Average business people feel comfortable working about 3000 hours per year (60 hours per week for 50 weeks, allowing two weeks’ holiday). This number represents the total number of hours worked, including all tasks. However, in a small business, most have difficulty “selling” 5 hours a day out of the 10 hours at work. The reason is a seemingly endless supply of “selling” distractions with which business people in large companies do not have to deal.

By the end of the day, you know you have been working hard but have no idea why you only worked on revenue-generating items for three hours out of the ten you were there. Unfortunately, this is a common problem faced by business people in small businesses working hard but not smart.

The key to getting control of your day is to set clear priorities. Make a list of daily activities you engage in (including all the non-revenue distractions) and prioritise that list according to importance (revenue generators and marketing your business will be at the top of this list).

After you have an excellent general priority list, you have a template for prioritising your activities. First, divide the tasks into four categories according to urgency and importance.

1. Category One (Important & Urgent) – In this category, you should put tasks critical to your business where time deadlines have passed or are imminent. These items are a top priority. It would help if you worked almost exclusively on these things until this box was empty. Examples would be paying the rent, preparing for tomorrow’s meeting, completing an order before time runs out, making a document you promised a customer for tomorrow’s meeting, and calling a client threatening to fire you. This is the fire-fighting box. The more items in here, the more harried and stressed you will be, and your work will suffer. This box should be nearly empty if you are running your business efficiently.

2. Category Two (Important But Not Urgent) – In this category, you should put tasks critical to your business where deadlines are not looming. These items are your second priority after completing group one. Most of

your essential matters should reside in this box. Your daily objective is to finish elements in this box before they reach a point where they belong in category one.

3. Category Three (Urgent But Not Important) – Here, you put things that are screaming for attention but are not critical to your business. For example, telephone calls from friends and family that are not bona fide emergencies should wait until you are home or until you have entirely run out of items in the first two groups. Likewise, computer-related projects not critical to your ability to do tasks in categories one and two (like organising your word processor files) need to wait until those two boxes are empty. These are discretionary tasks. They are distractions. Please resist the urge to act on them until pressing matters are complete.
4. Category Four (Not Urgent and Not Important) – These are utter distractions and time wasters. They are allies in refining your procrastination skills and will destroy your productivity. They include reading newspapers and non-legal periodicals, calling family and friends who have not contacted you for a while, talking about football with a friend or partner for 40 minutes, and shopping for personal items. This is the money-sucking zone. Activities in this box must be done on time and have no place cluttering your day.

After you have completed your initial priority lists, you are ready to begin attacking your work. The tasks with top priority will be those in category one. Then, within that group, prioritise the tasks by which items have the greatest combination of importance and urgency. When you finish this group, begin working on category two, and so on.

At the beginning of each day, you should update the lists. Some group one projects will be completed and thus crossed off the list. New items will be added to your lists each day. This exercise might take 15 to 20 minutes daily, but it will improve your productivity by one to two hours.