Not enough time to get stuff done try creating it

Are you finding that you don’t have enough time in the day to get your work done? Here are some ideas to help you ‘create time’ in the midst of the busyness. Change Your Work Hours & Save 6 Weeks! Imagine! Having an extra 6 weeks in the year to get work done or spend with the family! Are you working from 9am-5pm? That means you are probably traveling to work in peak hour traffic. In many cities, the average commute can take up to an hour each way. If you change your work hours from 9am-5pm to 8am-4pm, or 10am-6pm, you could miss the peak hour traffic and save 30 minutes each way. This amounts to one hour a day, 5 hours a week, or 250 hours a year! And that’s about a 6 week time saving! Commuting – Time Consuming and Boring? Or Productive Time? Are you one of the many commuters stuck in traffic each day? Many employees spend 30-90 minutes commuting to work, each way in cars, buses and trains. Do you get road rage? Stressed with the bustle? What a way to start the day – stressed! What if you could use this time to your advantage? If traveling by car, start thinking about what you have on that day, or use a Dictaphone to write a letter. Plan your first half of the day in your mind whilst driving. If traveling by bus, read a proposal or a work brief. If traveling by train, use your laptop to clear some emails. Look for new ways to turn the time consuming chore of commuting into an invigorating ‘Head Start’ on your day. This will help you save time, and start work in a more focused manner. Crazy Email Confusion? Or Disciplined Email Habits! ”Answer emails as they arrive, or a few times daily?” Most people answer emails as they arrive. This creates a distraction and can take 5-10 minutes after each email to get focused on work again. Based on an average of 10 emails a day and 5 minutes refocusing time, that’s about 4 hours a week being wasted. 20 emails a day can rob you of 8 hours a week etc. To save time, only check your emails at set times (i. e. 9am, 11am, 1pm, 4pm), and answer as many emails as you can in 15 minutes. Having set ‘Email Checking’ times will help you stay focused and achieve more. “Become a ‘Conversation Finisher’, as quick responses are good responses.” When people email you with a question, answer it! Don’t go off topic or get drawn into long-winded discussions. By answering right the first time, you will save time from ongoing related emails. Most email users use the ‘Forward’ and ‘Reply’ button far too much, resulting in confusing conversations, and not getting resolution on issues! Let the buck stop with you and save time! Spend Time Planning & you’ll Create Time! Spend 15 minutes at the start of each day planning your priorities for the day. This will ensure you make time to get the ‘Big Stuff’ done. It’s easy to fit the small stuff around the big stuff, but not as easy to fit the big stuff around the small stuff. As a famous quote said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” Obey the ‘5 Minute Phone Call’ Rule & Save Hours! When answering calls, be decisive and to the point. A good method to save time on calls is to have a timer on the desk and start it when you answer the phone. Spend the first minute getting all the info from the caller. Spend the next 2-4 minutes providing answers, info or helping the caller. When you get close to or over the 5 minute mark, start winding up the conversation. Make sure you always end the conversation, not others and you should control your time, not others. How Long Does it Take to Eat a Sandwich? Employees are given 30 to 60 minutes for lunch. There is nothing wrong with having a break, but if you’re under pressure for a few days, or need to stay focused on a project, make a sandwich the night before. Be a nerd and bring lunch to work! It takes about 5-10 minutes to eat a sandwich (and homemade always tastes better) but the real saving is time. By eating a homemade sandwich, you’ll save up to 50 minutes a day, or 4 hours a week! And if we’re really honest, that time would only be spent waiting in queues at cafйs or on gossip in the staff kitchen. Make a sandwich and shave 4 hours of stress off your week!

