Time, attention and focus

Chuck Bowen, Managing EditorIf I could have received anything for Christmas, I would have asked for the one thing no one can give me: more time. (No, I loved the socks, Mom. Really.) I imagine your desk looks a lot like mine most days – covered in reports and files, scribbled-on notepads and errant cups of coffee that seem to reproduce in the night. The red message light blinks ominously from my phone, and the notification bell on my e-mail seems to never stop ringing.

The hardest part of work every day is also the most important: cutting down distractions and focusing on the things at the top of your to-do list.

On average, according to Lawn & Landscape research, an owner running a $778,000-revenue landscape business works 50 hours a week – with 26 hours spent on the job performing landscape duties and 24 spent “working on the business rather than in it.”

At some point, owners – of small companies and large ones – need to transition from that in part to the on part. This month’s cover story, “Time Crunched” on page 20, examines how contractors can best spend the time they have, and maybe not have to end up working 80 hours a week. Unfortunately, one common method for dealing with an apparent dearth of time is to try to do many things at once – juggle e-mail and phone calls and people coming into your office.

But, people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. So you might feel like you’re getting more done, but you really aren’t.

Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking, says the key for business owners is to pick the things they do every day that make them the most money and build their schedule around those activities. Maybe it’s client meetings, maybe it's running a mower, but whatever it is, you have to do what brings profit to your company. Anything else can be outsourced or delegated.

“Those are the activities that you do that are worth the most per hour and would be the most difficult to replace. So once you’ve identified that, you need to establish in your schedule how much time you’re going to spend for the different activities,” Crenshaw says.

No matter what you try or how big your company gets, there will always only be 24 hours in a day. But by spending your time, attention and energy wisely – and focusing on your most profitable tasks – you can make the most of the day you have.