The Stop Doing List

CHAPTER 4 YOUR TIME IS WORTH MONEY!

Time is irreplaceable. If you lose money, you can always make more; waste your time, and you'll never get it back. All of us have a limited number of seconds in our lives. We don't know how much time we really have, yet we don't treat it with enough respect.

This is even truer in business. Every second spent in your business is time spent building something to help people, generate profit and build a future for you and your family. So when you spend your time on tasks that don't build your vision, it becomes lost time. Having a clear value on your time is key to the success of the Stop Doing List system.

The busyness trap

When we spend so much time working in our business, often our perspective gets warped and shifted out of proportion. Urgent work tasks are often mistaken for important ones. We get caught in the trap, taking on these urgent tasks, getting them done, and receiving the emotional reward of ‘well done, you've completed a task,' and we remain in that cycle day in, day out.

When you work for an employer, you have the advantage of someone managing your time. Not only are you told what to do (and, often, how to do it), you are given deadlines and time frames, often working with other people who have to meet their own deadlines.

More than that, you are told what your time is worth by your employer. Your hourly rate is set by the government, agreement or contract, and you always know what an hour is worth to you (and to your employer). ...