Task audit: buy back your time

Listening to the book below made me revisit the common productivity triage of:

1. Automate
2. Delegate
3. Defer
4. Drop / stop doing

Taking some time out to think about anything I could move to #1 or #2 allowed me to find a handful of small things I have now automated or handed to someone on our offshore team.

This has saved me over an hour a week - time I can spend on Deep Work, be more focused on highly-valuable work.?

Delegating even small recurring tasks that can be easily written up in your Operations Manual and handed over to someone down the org chart, or even better - automated, sounds common sense, but often isn’t common practice.

And, you should do it regularly.?

I now have a reminder once a month to review my week and ask “what can I automate or delegate?”

It’s easy to keep doing things the way you always have, so if you are not deliberate about searching for these wins, nothing will change.?

Do you have a reminder to move things off your plate, and when was the last time you did a task audit?

One Tool or Professional Development Resource

The “Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire” book I just finished has some great reminders from classics like “Getting Things Done”, with a few new techniques and perspectives to productivity.?

The book is written by a successful small business owner, for small business owners.?

My favourite quote from the book is “build a company you don't grow to hate”.

One of the businesses he started and sold is Clarity.fm, a great resource to find experts deep in the niche you need advice on, to help with ongoing or one-off advice.?

Blog posts live this week

• Grow your team: 5 ways to improve accountability as a small business owner and leader

Podcasts live this week

• Episode 347: 20+ years of experience managing a group of social enterprises and producing different types of equipment for different companies, or archiving services, now growing from 5 to 100 employees and around 4.5 million euros a month. ( Angela Achitei )
• Episode 348: 28+ years of delivering extraordinary outcomes, worked with 12,000 clients worldwide and profited from 43 different companies; helping small-medium business owners obtain results with his company Change Your Results with 6-8 FTEs. ( Shawn Shewchuk )
• Episode 349: QFF Founder and Director of an award-winning SEO agency, Studio Hawk, with over 10+ of experience in SEO. Now helping small-medium business owners increase marketing growth through SEO and knowing when to use Artificial Intelligence. ( Harry Sanders )????

Podcasts Throwback

Aged 15, still in high school, started a lawn mowing business, grew to 150 FTE, $10m USD annual sales and sold 18 years later.

Then launched ‘the Uber for lawn mowing’ app, now has 200,000 customers, 22 FTE and $20m sales p.a.

Listen to episode 63 I did with Bryan in December 2020.?

?Regards,

?Troy Trewin | Founder

Grow A Small Business

?P.S. Are you living the lifestyle you signed-up for? Business Transformation Program opens soon.