There’s one big huge change that’s happened to everybody’s life and that’s the lockdown. It’s something that no one could have predicted and something could plan or prepare for so it has been a major disruption to your routine.
Now, when you want to become an entrepreneur you have this view, fantasy and almost delusion that you can do what you want when you want and where you want, you think that you’re not accountable to anyone and you can stay in bed until midday and you have this fantasy of freedom.
But, the reality is there’s no one holding you accountable, there’s no time to clock in or clock out, there’s no one forcing you to send in your reports, breathing down your neck or micromanaging you, it’s all of the things that you hated way back when you were employed but paradoxically you miss them as an entrepreneur because they give you discipline and you’ve lost your accountability.
So you need to have a routine.
And I wrote a book called Routine=Results and It’s my smallest and shortest book, but it’s also my most practical as it helps you create your ideal day, compartmentalise your diary into 15/30 or 60-minute chunks and identify your key result areas such as business, sales and marketing plans and then everything else such as admin tasks gets pushed to the side, to their own dedicated hour.
By having a dedicated daily routine you can also track your energy highs and lows, track your clients and your staff needs. For example, I’d love to do meetings at 5:30 in the morning, but my staff don’t want to do them at 5:30 in the morning. So there’s a risk or friction there. So the book helps you look at external restrictions and responsibilities and helps you weave it all together
Now, because of the lockdown you’re going to be a bit lost, you’re not really going to know what to do with all of the new time you have and it’s going to get swallowed up by homeschooling or mothering or parenting and you’re really going to have to change how you run your day but the quicker you pivot from your old routine to your new lockdown routine the quicker you get productive, efficient and effective.
And when there are disruptions to your routine you can change and adapt to accommodate them, so I changed my routine because my business has grown significantly and again changed it again just before Christmas and because of the lockdown my routine changed and I had more free time as I was doing podcasts and meetings over zoom instead of travelling so sometimes I got 7 or 8 hours back per day but it’s what you do with that extra time that matters.
So the lockdown means that entrepreneurs need to adapt and change their routine completely to create new accountability, new key life areas, new key result areas and new income-generating tasks at different times in the day based on the lockdown that’s been imposed.
A lot of entrepreneurs still don’t know of entrepreneurs how to compartmentalize and manage their time and stay focused and disciplined because the irony is the more time you have, the less disciplined you can become and with interruptions from your kids or homeschooling or social media, you’ve not really got accountability.
Now when you are blessed with more time which a lot of key workers and those still going to work each day are not, you’ve got to be ruthlessly productive and effective. Even if with all of the distractions you only find two hours per day, if you have a routine you can be ruthlessly productive.
Sometimes even in your own home, you have to isolate yourself from your kids or tour wife in order to be productive, and that includes isolating yourself from distractions such as social media and bitching, moaning, ranting and trolling because when it’s time to do your key result area or income-generating tasks you need to have compartmentalised your time.
Okay, so a lot of people see their goals in terms of long time horizons and that can be hard to get your head around and you can feel unmotivated or that you’re not making progress and the best way to overcome that is to break it down into very small chunks, so the easy way to have a very good day is to have a great first 15 minutes or a great first hour. Now, it doesn’t matter whether you’re an early riser or you’re a bit of a night owl. Immediately, when you get your day started or your task list sorted you need to jump into something urgent, get it done and be productive.
It could be a workout, you know, it could be putting a sales presentation together or It could actually be leveraging out tasks. It could be unclogging messages or whatever you need to solve to make you feel liberated. It doesn’t really matter, but the key is doing it early because it all compounds and you get in a motion and create momentum for your day.
For example, it takes roughly 95% of the energy of a rocket to get it off of the ground so it’s important to start where the friction is, with productive high income-generating tasks and key result areas done and get them done early before the world wakes and whilst you’ve got a lot of energy. So having a good day isn’t about having a good day, It’s about having a really good start in a really small chunk.
The most successful people who get the most done, seem to have a set routine. They’ve created efficient order to the chaos. They’ve balanced work and play, family and finances, passion and profession.
They seem to have all the time in the world, despite the demands and responsibilities. It wasn’t always that way. They struggled with overwhelm, distraction and spinning all those plates.
They didn’t have enough hours in the day. They felt guilt of letting things slip, and frustration at having to deal with everyone else’s problems.
How to minimise wastage, firefighting, task jumping, overwhelm & procrastination for good This is not a theory book (or a long book), but a concise, step by step guide to plan and automate your diary, time and life to get more done in less time and create power habits that lead to your ideal balanced lifestyle. You can’t manage your time. Time flies regardless. But you can manage your life. You can guard your most valuable asset, but only if you have clear rules that balance all your life areas; a Routine that gets Results.
Which coincidentally is the title of my book Routine = Results: How To Realise More Success, More Often. The Easy Way to Stop Procrastinating & Be Happier Every Day
