Jason Calacanis is an Ever wondered how the most successful businessmen manage their time?
Here’s a pretty cool set of things that Jason does to efficiently manage his time. (Originally posted on Quora.com)
- I read at least 2 hours a day.
- I spend at least 2 hours a day with my family (more on weekends).
- I meet with a dozen founders a week.
- I host two incubator classes a week, 3 hours each.
- I host This Week in Startups 2x a week, 90 minutes each.
- I write for at least five hours a week.
- I work on Inside.com seven days a week.
- Play poker 1-2x a week with friends
- Do a Tae Kwon Do class 1x a week with my daughter
- Do a hike with my daughter every week (4 hours!)
- Social media, an hour a day probably
What Can We Learn From Jason’s Routine
All of us have just 24hrs in a day, but it’s what we do in those hours that make a different in our lives.
If you’ve observed Jason’s routine, he’s got the main chunks in order:
- Personal Development
- Family Time
- Focused “Income Producing Activities” in Business
- Speaking / Training / Value Giving
- Personal Writing
- Passion Time: Martial Arts & Hiking
- Social Media
How To Apply This In Your Internet Business
We are in the age of the ‘knowledge worker’, and it’s very easy to get distracted from our daily goals.
So in order to start living the internet lifestyle… we’ve got to inculcate some simple daily disciplines!
- Reading Daily
- Blogging Daily
- Marketing Daily
- Unwinding Weekly
- Efficiently Using Social Media
1. Readers are Leaders – Time and again, we’ve seen that those who spend a lot of time reading are the ones to end up having better lives and bigger bank accounts.
When David Wood once met a top millionaire many years back, he asked him, “What’s the Secret To Your Success?”
The millionaire told him just one thing…
“Read daily for 60 minutes for the next 10 years without fail, and your life will not be the same again.”
This golden advice helped David create over 15 millionaires world-wide and also helped him generate over $186 million in revenues online.
2. Blogging – The purpose of blogging is two-fold. It not only helps you give value to your market but also helps you learn as you write. As you LEARN, DO & TEACH at the same time, you will experience a super-charged growth in your personal and professional career.
3. Marketing – Getting new customers into your business is by far the most important activity in your day. Spend more time in marketing and less time in beautifying your website. There are many ways to market your website.
4. Unwinding – All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Sames goes while building your internet business. Pick your passions and allocate time for it. Even till today, I try to spend a lot of time working on my music production sitting in my bedroom home studio.
5. Social Media – If you are effectively able to use social media to build a connection with your audience, that’s the best! I spend a lot of time on social media, giving value to my network using Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
How To Prioritise Your Tasks
Know your priorities. Here’s a technique on how you can chunk your tasks into any of these 4 areas.
Prioritizing the tasks you need to do yourself is key. Once you have put the tasks in “do it now” you can look at the timelines for each activity and finish as per the urgency.
David Pethick,
I try not to be really busy, but for periods of weeks and months at a time I can be. I’ve found the following things work well to help me cope and remain productive when there is more work than time available…
- Operating Rhythm – you go insane without a tempo or rhythm to the day. Carving the day up into a few distinct chunks helps enormously. I generally spend the first few hours offloading the urgent stuff onto others who are more competent or have capacity to get it done. I then tackle the one big thing I WANT to do. I keep doing this until I’ve gotten as far as I can that day. I then move onto the must do urgent stuff that I don’t want to do. I take one shot at it, do it as well as I can before exhaustion sets in and the stuff that didn’t get done goes into the “offload” pile for tomorrow morning.
- Safety Valve – my worst moments and decisions have always come when I’m super busy. I’ve learned a lot about my own triggers and how to intercept my default behaviour and substitute something a lot less harmful. If I go for a walk around the park in the middle of the day, then something really frustrating just happened and I’m dealing with it the best way I can. By the way, I also learned not to take my phone with me on those walks, because if the wrong person tries to contact me at that time then I need to go and get a new phone 😉
- Sorry, but No – when non-important stuff gets added to the list, being able to say “no” with empathy is a very useful skill. Don’t leave any room for confusion though. No means no. Saying it to clients is an amazing experience – “we’ve got too much on, but let me make a warm introduction to these guys” has never failed me. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it works very well to help build relationships.
- Time Out – every now and then you just need to stop. The busier you are, the shorter the break needs to be to have an impact. I have taken this to extremes and done things like missing a flight sort of on purpose to simply buy a few hours of downtime.
- Book a Holiday – being busy can get addictive. I found that booking a holiday at a future point in time can be a great way to bring it to a conclusion. Generally, look a few weeks or months in advance, book it and then countdown to the day the crunch will end. I’ve never stressed about not making my holiday because have an end in mind is a great way to focus.
Conclusion – Final Thoughts
It all comes down to balance. You’ve got to have the right mix of personal growth, business and leisure for you to nail it!
Here’s how a $100 million man built his multiple businesses.
