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Time or money which is more important to you? Time is by far more valuable than money. Time is an opportunity to have more money. Putting a monetary value every hour will help you prioritize tasks and lose fewer minutes in irrelevant activities. 

Studies show that most employees spend an average of 30 hours in meetings, and less than 60 percent of their time working productively. 


Driving money and investing either to be an entrepreneur or only investor, is just like getting on a plane full of passengers and try to learn at the same time to fly. If you can get off the aircraft, I will really congratulate you, but you still have to learn about the dashboard, flaps, landing gear, alarms, autopilot, hold the plane firmly and then take it to the destination to land. Pretty complicated, right?

Having worked for a major public relations firm when I left college helped me understand the value I had every hour in my career. Although making a little money, customers paid more than $ 100 an hour while working on their account. For every 15-minute increment he was charged, he had to justify why. If a project gave me any difficulty, or I was just having an unproductive day, I adjusted my hours. 
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Although I no longer have to relate my time to accounts at the end of the day, that mentality has worked exceptionally well. I have found that it is very useful in any workspace (even if you work for a non-profit organization). The hours of the day are finite and precious, and the most successful managers and entrepreneurs are those who not only know how to manage their time but also the time of their team. 

I have long since left the world of public relations, but today I still allocate a dollar amount to my hours. And I recommend that any other person who has to battle with many tasks and pending at the same time also do. 

If you look at the first hour of the day as, say, $ 1000 instead of 9-10am on your calendar, then it will be easier to prioritize tasks by planning your hours, days and weeks around the most important goals. This will also help you away from activities that absorb time and that, in a new light, you will realize that they are not worth the 'money' they cost. 

As a manager, it is equally important to put a value on the time of your colleagues and employees. My time costs more than my employees, and yours more than the inmates. Everyone understands this dynamic and plans accordingly. It helps me to decide more quickly what kind of tasks to delegate to a patient, whether it is worth an employee to do it at the moment or if I should absorb it. In determining the relative importance (and time sensitivity) of the tasks, it is much easier to assign and complete them as productively as possible. 
Also read: The Worst Things You Should Never Do With Your First Salary

Assigning a monetary value to your duties and those of your employees helps to better order schedules and eliminate slopes that take time and decrease productivity. A one-hour meeting with 20 people, where they actually only needed to attend 10, translates into a virtually lost work day. 

For veterans of workspaces, this way of thinking (long meetings) may seem natural, but for young professionals, the value of a lost hour can be much greater. Therefore, thinking of time as a monetary value is a useful mental model that can be applied in any career. If we all treated the minutes as if they were dollars.

People who have traditional jobs often "watch the clock" to know when they finish work. That does not seem to happen when you are an independent worker because, in general, you are so busy that you don't know how the day went or you are getting busy with many distractions that you also don't know how the day went by.

For the self-employed, the workday seems to fade without actually knowing how time went by. If you do not use the time to earn money, you are essentially wasting time and money.

It is important to control the time to know how you used it, but also because there are four more reasons why you should keep track of your workday as an independent worker, as it can generate greater productivity, customer satisfaction, and profitability.

1. Precise billable time

You do not want to fool with the time dedicated to an independent project nor to overcharge your clients. If someone asks you about the time spent on certain tasks, you will have an accurate and detailed record of the billable time. 
As a self-employed person, time tracking apps

"Time tracking helps you to determine which task actually takes longer to get done and make you less productive."

2. Professional image

Still, some people consider that the freelance workers are amateurs and they realize a "little" work in the living room of their home, in spite of the popularity that acquired this work. However, by having an accurate record and sharing specific details of how the project time was used, customers can be impressed and increase confidence in you as a professional partner.

3. Greater responsibility

Although you may not consider spending too much time on Facebook or Instagram, or paying attention while you are analyzing the following article or phase of project development, it is helpful to have a tracking tool to have the evidence you need to know where is your time going

Seeing what you do in each minute can make you more responsible for staying on a task and use most of the time for productive jobs and generate money.

"Time tracking app can help you to eliminate or re-think about your bad habits like spending the whole day on Facebook."

4. Better calculations

Analyzing the time you devoted to previous projects can help you have better cost and time estimates on future projects with new or existing customers. This improves expectations while reducing any area of conflict if you realize later that you offered a lower price for the project or promised too much.

5. Reduction or elimination of multiple tasks

Despite what many people may think about various tasks, they actually lead to fewer things being done. It is more efficient to focus entirely on one project at a time than to divide the time for two or more projects. It is more likely to generate better quality work and maximize your time to accept more work than before. Time tracking will help you see why multiple tasks are not the best strategy.

