Setting Time Limits on Your Business

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I decided to do this recently and also read about its effectiveness in two different places within the last week, so it’s fresh on the mind and soon to be hot off the press. You know how work expands to fill the time allotted to it? Wouldn’t it make sense, then, to give yourself a shorter workday and see if you can get the same amount (or even more) in less time?

There are several benefits to picking a certain, smaller number of hours and then holding yourself to your goal:

Benefit #1: When your workday is over, it’s over. You don’t have to worry about your workload encroaching onto your personal or family time because you now have boundaries set to work within. If you tell yourself that you will be off work at 4:00, daggone it, and if you don’t do something before 4:00 it will have to wait until tomorrow, you can finally begin to have balance in your life again.

Benefit #2: You won’t always feel like you should be working on something. Let’s say you’re home alone one night when your wife is away at what women call a “shower” (insert manly passtime here if your spouse is male). The workday is over and you’ve now got 2-3 hours to kill. How do you spend it? Trying to catch up on work? How about working on a hobby or doing something you really love instead? You’ll never get “caught up,” anyway, so why bother engaging in a fruitless endeavor?

Benefit #3: You’re forced to prioritize. If you know that no matter what, you only have X hours per week to get your work done, you won’t waste time with things that are good ideas, but not urgent or as important as others. Each week, I make a core list of things that MUST get done that week for my business to function (write 2-3 blogs, send my newsletter, follow up with JV partners, etc) and that’s the standard that I need to accomplish each week if I get nothing else done. Then, I add 1-2 items to work on in addition to that. If I get those done, great. If I don’t, I can still rest assured knowing I got the most important things done.

Benefit #4: You will watch the clock more. Knowing that you only have a short amount of time will help you not to waste any a minute. It will surprise you how much more quickly you can get a task done if you know that you only have a short time frame. Test this and see for yourself!