Question:

How do you monitor yourself to follow the 80/20 Rule if you are alone?  I find that I like doing the 20% stuff more.

Note: The 80/20 rule says that 80% of your time should be spent on income generating tasks and 20% for other stuff.

Answer:

I think that we all like the 20% stuff more! However, if you need to make some money in your working hours you need to re focus your energy into productive tasks.

Learning to plan and spend your time wisely is a personal journey, something that you go after on your own.

The way to begin is to write down all the things that you did in a day and how much time you spent doing it. There is a great little form for this in the Forms and Facts Study Guide; you just keep it on your desk and pause twice a day and to jot down what your time is being spent on.

The action of writing begins to make us more aware of where our time is going.

Do this for 2 weeks and then take the time to have a little meeting with yourself. Leave the studio, go out for coffee with your notes and analyze what you are doing. Now you can make some informed decisions about what you want to eliminate, change or plan better.

Think of this as “baby steps” toward the 80/20 goal. When we start making conscious decisions about how we spend our working time we end up with more freedom in our lives to do the things that we really want to do.