6. Customer analysis

There may be clients who are not the best for your time and effort, but you will only know precisely if you track the amount of time you spend on each account and evaluate the earnings you get from the relationship. If you see that you are spending more time than the work is worth, you can leave that customer and leave the door open for one that is much better at the return on investment time.

7. Delegation of tasks

Before you reject clients, however, see if you can refer that work to someone new to independent work who can do it for you at a lower rate so that you can focus on the clients you get the most value for the time/money ratio.

If there are tasks within your business that are not very good and do not allow you to make more money, try delegating them to others who specialize in those areas. If you evaluate the time you earn by charging them and making more money, you can gain critical knowledge.

8. Improved financial decisions

Studying the time you spend on your business can show you whether life as an independent worker pays off for you or if there are ways to improve to make more money without working so hard, or at least being able to live on what you currently do.

Evaluating the time and money for the designated moment, you are using can give you a bigger financial picture of how you are achieving it. Often this is not distinguished due to daily activities that distract you from having a more detailed look at your processes.

9. Productivity schedules

Observing how the time and hours of the day when you are most productive can help you reorganize the workday according to those periods.

For example, if you see that you could make more money during the early morning or late at night compared to other years where you were more distracted, you could reorganize your day according to those habits and events.

It's okay to have productive and unproductive times during the day; Therefore, keeping track of what they are will only make you have a happier independent job.

10. Progress, motivation and goal setting

Although he loves independent work, there may be times when he feels like a hamster on a wheel. However, by recording time and getting a visual image of how productive it has been, you can increase the chances of staying motivated.

Having the ability to keep track of time also gives you a set of quantitative data with which to work to establish new goals in each quarter or year you spend in the independent business. Therefore, you can continue and see progress while maintaining that motivation

Anyway, investing in time tracking provides you with profits and makes "sense" to freelancers.

Having effective time management skills is the first quality to achieve success. Learn how to organize yourself to fulfill all the tasks and tasks on your agenda.

It is almost certain that at some point in your life have taken a time management class, you read a book on the subject or have tried to use some kind of calendar to organize your day and manage your priorities. Why with all these devices and information you still feel that you can not complete what you have pending?

The answer is simple. Everything you learned about time management is a complete waste of time and does not work. Before you begin to manage time, you must understand what it is. The dictionary defines it as "the point or period in which things happen." There are two types of time: clock time and real time. In the first, there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. When someone turns 50, they are exactly 50 years old, no more, no less.

In reality, all time is relative. Time flies or drags you depending on what you do. What time does the world in which you actually live, the real time or the time of the clock describe?

The reason that the time management devices do not work is that these systems are designed to handle clock time. You live in real time, the world in which time flies when you are having fun, or you drag when you are performing tedious paperwork.
Also read: 12 Ways to Improve Your Time Management Skills

The good news is that the real time is mental. You create it, and everything you create can handle it. It is time to remove any self - sabotage or self - limitation you have about "not having enough time" or not "the right time" to start your business or properly handle the current.

There are three ways to pass the time: thoughts, conversations, and actions. No matter what kind of business you have, your work will consist of these three things. As an entrepreneur, you will be interrupted frequently or taken to different directions. Even if you can not eliminate interruptions, you can decide how much time you spend on those things and how much you spend in the thoughts, conversations, and actions that will lead you to success.

Practice the following techniques to manage your own time: 

1. Have a schedule and pointing all your thoughts, conversations and activities for a week. This will help you know how much you can do during the day and what you do with your time. You can see how much time you actually spend producing results and how much you lose in thoughts, conversations and unproductive actions.

2. Any activity or conversation that is critical to your success should have a certain amount of time allocated. To-do lists take more time and more when they can not be finished. Homework books work. Plan your appointments and create blocks of time for the most important thoughts, conversations, and actions. Have the discipline to complete these earrings.

3. Spend at least 50 percent of your time with thoughts, activities, and conversations that give you more results.

4. In your planning, it includes time in which you will surely be interrupted.

5. Take the first 30 minutes of the day to organize your day. Do not start until you complete your plan.

6. Take five minutes to each call and task to decide the outcome you want to get. This will help you visualize success before you begin. Also, it will slow down time. Take five minutes after each thing to determine if you have achieved the desired results.

7. Put a "do not disturb" sign when you should actually do your job.

8. Practice not answering the phone just because it is ringing and the emails just because they arrive. Do not give people your full attention unless it is critical to your business. Instead, plan your time to respond.

9. Block distractions like Facebook and other social networks unless you use them for your business.

10. Remember that it is impossible to finish everything. Also, the odds are that 20 percent of your thoughts, conversations, and activities will produce 80 percent of your results.