Experts Blog

Are you making the best use of your time?

We all have exactly the same number of hours in a day, so why do some people seem to have enough time to do everything they want to do and others never seem to have enough?

If you want to be more successful, you need to use your time in a way that brings you the success you want. To do this you need to understand how you use your time and what it is worth.

A few years ago I sat down and worked out what my time was worth and how I wanted to spend it, and for the past two years my annual income has doubled. Here are my tips:

Start by looking at how you spend your time - the balance between business activities and the rest of your life. I suggest you go through your diary and colour-code the time as follows: 

1. Income Generation – Green – direct hours that clients are paying for.
2. Income Speculation – Blue – time spent looking for opportunities to invoice.
3. Income Saving or admin – Amber – time spent preparing accounts, meeting your accountant – anything that would save your business money, or prevent money being wasted.
4. Fun (income spending) – Red – everything else (eg social time, personal time, anything that was not work-related).

Notice how many weekends and evenings you are using for business meetings and events. Ask yourself if you are happy with this and if it’s bringing you the benefit you want. If so – great. If not – don’t do it anymore.

Next, understand how your daily activities contribute to your overall business (and life) goals. For example, if you want to double your turnover, you need to work out what your time is worth in financial terms. Here is how: 

1. Choose your target salary for the year and divide it by 10 months (10 months allows for time off over Christmas, Easter and other holidays.)
2. Then divide your monthly figure by eight.
   On average (and to make the maths easier) there are 20 working days in a four-week month. As business-owners we need to work on our business as well as in our business – from experience I know that on average two days per week are invoice-able.
3. This gives you a daily invoice rate, but that does not allow for the cost of conducting business or tax.
4. Double this figure to allow for the cost of doing business.
5. Divide this by eight (if we assume an eight-hour day) to give you your hourly rate.

As soon as I doubled my income generation hours (green) and reduced the other hours, my turnover doubled. Last year it doubled again.

Here are some tips to help you focus:

1. Have a purpose, aim or goal for a period of time. You can pick short goals like “to relax this weekend”, “to finish this report”, or larger financial goals “to double my turnover this financial year”.
2. Review the last month/week of your diary. How did you spend your time against the classifications of income generation, income speculation, income saving or fun? Are you happy with that outcome?
3. If your income is less than you would like, I suggest that you are not generating enough income (or invoice-able time), so adjust the balance.
4. Ask yourself the question – “Did my ‘activities’ contribute to my goal or purpose?” Is this how I want to spend my time? Think about the balance you are experiencing – lifestyle versus income.
5. Work out what your time is worth. You can use this to choose between certain business activities. It can help you recognise that a bookkeeper, for example, is worth every penny, because you reuse the time gained to work for and invoice your own clients. You can make informed decisions about certain activities and their business value.

Time and money are our two greatest assets. If we use them well we can create the life, business and lifestyle that we choose. It is our personal experience of time that matters. Are you happy with how you spend your time? If not then I suggest you review how you currently use your time. Work out what your time is worth – do the maths. Think about what is the best use of your time if you are to meet your goals.

In just 20 months, Vicki Wusche made the transition from single mother on limited income to being financially independent and having a property portfolio worth £2m. She runs a successful business that sources property for other investors, teaches people how to invest in property and has written many popular books on the subject. 

Are you a social media-savvy business?

Twitter celebrated its seventh birthday on 21 March and, with an estimated 1.2 billion Twitter accounts now registered, 200 million active users and 400 million tweets sent each day, it is more important than ever that businesses have stringent social media policies in place.

With the majority of businesses using social media regularly as a tool for self-promotion, interaction with clients and even recruitment, it is easy to forget that potentially millions could read the message you are composing.

The law of defamation concerns the publishing of statements that harm the reputation or character of someone resulting from the false statements or actions of another, and it is crucial to remember that the law treats the online world much as it does the real world.

In other words, every tweet is potentially a fresh publication for defamation purposes, and anyone who tweets a defamatory statement could be held liable for damages. Businesses must be aware because every tweet sent from a work-linked account could attract vicarious liability.

Unfortunately, it does not stop there and even comments on personal accounts might bring a business into disrepute if they can be linked back, which also demonstrates how vital it is for employers to have clear policies and training in place to deal with social media activity.

The misuse of social media has also led to numerous publicised dismissals. A report obtained through the Freedom of Information Act found that 11 civil servants at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have been sacked for misusing Facebook or Twitter since January 2009, while a further 105 employees have faced disciplinary action.

A social media policy should ideally include detailed information on what staff should and shouldn’t say and do on social media, privacy settings that need to be enacted, how to react to requests for references and what to do if an adverse comment is published.

Because of the nature of social media, it is very difficult to abolish the use of it altogether and this may well be counterproductive anyhow because it offers an abundance of benefits.

However, it has to be used correctly and appropriately if these benefits are to be seen. Therefore, when employees are encouraged to use social media as part of their job, employers are advised to have a ‘best practice’ guide available. Appointing a ‘social media’ officer or champion as a point of contact for those in doubt is also highly advised.

Crucially, once a social media policy is drawn up it is important that it is not simply locked away in the store cupboard and out of employees’ sight. It must be easily accessible and well publicised to ensure that all staff members are fully aware of their responsibilities when it comes to using social media.

Even if your resources are limited and social media isn’t a primary tool for your business, the costs of not being in control of it within your company are too big to be ignored.

By Lee Calver of employment law specialists Workplace Law

• Social media and the law - a checklist
• Blog post: Internet users are answerable to the law too