Welcome to the third in our series of tips on earning more and working less.

Today we are looking at the importance of time.

When you run your own business, time is your most important resource. And it’s probably the only truly limited resource. So the degree to which you achieve the best use of your time determines your success.

There are three secrets to taking control of your time.

1. Knowing how much your time is worth
The first step in getting control over your time is to know how much it’s worth. The most obvious way to value your time is just to take your annual earnings figure and divide it by the number of hours you work in a year.

However, the number of productive hours we have is much lower than the actual hours we ‘work’ so this underestimates the real value of time. But having a figure of some sort gives you a starting point that is better than no information at all.

When you know your hourly value, you can keep it in mind when you decide how you want to spend your time. If you begin to think of your time as worth your hourly rate, don’t be surprised if you start to earn it.

2. Making best use of the limited time you have available
There is a distinction between productive time and unproductive time:

• Productive time is time spent with clients or creating products and generates income.
• Unproductive time is checking emails, answering the phone, learning new things, surfing the web or talking to friends and makes you no money.

Of course it’s possible, for example, to spend time with clients that isn’t productive and learning new things can be very productive. The secret is being aware of the difference.

To get best results, you need to avoid these three thieves of profit:

1. Procrastination: Putting off tasks that you need to do.
2. Perfectionism: Waiting until it’s 100% right before you take action.
3. Undue Prudence: Too much caution and unwillingness to take risks.

Of course there always techniques that you can follow to beat these and one of them is discipline. As the motivational guru Jim Rohn says:

“We must all suffer from one of two pains, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is that discipline weights ounces while regret weighs tons.”

Having the discipline to control your time helps you use the day effectively.

3. Only doing things that earn the value of your time
Once you know your hourly rate, you should be asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing worth my hourly rate? Can I pay someone else significantly less to do it?”

So any business owner should make full use of automation and outsourcing to use their time more effectively.

The internet has made outsourcing an easy option for many people as it offers easy access to a wide range of services. You can outsource many aspects of your business to help you spend your time doing what adds greatest value.

So if you want to achieve the success you crave, it’s time to give your time its true value and to use it effectively.

See you in a couple of days for the next tip, when we’ll be starting to look at getting better results from your marketing.

P.S. To discover more about how making the best possible use of your time can transform your business, check out http://www.SuccessMindsetSystem.com