Many of you ask me Loren do you work 24hrs a day? mmm well…. For most of us there aren’t enough hours in a day to complete all of our tasks, some of us wish there were more hours in our days in order for us to be more productive. After running 5 brands, blogs, daughter, husband, household friends ect… it can get a little hectic, most of you wonder how do you do it.
This is an extremely important article my brilliant husband JR wrote on his blog beingjrridinger.com . I recommend you take the time to read the article and analyze your time vs. duplication
Recently, a hardworking, inspired and dedicated associate of mine at Market America tweeted that she worked full-speed all day and produced an extraordinary amount of work as she literally ran out of time and still had important things to do. “How do I make more time?” The simple answer is to duplicate yourself. That is the only way to accomplish more and multiply your productivity if you are doing as much as you can yourself productively and efficiently.
Time is the great equalizer when you think about it, because we all have the same amount of it. We all have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days per year. How long you live is another issue, but is related to the reduction of stress (which this blog post is all about), taking our products (supplementation), exercise, meditation – and for me – yoga. But let’s not get off track – it’s another topic!
How time differs from one person to another falls on how we utilize it. Undoubtedly, it is the most valuable commodity. But if you are productive, efficient and sure you are not wasting it on non result-producing activities, the only way to get more done is to duplicate yourself. Of course, that is easier said than done. Duplicating yourself and adding people are not the same, so do not confuse the two. You need people that will offload work from you and duplicate what you do in quality and quantity. They may never be as good as you, but the objective is to empower people and make them as productive, knowledgeable and self-sufficient as possible to double your productivity.
That is a bit idealistic, but it is the goal. To do that, you must do one of two things. Before things reach critical mass and you find yourself on a reaction wheel, find someone who has great work ethic that is passionate to contribute and succeed and have them literally follow you around to be coached. They learn on the job by emulating you and doing it with you. After having them work with you for a while, let them do it and check them. If they don’t pick it up after a couple of attempts under your supervision (after they watch you and you explain to them what you are doing and why) and they are not passionate about getting it right, you have the wrong person and need to replace them. Do not keep people that are not working out because they become a burden and their mistakes and lack of productivity will slow you down even more. They must work from a list and you must check their list and monitor their work.
The second option is to find someone who is experienced and has done something comparable to what you are doing and needs assistance. This person still needs to be acclimatized, to have the objective well defined, and to comprehend what the desired result is. The key to a great duplication is finding someone who can practice anticipatory thinking. They are always thinking ahead (anticipating) and they evaluate everything they do as to how it will affect the end result or what the action will cause.
When you delegate in an attempt to duplicate, you cannot just cut the person loose. Now you must initiate and execute the successful formula of offloading responsibility, delegating and duplicating: MEASURE, MONITOR, ADJUST AND CONTROL. You must measure what they are doing. So to begin with, the assignment must be measurable. If it can’t be measured, it is not defined and might as well not exist (maybe it doesn’t). If you can measure it you can then monitor it through reports, checking their work, or asking questions, or simply checking with people behind them. So you are monitoring what you can measure. If the desired result is not there you can then ADJUST, by interceding, coaching or working with them to improve the outcome. By adjusting what is being done, you can control the outcome or result and greatly increase what is being produced. If you understand this, you have actually created time.
If you are productive and efficient and you add a second person who is as productive (be satisfied with 50 to 75 percent as effective), you have doubled your time and productivity. So if you are putting in 50 hours a week (what entrepreneur only works or “plays,” as our work is play, less than 40 hours a week?) and they put in the same, you have 100 hours being put in while you still put in the same 50. If you triple that and have four more people, totaling six, now putting in 50 hours, you are now leveraging 300 hours for the 50 you put in. Of course there is some slippage and it is affected by how well you manage (measure, monitor, adjust, and control).
But before we take this too far or get too excited, everybody FREEZE! Pause! You need to check yourself before you wreck yourself! Most people have not maxed out their time or productivity. Let’s make sure we are doing the result producing activities and not chasing our tail or just putting time in. Putting time in is not what counts. What counts are activities that lead to results or increase productivity. I have struggled with this for years and have tried to reduce it to a formula that made it approximately measurable.
To read the entire article visit www.beingjrridinger.com
