Reach Your Goals Faster: Eight Secrets For Turning Wasted Time Into Productive Time

Now your challenge is to find more free time - the time you need to accomplish your goals. By "free time" I mean wasted time. The 5 minutes here and 10 minutes there that slip by unnoticed, but swallow up hours of your life every day.

Here are eight productivity secrets that can save you a good two hours each day that you can put toward achieving your dream of financial independence.

Productivity Secret No. 1: Streamline Your E-mail

E-mail has become a way of life for most of us - especially in business - but it doesn't have to take a huge bite out of your work life. With just a few changes in the way you manage e-mail, you'll save yourself one or two hours every day that you can apply to constructive goals.

Here are a few ideas to help you streamline the process.

• Keep your e-mail messages short and to the point - and ask the people who e-mail you to do the same. Very few messages need to be more than a screen-page long - and those that pose a problem should always be presented with multiple-choice solutions.
• If you find that you need more than one screen page to say what you have to say, the subject is probably too involved to be handled effectively through e-mail. You need to do it over the phone or face-to-face instead.

Productivity Secret No. 2: Attack Similar Tasks in Blocks

Whether you have to answer 25 e-mails, make nine phone calls, or write three memos, you'll easily save yourself an hour a day just by lumping like tasks together and blocking out time in your schedule to tackle them all at once.

Assembling common tasks makes you much more efficient. So group them into one category on your daily to-do list and allot them a specific time on your schedule.

And while you're at it, block out some time for yourself as well. Full schedules without relaxation lead to burnout. You need to give yourself a few 5-minute, 10-minute, and 15-minute blocks of "me" time each day.

Productivity Secret No. 3: Take Control of Your Schedule with This Simple Device

Do you start your day with the best of intentions - organise your schedule, block out your time, highlight important goals, and vow to stick to it today - only to find your good intentions shot to hell by noon?

It's hard to keep track of the time. You bury yourself in work and the next time you look up, three hours have passed and you don't have half the things done you'd planned.

I've solved that problem with an electric egg timer. It looks like the conventional, windup kind but runs on batteries. When I begin a project, I allot a certain amount of time. When that time expires, the timer signals me with an ascending scale of louder and louder beeps.

Another way your timer can help you control your schedule is when someone comes into your office and says, "I have a quick question. Got a minute?" Say "sure," and set your egg timer for a minute.

Productivity Secret No. 4: Get Company Meetings under Control

I believe wholeheartedly in limiting company meetings. Too much time gets wasted in daily meetings that stretch on for an hour and two hours without accomplishing anything of significant value for anyone there.

Whether or not you're leading the meeting, you should always have a plan before attending. Your plan should include a specific personal agenda (e.g., "I will leave the meeting with an agreement from Jeff on the new product") as well as ideas about how to attain that goal (e.g., "I'll make him a quick, logical argument - and if he doesn't go for that, I'll remind him of the favor he owes me").

Obviously, you can't just stop having meetings altogether. You can, however, reduce both the number held each week and the time they take. That leaves an extra hour or more of productive work to advance your company's objectives as well as your own career and personal goals.

Productivity Secret No. 5: Limit Memos to One Page

Another way you can streamline your day is by changing the way you write simple business documents. Writing a memo can take 30 minutes or more. But you can cut that time in half and double the power and clarity of your message simply by shortening the length and stating your primary point earlier.

Stating your main point early lets your readers know exactly what you are talking about and why they should keep reading. If your thesis is strong (i.e., the idea is useful to them), it will appeal to your readers right away and motivate them to read with attention the rest of what you have to say.

Productivity Secret No. 6: Learn to Delegate

It's not easy to delegate responsibility when you know no one else can do the job the way you want it done, when you want it done, and how you want it done. You're the go-to person, the one who can answer questions, explain things, get problems solved. This is a good and a bad thing. Good because it gives you power. Good because it advances your goals. Bad because it can overwhelm you if you are not careful.

Unless you are the only person in your business, reluctance to share the workload will cripple your company. It is foolhardy to think you can do everything yourself. Beyond driving yourself crazy, you will collapse from exhaustion and your business will collapse along with you.

Productivity Secret No. 7: Hire Great People

It's not easy to hire/recruit good people, but it's well worth the time and effort that it takes. Here are the four most important things I've learned about how to do it:

1. Make the commitment. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. You can't expect to hire/recruit great people if you spend just a few hours working on it.
2. Look for the right things. Intelligence is important, but I'd put it third on my list of things to look for . I agree with Jeffrey J. Fox in his book How to Become a Great Boss (Hyperion, 2002) that the two most important things to look for are attitude and aptitude.
3. Flee flaws. Generally speaking, you'll see candidates at their best when you interview them. If you notice something that seems wrong, don't ignore it - especially if it concerns qualities that are important for the job.
4. Don't worry too much about specific experience. Of all the qualities that are important to look for in finding a great employee, specific experience is not very high on the my list. Yes, it's good to know that the person you hire can do the technical work from day one - but on day 7 or day 14, you'll wish you had opted for the better, though perhaps untried and unproven prospect.

Productivity Secret No. 8: Fire Bad Employees

When you want to save a hammock of endangered hardwoods, you start by chopping down a lot of trees. You must get rid of the younger, faster-growing trees that threaten the good wood in order to let the sun come in and give the really valuable growth a chance to develop. That is how it works in nature. And I have found that the nature of a business is not too much different.$

[Ed. Note. Ray Buckner is dedicated to helping you take control of your financial future with a web-based business that you can operate from anywhere in the world – including a coffee shop, your kitchen table, or anywhere around the world where there is Internet access. Discover how you can achieve the American Dream and your financial independence here. You’ve never seen anything like this before.]