“Time is money.”

You’ve heard that expression a thousand times or more. And as many times as you’ve heard it,  you have ignored it.

Every year, I get hundreds of requests for a course in time management. And every year, I give my answer: Why are you asking ME what to do with YOUR time? Don’t you KNOW what to do?

I am writing a book on the subject of time management. Working title: “You already know what to do; you’re just not doing it.”

So if time is money, as suggested earlier, what are you doing with yours? Are you spending it or investing it? How are your time investments working for you?

Spending time or investing time is a CHOICE. Here are some examples of choices. See which ones apply to you. 
• Do you spend time watching TV or invest time reading a book?
• Do you spend time drinking in a bar or invest time writing or preparing for a sales call.

Is it time management? No, it’s actually time allocation. It’s how you choose to use your time RIGHT NOW. 

How are you spending or investing your 16 to 18 hours a day?

New pressures are being placed in the immediacy of your time — and for many, it’s hours, not minutes a day. These time uses have crept into the work fabric and are firmly planted in your life and mine.
• Email. How many a day? Ten or 100? 
• Texting. Instant and unavoidable. 
• Smartphones. People (not you, of course) are addicted. They can’t sit down without looking at it, and responding to it. They spend hours on your mobile device with text, search, email, apps, games and THEN they start talking.

“I don’t spend that much time on the phone.” Really? An hour and a half a day is 2,700 minutes a month, or almost two full 24-hour days a month. And most people spend MORE. I’m not saying it’s all bad time. I am saying it’s 90 hours — measure its value.

And new time pulls are reallocating your limited time. The biggest being social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube demand business and personal attention, and more time allocation. Time you and I never had to allocate before. Add blogs, e-zines, emails and websites, and you have hundreds of new hours demanding, no commanding, both attention and time. 

Wanna add up your new allocation of time? Three hours a day (minimum for all the items above) is 15 hours a week, if you only play five days. Doubtful. That’s 780 hours a year. My number would be closer to 1,000. How about you? You’re probably spending 1,000 hours just on your smartphone.

Here’s the opportunity, or the rub, depending on how you look at it. In all this allocation or reallocation of time, make certain you’re addressing the real goals of the time investment process. Here’s what you should be concentrating on achieving during these allocated hours:
• Making connections.
• Helping customers
• Providing value
• Service in an instant
• Building relationships
• Earning referrals
• Building a social selling platform
• Writing and blogging
• Following up with hot accounts
• And, oh yes, making sales

Cold calling? You have no time to waste on hit or miss. Cold calls are 99.9 percent misses;  referrals are 75 percent hit. Start there.

LinkedIn is a professional connecting platform. Start there.

You might want to allocate some hours for reading, family and travel. I do.