How to Add Two More Power Hours Every Week

Is time giving you fits?

Time, that precious commodity: you just have only so much time. You must make the most of it.

If you’re feeling strapped for time, it’s because you’re like 94.7% of financial advisors. You suffer from time fits.

What do I mean by time fits? All financial advisors make firm appointments with other people‚clients, prospects, wholesalers, and accountants. You consider these appointments important. You put them on your calendar and make every effort to keep them.

Not so when it comes to things like writing, research, and that all-important activity marketing. You fit it in, even if during your spare time. And there’s never any spare time running a business. Trying to fit it in gives you the fits.

I used to suffer from time fits and my practice suffered right along with me—until I discovered this.

One of my clients, Rick Ruby, a multimillionaire mortgage broker, taught me one of the most valuable time management lessons of my life—SCHEDULE EVERYTHING!

Make appointments with yourself to work on important tasks. Treat these appointments with the same respect you give to appointments with your best client.

If you try to fit in your writing, it usually doesn’t get done. If you try to fit in your marketing, it usually does not get done, certainly not done on time. And you know what happens when you don’t market your business. It dries up.

New Rules

Make inviolate appointments with yourself. Schedule everything.

Every morning I allocate one hour to writing from 6 AM to 7 AM. I write something no matter if I am uninspired, no matter if I’m tired, no matter if I don’t feel like it.

I schedule specific times to make prospecting calls. This vital activity is almost never done when I used the “fit it in” method.

I coached a physician to close her office on Thursdays and schedule the day for marketing activities. As a result, she doubled her patient caseload.

I schedule my daily walks and weekly swims. By the way, most of you don’t consider such self-care as work time. I do. As Stephen Covey says, taking care of yourself is like a lumberjack sharpening his ax. When he goes back to chopping down trees, he’s ten times more efficient.

Adopt the attitude that exercising, meditating and vacationing is work time. You’ll rid yourself of guilt. You’ll enjoy and engage in them regularly. You’ll be more efficient.

Bottom Line

Don’t give yourself fits over time management. SCHEDULE EVERYTHING. Make appointments with yourself as far in advance as you can—a week, a month, a year.

Replace your “fit it in” system with this disciplined system and you’ll create tons of creative time for yourself.

Let me hear your experience with managing your time. Any objections to what I proposed? Let me know your most vexing problems. I will answer.

If you want help to free up two productive hours a day, let’s talk.