Need More Time to Work on Your Business? 8 Common Time Wasters to Eliminate Now!

Hey Friend!

Today, we are talking about time wasters. One of the common things that you all bring up is that you don’t have enough time to work on your business. You wish you had more time. If only you had more time!

Now, this is completely relative to your situation. I know some of you have a full-time job, and having limited time to grow a business is so real for you. I know some of you are homeschooling or are in a season of raising four kids under three. God bless you.

Some of you may have some time, but you’re finding that you’re wasting it. So, wherever this finds you, I know that one of these things will resonate with you.

I’ve got 8 very common time-wasters you can eliminate now. Some of you will be able to eliminate all of these, and some of you will be able to eliminate a couple. But no matter what, I pray that this helps you find some additional time to work on the things that matter and move the needle. Grab a notebook. Let’s go.

Let’s Talk About Ways to Find More Time

Today, I’ll share the 8 common time wasters I want you to eliminate. Elimination, terminator style. These are gone, okay? I want you to do this because:

• I want you to have more time to work on your business.
• I want you to be intentional.
• I want you to be productive.
• I want you to be a time management superhero.

Because we don’t have time to waste. I believe that time is actually more important than money. Why? Because we have limited time. We want to be present, right? With our kids and with our families. I want to have time to do my Bible study in the morning and not start stressing out about the 100 million emails I’ve got to deal with.

I want to shut my laptop at 3 or 4 every day, play outside with my kids, work out, and watch the sunset. But to do those things, when I’m working, I am extremely intentional with my time. I was intentional when I had my kids at home full time and also when I was working in my job and getting my businesses going.

I’ve done all of those things before. So I do recognize and realize that some seasons are harder than others believe, but there are still some of these that you are going to be able to implement in your life no matter where this finds you.

The 1st Time Waster Is Excessive Social Media Use

According to a survey by Statistica in 2020, users spent an average of 2 hours and 24 minutes per day. And I’ve seen some other studies that say between 5 and 6 hours a day, depending on where you’re getting your research. Several hours per day on social media networks. This is a trap! It’s a trap, y’all!

Okay, you don’t have to fully get off of social if you don’t feel God pressing you to do that. But I think that each of you, myself included, can cut our social media usage in half.

How about if you just started by cutting it in half? What I found to be true for me is that I wasn’t able to cut it in half because of the addiction tendencies and the dopamine hits that it created in my brain. I found myself there anyway, even when I set time limits. I time-blocked myself only to show up there a couple of minutes or even a couple of hours a day. That turned into 2 hours and 4 hours, etc., right? Like 10 minutes becomes 20 minutes.

If you cannot have boundaries and be disciplined around them, how about completely deleting these apps during your work weeks or the weekend? You can try one or the other and start there because excessive social media use is not helping you grow your business. It’s a time waster, 100% unapologetically. I believe this to be true.

The 2nd Time Waster Is Email Overload

So, how many of you are constantly checking your email? How many of you are continually responding to emails? Maybe you’re crafting this well-thought-out email and double or triple-checking your punctuation.

A study by The Radicati Group estimated that the total number of email users worldwide would reach 4.6 billion by the end of 2025. Listen to this. A study by Adobe found that online business owners spend an average of 3.1 hours daily checking and responding to emails. Finally, another study by McKinsey and Company reported that online business owners spend 28% of their workweek managing emails, which is basically 2.8 hours a day.

Y’all, that is absolute craziness! I probably spend 15 minutes or less in my inbox. Now granted, I have a team so we’re going to keep it super real here. But even my team members have automations set up. We also have a thought process around how to effectively and efficiently reply to emails.

Email Tips

Here are some tips to use as you find yourself responding to an email that is consistently coming into your inbox.

• Save that email as a template in a Google Word doc.
• Create drafts based on common emails that you might send or receive.
• You could also set up an autoresponder that says, working on [name the issue]. Click here.
• Want to listen to the podcast? Do this.
• Are you a student? Go to this group.

You can filter through. If you’re a solopreneur, you don’t have much help in your business yet. Filter through with an autoresponder and direct people to the right place or the right person because you can’t spend 2 to 3 hours a day in your inbox. You‘ll completely eliminate the time that you have to grow your business, right?

More Email Tips

So another tip with email I will give you is that I do not reply with a long wordy response. My customer service person does that. Again, we will keep it very real. I reply typically with one sentence. It is a:

• Yes
• No
• Go Here
• Do This

Most of my emails go to my team, so they recognize that if you email me, you’ll get the most efficient and streamlined answer possible. If I need to reply to a student, a collaboration opportunity, a colleague, or something of that nature, I will take a little bit longer to craft an email. However, my emails are always succinct, simple, and to the point.

If you want to talk with me, we will hop on a Zoom call or have a Voxer chat. I will not have conversations with you via email. That is just Bad Business 101 because you don’t know how emails will be construed. Also, every single thing that you write is forever documented. So be mindful of that as you’re dealing with things via email. These tips will reduce your email overload and give you more time to work on your business

The 3rd Time Waster Is a Lack of Clear Goals and Priorities

If you don’t know what you are sitting down to do and work on, you will be led to unfocused work and unproductive activity. That’s what it looks like to have a lack of clear goals and priorities. A study by the Harvard Business Review said 36% of professionals could not name their organization’s top priorities.

