Who's Got the Time to Save Time?

We online business owners are always so busy and there never seems to be enough time to get everything done.

Or are we really so busy?

I rather think we sabatoge our own time by getting ourselves into the "I'm too busy" rut.

I wrote about this today on the Mom Masterminds blog I run with Kelly and Lynette, but this isn't something that just affects mom's in business - I dare say it affects most online entrepreneurs.

It started out by Lynette posting an entry that went like this:

"When I started advocating technology in ... forums a few years ago, I was often met by a lot of resistance. ..

...No, we don’t have a robot typing our newsletters, human personal interaction is still a huge part of our businesses but the difference is in using technology to speed up, improve and make our business more efficient without being a hands on micro manager all the time.

I just came from the [Mom Masterminds] forums and am so proud of the moms who are giving tech a chance to help them. [They] are thinking about:

- Help desks
- Collaborate on blogs without adding more work on their plates
- More effective ways or using autoresponders
- Scripts that’ll help them achieve a often repeated task like copying and pasting.

These are just small things but if that small something can shave of just 5 minutes of your time a day, hey there’s 5 minutes more for playing with your kids. "

This prompted me to take this a little further with a blog entry of my own. I wrote:

"If you’re [an online entreprenur], doing things the hard way…definitely listen to what Lynette has to say. Please!

From my experience talking to [people] who are resistent to technology, it sometimes comes out fear (I hear you! Technology CAN be scary and so can learning new things)…but often times it comes out of thinking they don’t have enough time to learn or to put the processes in place. WHAT? That’s kind of silly, but I’ve said it before, “Sure it might save me time, but I just don’t have the time to set it up.”

The reason we’re all too busy is because we’re doing things the hard way. Yes, there’s a learning curve to everything, but the time you spend setting things up now will save you so much in the future.

And it’s not just technology. It’s everything we do in our businesses. Have you ever said:

“I’m too busy to train an assistant.”
“I’m too busy to write out a detailed work or business plan.”
“I’m too busy to….you fill in the blanks.”

It’s important to take the time to streamline our businesses because when we do something once, it saves us time over and over again.

Sure, it would take me 20-30 minutes to write a detailed schedule for the coming work week, but I’d be more organized and would eliminate time-wasting activities. Because let’s face it, if you don’t have a plan, you can become easily distracted and much of your work time is wasted.

And yeah, it would take me 5 minutes to answer a support ticket from someone who couldn't find their ecourse download instructions OR I could take 15-20 minutes to write up detailed instructions for my assistant. Seems like doing it myself would be the easier thing to do, right? Well, if I wrote out the instructions and gave them to my assistant, I could save myself that 5 minutes over and over again. And even when my assistant no longer works for me, I still have those instructions saved and written to pass onto a new assistant. "

So what about you? Will set aside 20 minutes today to save yourself hours and hours in the future?