all the obstacles that would otherwise keep you stuck.

But with such busy lives, how can we develop the speed and momentum we need within our businesses, and still have time for the things we love?

Well, it's all about Time and Energy Efficiency.

Now I've known about this on an emotional level for a long period of time, but it wasn't till very recently that I got it on a purely clinical level...

And that changed everything.

It took the mind drama away from everything I was doing...

Mind drama is like having a handful of sand thrown into a machine, it wears you down, and makes everything work less effectively.

So what changed that allowed me to get clarity on time and energy efficiency?

Well, I was reading Tim Ferris's 4 Hour Body book.

Most of you would know him for his 4 Hour Workweek book, but he is also an obsessive body hacker who has perfected the art of minimal energy for maximum gain.

This was the example that changed it all for me...

The melanin in your skin takes 15 minutes to switch on so that a tan will start to develop. Anything over that at one period of time leads to damage and sunburn.

You could spend an hour in the sun working on your tan, develop sunburn and a week later be back to your original glorious whiteness - minus some peeling skin, or you could take that same one hour and divide it into 4 x 15-minute sessions over that week for maximum gain for the same effort.

******* BRAIN EXPLOSION ******

Well, that's what happened to me anyway.

You see that example totally stripped away any emotional connection with sunbaking so that I was left with just the clinical facts, and how best to use that to my advantage.

So today, I want to take that and turn it to our businesses and look at how to maximise our Time and Energy Efficiency.

First, I want to clarify one thing. 

We all know that time is an energy. And that money can also be used as an energy (by using it to pay for things to be done for us).

Now, if Time is Energy, and Money is Energy, then it follows that Time = Money.

(Watch out Einstein, here I come.)

You need to think about what you have more of at the moment...

Time or Money?

If it is time, you are going to need to learn how to do everything yourself until the point in time where you can afford to pay others. 

At that point, money becomes a valuable source of energy and it is time to evaluate exactly which tasks you need to relinquish and which tasks you should relinquish, and then find someone to do them for you.

By freeing up that time, you will have more energy to feedback into your business to do the things you need to, which means your momentum will continue to grow.

The mistake a lot of online coaches make, is to think that because they CAN DO something THEY SHOULD.

THIS IS FALSE!!!

There are ways to track what you are doing so you know what you should be letting go of and when, but I will go through that another day.

For now, I want to give you 5 tips on the best way to maximise your time efficiency.

1. Understand the Law of Diminishing Returns

There is a point at which the effort you are putting into a task and the change in results that extra effort effects, starts to reduce.

Up to that point, the effort you put in to create something is rewarding you with ever-improving results, but suddenly, the extra energy will give you smaller and smaller improvements.

For example, the time I spend writing the first draft of this email/article is going to give me the greatest return on energy/time. The next time I proof it I will pick up the largest majority of my typos and mistakes.

But each time I reproof it, I will pick up less and less errors, even though it is taking me that same amount of time.

Which means that I am entering a phase of Diminishing Returns.

Now, I know from having proofed my own fiction books many, many, vomit-inducing times, and then having paid an editor to go through them not once, but twice, only to have then found more errors when proofing the initial hard copy, which I corrected, only to have people email me to tell me about errors, that I am most probably am never going to find them all.

So is it better for me to spend the next ten years of my life going over and over my work with a fine-toothed comb, till I am 100% sure not one typo remains, or would it be better for me to write ten more books in that time?

Time = Money in more ways than one.

Not only can we use money to create us time, but we can also use time to create more money. 

Understand the Diminishing Law of returns and be aware of when you are entering a state of reduced output for your energy input.

2. Understand The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 Rule is along the same lines as the Law of Diminishing Returns and states that you will get 80% or your output from 20% of causes. 

So in reverse, that means that you will spend 80% of your time creating 20% of your result.

WHOA....

80% of your time to only get 20% of your results????

What if you stopped short of that??? 

What if you just used that 20% of effort that would give you the 80% result and then took that other 80% time/effort and spread it out over 4 other projects to get them all to the 80% mark?

All of a sudden you would have created 500% more results.

******** BRAIN EXPLOSION ********

You have to be able to let things go, even if you aren't sure they are perfect!!! 

Don't let your fear of rejection/being laughed at/criticism slow you down so that you aren't creating the momentum you need for success.

Be prepared to let your B Plus work into the world knowing that your B Plus work, is somebody else's A Plus. 

Everybody's idea of what is perfect differs, which then (along the lines of the age-old tree in the forest question) logically dictates, that there is no such thing as perfection at all.

Next time you feel anxiety creeping up your spine as you pause with your finger hovering over the submit button, remind yourself that perfection is just an illusion.

3. Create Systems for Everything You Do

Not only is this going to make your life easier, quicker and more stream-lined, it is going to make is much, much simpler when it is time to hand that task over to someone else. 

It is also going to keep you accountable. Because it is harder to not do something you should when there is a system in place to make it easier. 

Get organised now, while you are still small, or when you start to leverage and scale, it is all going to become a huge time-sucking disaster.

4. Have Thinking Time and Doing Time

This may seem simple, but it is a game-changer.

If you wait till you have to do something, to create it, you are going to be continuously in overwhelm. 

Everything is going to take you far longer than expected, and by the time you ae meant to deliver, you will be frazzled and low on energy.

The answer to this is to have thinking time and doing time.

Thinking time is when you create things, doing time is when you action them. Don't combine the two.

Let's use social media as an example...

If you use 3 hours one day to create all the content you are going to post for the following week, when you wake up each morning you are going to feel energetic, and organised and you are going to be able to get on with what else you need to do after you have finished the necessary posting for the day.

If you wait till each day to think about what you are going to create to post that day, you are going to be stressed and overwhelmed and quite probably won't get done what you promised yourself...

Which leads to not posting at all.

5. Know Your Finish Line

Imagine you are running a marathon, but you're not quite sure where the finish line is.

You are going to never, ever finish...

Or you are going to go way, way too far.

One is a shame, the other a waste of time and energy.

When you start a task you need to have clarified exactly what it means to you, to have finished it.

Which means breaking it down into the necessary steps you have to take to get that job done.

This has three benefits.

Firstly, it is easier to work out how much time each of these steps is going to take you than the project as a whole, which makes time management easier.

Secondly, all of a sudden the project will look a whole heap more doable.

Eating an elephant. Etc. Etc. 

And thirdly, and most importantly, you are going to know when you have crossed that finish line. Which means you only need to put in the minimum amount of effort to get the job done. 

Okay, I hope that has given you a mind shift on using your time and energy.

If you want more help with the whole planning side of things, I created a planner, which comes with training, that you can download and use to help you within your business.

You can access it here: https://www.donnajoyusher.com/planner