© 2000 Elena Fawkner

I receive many emails each week with send times like 5:02
am, 4:47 am and 1:02 am. Ah, I think to myself, another
moonlighter. It's tough being a moonlighter, as many of you
reading this know only too well. Here are some ideas to help
you beat the time crunch.

WHERE DOES THE TIME GO?

Before you can begin planning how to make the most
effective use of your time, you need to understand where
it goes.

An activity log is a good way of identifying black holes that
can be turned into productive time. Keep an activity log for
a week. Just write down everything you do for a week. Be
sure to include everything: getting ready for work, eating
meals, taking breaks, travelling to and from work, grocery
shopping, telephone calls, faxes, emails, casual chats,
work activities, reading, making meals, watching TV,
whatever.

IDENTIFY TIME WASTERS AND NUKE 'EM

Your activity log will identify, in excruciating detail, exactly
how much time you are squandering each week ... valuable
time that you could be putting to productive use in your
business. You may find that you're spending 16 hours a
week watching TV, for example. That's two whole business
days!

So identify those time wasters and kill them off. A time
waster is any thing that doesn't make a worthwhile
contribution (proportionate to the time you spend on it) to
your work, your business or your personal wellbeing. If it
doesn't make a contribution to one of these three areas,
dump it or delegate it.

ON THE JOB

If you are more efficient on the job, you will be able to free
up some time for business-related activities. You can't be
too obvious about it, of course, but so long as you're on
top of your work responsibilities, you can buy yourself some
time to take care of some of your business-related activities.

Paradoxically, studies have shown that moonlighters who
'cheat' by squeezing in business activities alongside their
work activities are often more effective in their day jobs
because they work harder than they normally would to keep
from getting caught. One word of caution, though. It's
generally a BAD idea to choose for your business something
that competes with your employer's business. Such an
arrangement is rife with conflicts.

SCHEDULE YOUR TIME

If you've followed the above steps, you should have a good
idea of how much time you have available to you and what
activities are going to serve your business, work and personal
needs. Now it's time to schedule everything you need to
accomplish. You may choose to do this on a daily, weekly
or monthly basis, it's up to you. I recommend though that
you start out by creating daily "to do" lists until you get
used to the discipline of managing your time effectively.

So make a list of everything you would like to accomplish
today. This includes business, work and personal. Now
prioritize those activities in order of necessity, importance and
urgency. When thinking about priorities, make sure that if you
run out of time today, what doesn't get done is something that
can wait until tomorrow.

In addition to scheduling your activities, allocate realistic
time periods within which to complete them. By setting a time
limit for these tasks, you will force yourself to lift your pace to
get them done in time and this will in turn force you to become
more productive. It will also help you discipline yourself
not to allow distractions to get in the way.

When scheduling, work with your effectiveness level as much
as you can. Schedule important tasks that require creativity
and clear-thinking for your most alert period of the day.
Routine or mundane tasks can be slotted in to low energy/low
concentration periods.

Also, try and maintain and influence your energy levels with
diet and rest. A high carbohydrate breakfast will keep the
brain supplied with sugars for the early part of the day. But
by mid-morning, you may experience a sugar slump so get
into the habit of having a mid-morning snack to avoid this. A
banana will do the trick. Some people swear by protein
(such as an egg) at breakfast to delay the energy dip.
Experiment until you find what works best for you.

Still on the subject of diet, if you want to have a productive
afternoon avoid large lunches because they divert blood from
the brain and to digestion. If you've ever felt like taking a nap
after lunch, that's why. Also, don't drink alcohol at lunchtime
because it's a sedative. All you'll want to do is go to sleep.
Not very conducive to a productive afternoon's work.

BE RESULTS-FOCUSED

Focus on results, not on being busy. You are, I'm sure,
familiar with the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20
rule. The Pareto Principle says that 80% of unfocused effort
generates only 20% of results and the remaining 80% of
results are achieved with only 20% of effort. Focus on the
results you are wanting to achieve and look for ways to work
more efficiently.

MANAGE DISTRACTIONS

No doubt your activity log revealed an amazing amount of
time taken up with distractions. Distractions can take
many forms but let's look at three major ones: email,
telephone calls and casual visitors.

=> Email

Check your non-work (i.e. non-job) email only once or twice
a day and deal with each item only once. That means
reading it, responding to it, filing it for later review or trashing
it. Don't leave it sitting in your inbox once you've opened it or
you'll forget what it is and waste time rereading it probably
several times over.

=> Telephone Calls

Be disciplined with telephone calls. Have an agenda before
dialing and stick to it. Be clear in your own mind the
purpose of your call and the outcome you want. It's also a
good idea to schedule "telephone time" if you can manage
it. This is an hour or so every day when you make and return
phone calls.

=> Casual Visitors

Discourage chatty drop-in visitors by getting up from your
desk, continuing to appear busy, not having convenient
visitors' chairs (drape your coat over them or pile them up
with papers) or by saying something like, "Joe can I get back
to you on whatever it is once I'm done here? I'm under the
gun."

LEARN TO SAY NO

Get out of the habit of feeling bad about declining requests
from people to take on tasks that will erode even further the
time you have available. Now, if it's your boss and what you're
being asked to do falls within your job description, you
obviously have no choice, but do you really need to be on yet
another committee?

USE DEAD TIME PRODUCTIVELY

Time spent waiting for an appointment or when you're
travelling can be put to productive use. Use that 15 minutes
you're waiting in the doctor's surgery to sketch out some
article ideas, write some classified ads or answer email. Same
thing when you're travelling. If you're travelling by air, try and
get a seat that will allow you to work. That may mean an
emergency exit or a bulkhead seat, for example. Any seat
that will allow you to work on your laptop comfortably is worth
the effort.

GET UP EARLIER

This one is a no-brainer. If you get up just one hour earlier
each day, you effectively create another 365 hours a year.
That's more than two weeks! You could create a brand new
website in two weeks. You could write the outline of a novel
in two weeks. At least think about it.

IMPROVE READING TECHNIQUES

Consider learning how to speed read to save time on your
business reading. Alternatively, learning more effective
reading strategies to extract required information most
efficiently is another time saver.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about how
you can save time and create time in your day. By putting
these principles to work and constantly testing your activities
against the yardstick "does this make a worthwhile
contribution to my work, business or personal wellbeing?",
you will quickly develop a radar for time wasters and begin to
eliminate them from your life. By simplifying your life in this
way you will be amazed at how much more you are able to
accomplish and your dream of giving up your day job for your
own full-time business will become a reality much sooner
than you would have ever thought possible.

_________________________