Good experiences come back 10 fold

How many times have you needed to call for a service such as carpet cleaning? Mechanic service? How about a more serious issue such as a flood service? Did you find that looking through the phone book just doesn’t give enough info and searching online pops up to many unreliable, irrelevant leads? Either way, I personally find it hard at times to find quality, fast reliable service. For instance, I thought word of mouth was the best way to get what I am looking for. So I talked to a friend when my car broke down. “Sure” she said, I know just the place. After agreeing to pay a ridiculous price for a fast turn around, I thought money talks, right? Not in this case, 2 weeks later my car is still in the shop and the price has doubled. Well after explaining that I found the part myself for half the price they were charging, I would just have it towed to my location to fix it myself. I am quite handy and knew how to fix the problem, but I was going to pay so that I would not be under the hood when I needed to be out working. Trouble is I work from that vehicle and after 2 weeks you can get pretty hungry with no income. After the manager found out that I was taking my vehicle, they cut the price in half and I agreed to let them try again. We will see how that turns out. The point that I would like to make is that I see it all to often. I see companies take on more work than they can handle or put the same person on the back burner over and over again. I am a victim of that and it feels terrible. Do you think I will send them any biz? When I started my company Moore Services in 1997, I knew that word of mouth is the most respected advertisement and I wanted just that, a respected name that my customers could count on. From the first day of business, and even now my goal is to build a solid customer base of repeat satisfied customers. Now I have pride knowing that I still have many of my first customers all because of situations that had a negative impact on me. What I mean by that is, I knew I didn’t like to be ripped off or taken advantage of and I sure don’t want a single one of my customers to feel that way either. Sometimes you just need a fast response and hope for the best after making one phone call. I spend each day making sure that all of my customers feel that calling me is in fact that one call they can trust time and again with out a doubt if they need me. If you or a friend run a company, remind yourself of the frustrations you deal with and turn the situation around to make positive impressions and experiences for your customers. They will thank you 10 fold I promise. Try to confront every frustration as a new learning experience share a smile knowing that you would never do that to a friend or a customer. For every bad day you have, make someone else’s day a good day by giving them a no hassle experience. Remember, it comes back 10 fold maybe even 20 if they have that many friends and relatives. From 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000. Now that is a lot of happy customers from just 1 happy customer. Just imagine if you gave them a negative experience.

The importance of organization

When you begin a business, you begin a challenge that is unlike any other. Suddenly your life is much more complicated than you ever thought it would be. The case is certainly no different with a food concession business. Some may think that it is much easier to deal with, but that is just not the case. While the concession trailer business is a difficult undertaking no matter what you do, there are many things that you can do to make your life easier. One of the most important traits to make sure that you perfect when opening and running any business is organization. Developing your organizational skills can help you have a much easier time with paperwork, routine for business, and can make your life easier in general. The first thing that getting organized can do for you is to give you help with your paperwork. Keeping track of income, expenditures and taxes is all a part of running a successful businessing up with an organizational system can help obliterate confusion. Having receipts, ticket books, and an up-to-date list of income and expenditures cuts down on clutter as well. Plus, when you need to find something, you can go right to the items you are looking for because they are well organized. There are several systems out there that you can put into place for your concession business. There are electronic tracking systems available or you can come up with a system that is all your own that can work for you. Taxes are something you must keep very close track of or it becomes difficult to prepare them when the time comes. Payroll is something else that organization can aid with if you have employees. Organization doesn’t just come in handy with regard to paperwork. It can also help when you are dealing with inventory and daily and weekly business routines. Listing the things you expect from your business operations and from your employees is a great way to make sure everything gets done when it is supposed to. Also, having a system for the stocking and restocking of inventory can make the business run a lot more smoothly. If you don’t have a system in place, do some research. The internet is a fantastic source of information. Also, asking people in this line of work the way that they handle their businesses can be of tremendous help. Organization is not simply for the business world. It can make your overall life better in general. Organizing your life will make things easier to find, save you time, and could even save you money. Wasting time looking for things you’ve misplaced and forgetting to take that defective product back to the store can cost you two of the most valuable commodities that exist. Time and money don’t grow on trees and if you take the time to organize and then you keep it that way, they are two commodities you don’t have to worry about losing. Organizing your business can bring you the same benefit, in a much bigger way. The value of your time is more and the money you stand to lose is a much higher amount. The price for being disorganized in your business is definitely a hefty one.