The Entrepreneurial Time System
Posted on October 13, 2007
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Erik Stafford here, and as a visionary, work-from-home type of person, I find that all my days are pretty much the same… I wake up, grab a coffee, and then spend my entire day dealing with whatever my voicemail or email throws at me.
I work too many hours. I work everyday, since my office is always right here, beckoning me.
I mentioned the Entrepreneurial Time System in my email yesterday. It was the core part of the Strategic Coach training I received last week in Phoenix, and it’s already making a huge impact on my energy and productivity… So I wanted to share it with you.
Basically, the Entrepreneurial Time System breaks the work week down into the following types of days:
Free Days: Free Days are not mandatory, they are required. Free Days are 24 hours, from midnight to midnight… completely unplugged. No email, no work, no phone. I am not even supposed to read books that relate to work!
Buffer Days: These are days where I plan, delegate, and generally complete any work that I have to get done. This includes podcast recording, blogging, myspace and social bookmarking stuff, customer support emails, etc. etc.
Focus Days: Focus Days are days where I spend almost all of my time doing “focus” activities, which are basically activities that center around my unique abilities, and directly affect my bottom line and the growth of my business. For me this means working on The Faster Webmaster II, and setting up partnerships and joint venture opportunities.
For me, I am going to start taking one “Free” day every week, and two “focus” days. This leaves four general “buffer” work days.
So what does this mean to you?
Well, even if you are not in a position where you can split up your time based on entire days (perhaps you have a full-time job, for example) then you can at least start by turning one weekend day into a “buffer” day (perhaps you work on side projects, or clean the house and run errands, or work on your internet business) and one weekend day into a “free” day: go ahead and unplug for an entire 24 hour period.
Read a book. Take the family somewhere. Go golfing, or go for a long walk.
In your work days, go ahead and carve out “focus” time and “buffer” time. Perhaps you check and answer emails and voicemail’s first thing in the morning, and then you turn everything off and just work on “focus” stuff until lunch.
I am taking my first full “free” day tomorrow. Wish me luck! I am taking the kids to the park, and then probably going to settle into my hammock with a good book. Maybe I will go golfing. Who knows?
Anyways, I hope you find this information as powerful as I have, and have a great weekend!
To your success,
Erik Stafford
The Entrepreneurial Time System Time Management Work From Home Work From Home Lessons Work From Home Tutorials
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5 Responses to “The Entrepreneurial Time System”
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I find my life orders itself this way naturally. It is like that: days when blogging, email etc take most of the time. other days when I just work on writing, drawing, graphics,printing, creating. . .
and then there are days when it is a long walk, or other errands. It seems to be built in organically. and I remember a millionaire who advised that one go for at least an hour or two of creative activity at the beginning of the day, as he found that answering emails right off made him a bit depressed: and lowered his productivity and enjoyment of life levels significantly.
Hi Erik,
What you say is good stuff. I guess this is one of my buffer days as I’m reading your blog.
As I have many distractions - a part time job, kids, a household to run, I have to take focus hours, not days. But when I make a point beforehand to say “these are my focus hours, not surfing hours”, I get a tremendous amount done. In fact, I just blogged about my experience with a 3 hour focus experiment http://peggybaron.com/blog.
You do have to keep a balance, don’t you? I like your terms; free, buffer, and focus. I’ll take a better look at how I am spending my days.
Thanks Erik,
Peggy
http://peggybaron.com/blog
[…] recently read an article on the Erik Stafford’s blog about a technique called the Entrepreneurial Time […]
Hi Erik,
This is really great info. I’ve written about it on my own blog and i’m going to try and implement the techniques.
Cheers
Jason
http://prohumorist.com
I have far too many buffer days and not enough focus days. This is a great system to break up the week, or even to divide up each day. I’m going to post a note to myself on the bulletin board so I don’t forget this.