Maximize – Monetize! – Your Time

It’s an old cliché but it really is true – time is money.  Minimum wage here in Florida is now, for 2016, up to $8.22 an hour.  Many professionals you encounter will tell you what their rate is, charging by the hour.  Employees want double time if they have to work above and beyond their eight-hour day.

Those of you reading this who are musicians know how much you need to get paid when you perform, and that probably varies with how much time you are being booked for.

So why do so many people squander away their time with activities that really aren’t productive to what they do in their everyday life to make money?

Someone is going to get offended by this because they’re going to try to make the work/life balance argument.  Those are the people who are clock watchers.  They’ll find any excuse why the boss should let the staff leave early that day.  Or they work from home and justify sleeping in and/or taking naps as offsetting all the long hours they recently endured for some special project.

But the fact of the matter is we need to do a self-audit in terms of our time.  What are you doing that you can eliminate because it’s not directly leading to income?

Full disclosure, I am speaking from experience.

It has been over a year now since I, for all intents and purposes, stopped surfing Facebook.  I imposed a mandate that signing in to social media would be solely for putting up a post on the business accounts.  That’s it – sign in, put up the post, and then sign out.

It probably has helped that I have never had Facebook or Twitter on my phone.  One could argue that I might be missing out on doing more business and making more connections as a result, but I can say that it has certainly prevented me from wasting time just poking around on one or both of those platforms.

Additionally, I served in an officer position with a local organization that required me to sit in a meeting once every other week for approximately 90 minutes.  Not only was there drama I didn’t need to sit and listen to, but more importantly, I realized that being in that role was not increasing business for Now Hear This.

I politely and professionally stepped away while still getting business from the organization on the whole.

With today being the first business day of the new year, it’s a perfect excuse to look yourself – or your schedule – in the mirror and make some changes aimed at addition by subtraction.