Why You’re Spending Too Long on Your Work

Business Foundation Skills, Create More Time, Get Out Of Your Own Way, Productivity, Strategic Planning, Time Management

Are you spending too long on your work? In 15 minutes you can change your world.  

This past Saturday, I taught one of our Flow Method Days. 

I love watching people have huge revelations about how much work they can get done when they know how to recognize resistance and perfection. 

I’ve found over and over again that we don’t have too much work as entrepreneurs – it’s just that we’re spending too long on our work. 

A website should not take weeks to build.

A newsletter should not take 3 hours to write (I timed this one to take 15).  

A free gift should not take weeks to assemble. 

Our work is like water. It occupies the amount of space it is given.  

If you give yourself two hours, then it will take two hours.  

If you give yourself five hours, then it will take five hours. 

I find that the entrepreneurs who know this best are mothers of young children. Time suddenly becomes precious when you’ve got a toddler screaming, and you learn that no task actually needs all that much of your time. 

I find that I do my best work when I bookend my schedule with fun activities at the start and end of the day.  

My actual working time is about four to five hours of working super intensely in 15-25 minute spurts. I don’t take anything too seriously, and I pay attention to the clock. 

Any task that takes longer than it should tells me one of these things: 

1. 1. I need to delegate it to someone who is faster than I am. 
   2. I need to hire someone to teach me to do it faster. 
   3. I need to upgrade my skillsets by taking a class or working with a coach so that I can do it faster. 

• I’m in full resistance to doing the task quickly because I want to control it – I want it to be perfect, or I want it to be right. I have to pause and let go of that need.

1. I’m doing it in the wrong format for my learning and creating style – for example, I’m trying to type out a newsletter instead of recording myself talking it through, or I’m trying to create a presentation on my own instead of talking it out with someone (I’m a verbal processor).  
2. I need to stop doing it now, because I’m tired and this is just not the best time to do it (for me that’s just about everything after 5pm). 

Once I start to analyze using the list above, I figure out how to handle my work so that I can work like a ninja, cutting through it all fast and furiously.  

So here’s my invitation for you this week: what if you could move through that to-do list faster, be less of a perfectionist with each task, and feel amazing about all the items you’ve crossed off by the end of the day?  

Try working in 15-25 minute increments – and if/when it doesn’t work, use the list above. See what happens when you get super clear about how you are spending your time.  

And then – go have more fun 🙂 You deserve it. 

To learn more about our Flow Method Program, which is all about getting twice as much done in half as much time – click here.