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Buying Time

There is always a chance for you to make back the money you lost, but lost time is lost forever.

I often talk about our time as a non-renewable resource, and while you cannot buy more time, you can always save time. 

You do this by buying the time that other people have spent learning to do what you want to do today. 

And it compounds: the sooner your start, the faster you will go. The later you start, the harder it is to catch up. 

There are two parts to our life: the part when you have more time than money and the part when you have more money than time. 

I am talking to those in part two because while you are in part one, you trick yourself into thinking there will always be more time.

Invest in Yourself

Use some of the money you have to buy the information that will put you in the fast lane. Hire a consultant, do a strategy call. 

Our egos will trick us into thinking that we know what we are doing and we don’t need someone else drafting a plan for us or reviewing the one we have created. So we end up making mistakes that we could have easily avoided. 

I believe in learning from mistakes, but it’s best to learn from new mistakes instead of rehashing the same territory. 

Ask yourself: has anyone else done this before? What can I learn from them? How can I take that and go farther? 

Use tools like Udemy or Skillshare. Get to know who is word-class in your field and follow their content. Hire them if you can afford it. 

Most people are willing to spend thousands of dollars building a website, but they would not spend $300 to hire a consultant first. What do you do if you realize it is the wrong audience, the wrong tech, or that you are too late at the end of building your website? At that point, you realize how cheap and effective it would have been to get on that strategy call.

What I do today I could have done ten years ago. Instead, I chose to poke around in the dark instead of asking for directions. Yes, I learned what I learned deeply and profoundly, but is it worth ten years of my life? My older self says “no.” I can only imagine where I would be today if I had a ten-year headstart. 

And it is not only about you. The longer it takes you to get your act together, the longer we miss your contribution. 

Buy a map, get a compass, hire a guide, and then go where no one has gone before. 

Schedule Meetings and Appointments More effectively.

If you are looking to spend less time booking sessions with your clients or choosing the best time to meet, then you might want to use these tools: Calendly and Doodle.

Use Doodle to select the best time.

With Doodle, you can create a poll with times when you are available, and you can share that with the other participants, so you quickly agree on what is the best time. 

The advantages of using a tool like this are avoiding emailing each other back and forth to figure out your availability and automatic time zone detection, so everyone knows the correct time every time!

Use Calendly for session scheduling. 

With Calendly, things are a bit different. You configure what kinds of sessions you are offering (30 minutes, 1 hour, etc.), the available time slots, and then send that to your customers, who will pick the right time for them. 

Using Calendly also takes care of dealing with timezones correctly, and if you connect it with your calendar, it will automatically avoid double booking. 

Both these tools have a free plan, and they are a great place to start when you need to schedule meetings or sessions with your clients.

 

New Normal – Collaboration Tools – Trello

Trello – The playful and pretty way to manage a project

If you are a fan of using post-it notes to organize your projects, you will love this next tool!

This post is part of the “New Normal – Collaboration Tools” series, and we are going to look at Trello.

Trello is so simple that it can be explained with just the picture below:

The idea is to use cards, organized in lists, to keep track of what is going on in the project. And the most simple version is to have the three classic lists:

  • To do 
  • Working On In
  • Done 

As you have guessed, you choose a card from the “To Do” list and move it to “Working On It” and when you finish, you move the card to the “Done List.”

So why is this so powerful, and not just use sticky cards on a real board? 

This series is called “Collaboration” tools, so that is where the power is. The Trello boards can be shared with teams of people. Now everyone can see the lists and move the cards around. This way, you can easily coordinate. For example, two people cannot pick up the same card to start working on it. Everyone has a clear picture of the status of the project by looking at the board. 

And the goodies don’t stop here! 

Each card can have its own comments – keeping the discussion always linked to the correct context.

The cards can have checklists – those can be used in very creative ways. For example, you can fragment the work further in sub-tasks, you can have a list of prerequisites that you are waiting to be fulfilled, and so on.

And the cards also have attachments. Attachments allow you to link relevant files to the card so the team can easily find them and access them as needed.

You can assign the card to someone, and you can set a due date! 

The interface is very friendly, playful, and easy to grasp! But make no mistake, Trello is not a toy. If you have time to dig into it, you will discover that it is an amazingly powerful tool. 

How to choose between Trello and Asana? 

If you are just starting with project management online, go with Trello. The free tier will serve you well for a long time. Asana is more complex and not as easy to learn. The only reason I am using Asana over Trello is due to my own resistance to change :). 