That means a tiny bit over one-third of the people in a professional organization, whether that is a brick-and-mortar, career-focused business, or an online business, only one-third of them knew the entire company’s goal. If your team and you have no idea what the direction is of the business and organization, not just this year but this month and this week, you are going to spend time, and your company will waste money on tasks that don’t move the needle.

And when I say move the needle, I mean grow your leads or make revenue, period. Those are things that grow a business. You are a company. I believe 90% of you are for profit. 10% of you here are doing mission work. You’re a nonprofit. I’m 100% with you on that. But you’re still here to grow your mission. You’re still here to grow your message.

Get Super Clear on Your Goals and Priorities

So you’ve got to be doing things that make that happen—swirling around and wondering what you’re supposed to be doing and doing mundane tasks and not being intentional and focused on project work or things that will be income-producing. They’re all a time waster. So, how do you get super clear on your goals and priorities?

Well, you, as the CEO, sit down. You have a business meeting with God. You look at where you’re trying to grow and get intentional about where you are today.

• Where is your revenue?
• What are your download numbers?
• Where is this business?
• Where do you want to go?
• What is the next right step to get there?
• What is your 3-month plan here to start moving in that direction?

If you’re a solopreneur, ask yourself, “What do I need to do to start moving in the correct direction?” Then, you put that in place in your operating system.

Here’s the Operating System I Use

I have a link for you guys for an amazing operating system that I highly, highly, highly recommend. You break your monthly goal and put that into your operating system. Then we go one step further and we put it into our weekly goal. So every single person on the team has a card in our operating system that says top priorities for the week.

We‘ve got 3. We‘re allowed 3 priorities, and that is it! Those are the number one goals that we each have as a team this week that are all focused on the company goal for that month and that year. That’s going to really help you.

Suppose you guys need help with an operating system that will help you know exactly what you’re supposed to be doing inside your business daily. In that case, I highly recommend Systemize Your Life from my dear friend Chelsi Jo. It’s super affordable and transformational to get your house in order and know what you’re doing. What are you prioritizing? What are you focusing on? So you can quit wasting time. Yes, and Amen!

The 4th Time Waster Is Multitasking

The next time waster that prevents you from having more time for your business is multitasking. But Stef I have to multitask! I get it. Multitasking can seem efficient, and in some cases, I do think that it can be fine. I’m in a Mastermind right now, so I might be doing laundry and listening to a training, listening to a podcast, or maybe refreshing myself on a course that I bought in the past. I think that’s fine. However, there are studies like one from the National Academy of Sciences that find multitasking results in a significant reduction in cognitive performance.

If You’re Doing Income Producing Work, Don’t Multitask

I’ve talked about this before. You sit down to a work block; You’re intentionally going to work. My team and I call it the Black Hole. We‘ll send a black hole emoji to each other and be like, don’t message me. Don’t Vox for me. I‘m unavailable.

I’m going to work on something and close all the tabs on my computer except that one thing. I turn on some quiet worship music, and I intentionally get laser-focused. I make sure that the room is cool so I can focus. You’ve got to laser in to create highly productive outflows.

So multitasking is okay if you’re doing something. Think of it this way. Multitasking equals mindless. If you have something mindless that you’re okay with, like, I’m going to listen to this thing, I’m going to refresh my memory on this thing, fine. But if you’re doing intentional work, you need to get rid of every single other thing that you’re doing and really zone in.

The 5th Time Waster Is Having an Unorganized Work Environment

If you are sitting in a place that is completely unorganized and cluttered, it will lead to inefficiency. The National Association of Professional Organizers reported that the average person spends 1.5 hours daily looking for things.

This is so funny because I am in this statistic. I am always looking for my coffee or my phone, like, pretty much any hour of the day. You can find Stef randomly walking throughout the house, looking for her coffee or her phone, all of the time. My family will attest to this. So I am not holier than thou, friends. I am guilty of a lot of these things, this one in particular.

But let’s stop that madness. One of the things I should do and take my own advice is have a phone basket. Because I don’t like to hold my phone very often because I’m trying not to be super attached and addicted to my phone 24/7. I need to put a phone basket in three places in my house and set it there. That way, at any given point, I can lose my phone intentionally, but it’s in a place where I know where it is. That would be one tip that I would have for you there.

Forget Carrying Your Phone Around All Day

Let’s start carrying our coffee cups around all day. That’s fine with me. I’m not mad at that. But when we think about limited time and availability, if this is tight for you, you can make up an hour and a half, an hour and a half a day if you’re not looking for things. This includes:

• Looking for things on your desktop
• Looking for things on your computer
• Looking for your planner
• Trying to find a pen

How can you get so organized that you have everything you need when you sit down to work? You know where everything is. Your computer is organized and optimized. You go into your operating system. You know what you’re working on. It’s going to save you hours!

