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Organization/Time Management

You know you've heard this phrase before: The Time Value Of Money. It simply means the amount of revenue your money creates for you over a period of time. It is a way of identifying which investments pay the highest dividends. Have you ever wondered about the Money Value of TIME? Money Mapping™ is a wonderful tool for understanding just how valuable your time is to your success.

We all want to work less and make more. That's true for you too or you wouldn't be reading this article. While this is a desire that burns strongly for us, it is also the one that eludes us most often. I started wondering why as I was working with my client the other day and it came to me. We, as individual entrepreneurs and small business owners are subject to the same Laws of Economics on which our economy is based. It is The Law of Supply and Demand. It really is a simple law and it applies to you. Here are the basics:

    * When supply is low, prices go higher
    * When supply is high, prices go lower to drive sales

You see this law at work every day when you go to the gas pumps. Lots of oil, lower prices. Shortage of oil, higher prices. Threat of shortage of oil, higher prices still. So how can you get this law to work on your behalf?

That's where the principle of Money Mapping™ kicks in and you'll need some simple tools to make an amazing discovery:

   1. A knowledge of your body's clock
   2. Your daily planner/schedule
   3. A green pen or pencil

Step 1: Identify Your Body's Clock

Each of us runs on a particular time schedule. Some of us are night owls and some of us are morning people. You know who you are by how early you run out of steam in the evening and how early you start in the morning. Within your 24 hours there is a set of Magical 5 hours where you are on top of the world. This is your most creative time of day. One of the biggest mistakes we make is to squander the Magical 5 on tasks that require no creativity whatsoever: reading email, opening mail, reading the paper, talking to co-workers or running errands.

It's a daily tragedy that gets repeated over and over and is a true loss. Every creative hour we waste can never be recaptured. Stop and take a few moments to identify your Magical 5.

Step 2: Find Your Planner

Before you can make lasting changes, it's important to move the ideas from the intellectual zone to the emotional zone, where change really occurs. Look over your schedule and take an inventory of the Magical 5 that were available to you over the last month. That's 30 creative hours a week (take off one day to rejuvenate your spirit) and on average 129 creative, high-energy hours a month.

To complete our equations, you must know your gross wages per hour or your hourly, billable rate. Start to think like an attorney and you'll make money like one.

Now out of that 129 hours available, mark off those that were used on revenue generating activities only. If you had to drive to an appointment for a sales call you can count that time, but make sure you look at the cost: benefit ratio of the call.

To get your efficiency rate, take the number of billable hours you worked. Note: Do not count all the time you were working, only count the exact number of hours you worked at earning money, i.e. on a sales call, filling an order, following up on a lead, doing a client's work for which you are getting paid.

So if you had 129 billable hours available and worked 50 of them on revenue generating activities you have an efficiency rate of 39%. What do you think the rate is for wealthy business owners?

Step 3: Create Your Money Map™

Grab your green pencil and mark off your creative time, your Magical 5 for 6 days a week. Do it for every week. This step is crucial to your success so don't skip it. Every activity your schedule in the GREEN Zone is for making money. When you schedule a maintenance activity, errand, or social call during this time, you are short-changing your earning possibilities.

By marking off your Magical 5, you will train yourself to be more conscious of how you spend and waste your best time of day. After a while, you will turn off your email and let the voice mail answer the phone while working on a revenue activity. More of your good time will be spent on making money. What do you think you'll end up with? More Money, of course.

I encourage you to practice Money Mapping™ with your Magical 5 this month. Next month I'm going to share how to put the Law of Supply and Demand to work in your business, but it won't work for you if you don't have a strong handle on this trick first.