Can I get some time back, please?

I am bored, and I want to kill some time! Let’s binge watch Netflix or YouTube!

I used to think like that in the past. But in the last few years, I don’t remember a time when I could get bored! 

There are so many things I would like to do, to explore, to learn, to create! So many things… and so little time. How can you get bored?

When I look at where does boredom come from, for me, it had to do with something that I did not care for: like learning in school about a subject that was not interesting to me or having to do chores around the home. Then I would get bored. 

How does this apply to web apps?

Sooner or later, you will have this realization. No matter how much money you make, you cannot buy more time or lost time. You can lose money, and you can make more money. But lost time remains lost.

Once I had this understanding paying for coaching and mentors and specialists made much more sense. I was living with the illusion that I have an infinite amount of time. That I can do it all by myself, that I don’t need help, that I can eventually learn! But that is so very slow! 

If you do enjoy learning, then, by all means, do that in some areas of your life. But when it comes to realizing your goals, it is much more efficient to pay for help. You cannot buy more time, that is true, but you can use the money to save some of the time you got.

Get a coach, find a mentor, hire a specialist. And if you can, outsource the tasks that are boring for you. 

A note about outsourcing 

It was challenging for me to imagine that someone else might want to do the thing that I am bored with. But I have discovered two things:

– some people still prefer to trade their time for money, even if they don’t like the job (and if you need to keep the lights on, I understand, do what you need to do)

– and, more interestingly, some people find boring the things that I do with excitement and gusto (like dealing with complex online systems) 

I am glad we are all different; we each enjoy different things. This diversity means we can collaborate in projects where we do what inspires us, so we don’t feel like we are wasting our time, but we are fully living our lives instead.

Spend your time wisely!

Working from Home – Choose to embrace it

I didn’t plan to write about current events, but maybe this will help. 

I have made the transition to work from home a long time ago. The fact that I decided to do that and was not forced to do it, I am sure helped, but here are some things that I have learned that I would like to share with you.

I am also going to assert that you care about your work, and you want to continue, instead of merely taking time off now that “nobody is watching.” 

Your working Space

You need to have your distraction-free working space. It helps you with the discipline of “going to your office” every day. 

Your working Mode

Now that you work from home, you may be tempted to binge-eat while you work, to stay in your PJs, browse the YouTube, and latest news. Don’t do that. It will mess up with your focus and with your ability to do something productive for the day. 

As time passes and you get more disciplined, your working mode may include PJs and peanuts, but don’t start with that. Continue to “dress for success.” All of this is more of a “mind game” than anything.

Do not overwhelm yourself

The home office is a big change. Most humans don’t generally like change. The outside world is also going crazy. Be honest with yourself. Your energy and your ability to focus is not the same as it was before this change. Don’t overcrowd your workday. You are only setting yourself up for disappointment and burnout. 

There are many ways to do time management, but that I would suggest for this time is “the promise for today.” This way, you promise to do one important thing that can be done in a day and you do it. Yes, I said “ONE” (not ten). But I also said “important.” Trust me, drip by drip, you will make steady progress instead of burnout after burnout. 

Take care of your body.

It’s common sense, but let’s make it common practice. Drink water, take some pauses to stretch and walk around, look in the distance to relax your eyes, or better yet close them for a few minutes. This time is not an excuse to get out of working mode and binge on distractions. 

There is a tech solution for almost everything.

I don’t know what your work involves, but there is likely an app, a service, a new way of using technology to help you work from home. From remote access to files, to voice over IP, to Zoom calls and screen sharing, find your tools that can help. It can be done. If you don’t know how to do it, ask for help. Asking for help does not make you an idiot; it makes you efficient. 

We are all in this together.

It can get lonely when you work from home. Setup video calls with your team, even if only for 5 minutes after lunch. Call a friend for a “one on one – how are you doing conversation.”

But most of all, be compassionate and patient. The person at the other end of the line, computer, phone, service is in the same situation as you. They also are going through a big change, they also have family members to worry about, they are also concerned about the unknown future. Humanity first, business second. 

Keep positive

I am a strong believer in keeping your immune system in high gear. Stress can affect it dramatically, so stay positive as best as you can. Take things one day at a time. Make room for humor and play in your work. And when you are done working, I invite you to help another. You may have skills that are needed, knowledge than can be shared, but also a smile, a warm hug, or a deep “I see you” connection can go a very long way. 

“Live long and prosper!”