The 6th Time Waster Is Procrastination

Number 6 is procrastination. This is a BIG one for people. A study published in Psychological Science estimated that 20% of people are chronic procrastinators. How many of you are raising your hand for that one? That one I am not, although I am highly distracted. So, each person has their vice.

But the procrastination card is a huge time waster. One of the intentional habits I focus on is getting the hardest things done first because my brain capacity is higher in the morning. Plus, I’ve got some extra caffeine. My kids are at school now. They’re full-time school.

I’m in a season, which is great, where I’m able to get more done during the early hours of the day. I focus on what are the hardest things I need to accomplish. Those are going to always go first for me. So for my procrastinators, I want you to stretch yourself and get into this uncomfortable posture of doing the hardest things first. Train your brain to do that. Train yourself to get things done earlier, well before the deadline, because it’s going to help you have a lot more time. There’s no need to procrastinate on the things that have to get done anyway.

The 7th Time Waster Is Overly Long or Unnecessary Meetings

Overly long or unnecessary meetings are a big time waster. Listen, don’t tell my husband, but he works at the government, and he’s got about ten meetings a day. They have meetings about meetings, and then they have a meeting about the meeting to discuss why they need a meeting.

Oh, My Lanta! Stop the madness, okay? According to a study by Atlassian, the average employee spends 31 hours in unproductive meetings every month. Like, I’m just not here for that. I’m really not. My company only has a meeting if it’s something that takes two people’s brain power to accomplish.

We don’t have excessive meetings with all the different levels of the team, right? If we’re going to have a meeting, we’ll all sit down and have a meeting. Let’s have one meeting, smash it, and be done. So we’ll do that. I also have one meeting with my online business manager once a week, and then she goes, and she executes and operates through Voxer.

Our Operating System Saves Us More Time

Through our operating system, we’re streamlined, efficient, and effective. It doesn’t take talking about things to get things done. It takes sitting down and doing the actual work. So there might be a strategy meeting that needs to be had once in a while, and then it’s execution. I am focused on:

• Execution
• Optimization
• Simplifying
• Streamlining

That’s what we’re here for. And so having meetings about the meetings about the meetings is a time waster, in my opinion. Do an audit of all the meetings that you’re having and see if you can’t cut that down. See what can be eliminated. See what can be shifted to a quick 30-second Voxer chat, or even better, into your operating system as a small, short-to-do task you assign someone else.

The 8th Time Waster Is Ineffective Communication

Last but not least is ineffective communication. This relates to meetings, like a back-and-forth all day long. It’s just unnecessary and misunderstanding. This is where I think communication through email is a huge time waster.

Again, don’t tell my husband, but I watch him have these email conversations with his staff or with people, and he’s thinking about how to articulate this thing. I’m like, pick up the phone, Yo, call him up. Be like, Yo, I need this. One, Two, Three, Go, Bye! It’s excruciating for me to watch. But again, it’s just how they do things culturally.

For me, I’m going to tell you what I need. You’re going to get it done, and we’ll move forward. Let’s get things done effectively and efficiently and with communication. Being an entrepreneur and having been in some leadership positions for most of my life, I had to work with people or with customers or clients. I’ve learned that being extremely forward and respectful, but forward is always the best policy.

Be Honest in a Grace-Led Way

Being honest in a grace-led way is going always to return the best results. I need this by this time is going to do a lot better than:

• I hope you can get this done
• Maybe I need it like this
• Whatever you think is best
• I know you’re pretty busy right now

No! Be clear in your communication. I’m here for that across the board:

• In your brand
• In your podcast
• With your team
• With your spouse
• With your kids

How do we be clear? How do we articulate exactly what it is that we need, want, and expect so that there are no minced words and there is no confusion. Confusion equals:

• Destruction
• Inefficiency
• Inaction
• Procrastination
• Animosity
• Resentment

We are done with all of that because we are going to be clear communicators.

All Right, That’s It.

So, which of those 8 things will you implement right now? I want you to circle the three that you wrote on your paper. Let me list them for you again.

• Number 1: Excessive Social Media Use
• Number 2: Email Overload
• Number 3: Lack of Clear Goals and Priorities
• Number 4: Multitasking
• Number 5: Having an Unorganized Work Environment
• Number 6: Procrastination
• Number 7: Overly Long or Unnecessary Meetings
• Number 8: Ineffective Communication

Circle the three you know you are guilty of or the three you need to focus on. Circle them right now. Then, go into your planner and your operating system and implement. Again, if you don’t have an operating system, I one billion percent recommend Chelsi Jo‘s Systemize Your Life. Do it! Invest in it! I promise you it’s incredible. Plug it in.

When are you going to make these changes? It is one thing to listen and to learn, and it is another thing to implement what you learn. The greatest, most successful, world-changing human beings that I look up to, the people who make real money and real impact are action-takers.

We do not sleep on an action. We actually take it. Then, we make it happen and we do the work. You are one of those people or you would not be listening to this podcast. So circle your 3, plug them in, and get it done.

I pray this blesses you!

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