For all the freedom that comes with being an entrepreneur there is also the danger of having too much free or unstructured time.

Going straight from the time demands of college, to the routine of Corporate America I had become conditioned to get things done when they needed to be done. Period.

When a professor gave me an assignment to complete by the 10th – it got done. When my boss requested that I provide a report by 3:30pm it was done.

However, after working from home full time for almost 6 years now, and embracing the freedom of setting my own schedule, I have found that lately I haven’t been as productive as I need to be in my business or life.

After more than a few days had passed when I found myself  still in my PJ’s at 2 o’clock in the afternoon with nothing checked off of my ever growing things to do list, I had to ask myself if it was because I was spending too much time (the very time I’d convinced myself that I was running out of)  on the wrong things and not enough time on the things I needed to focus on.

My husband, who also works from home, challenged and intrigued me with what he calls the “Open Checkbook Theory,” it is the belief that there is an unlimited amount of resources (be it money, time, etc)  in which we have to operate.

To understand this theory, you have to realize that it is not an attack on any principles of abundance, rather it is the realization that we are all given the same 24 hours in which to work and when they’re up – they’re up.

So how does the Open Checkbook Theory work against you?

It actually has to do with the 80/20 rule or what’s known as  the “Pareto Principle,” which suggests that 80 percent of your productivity will come from 20 percent of your action.

Mix the Open Checkbook Theory with the fact that most of us spend 80 percent of our time working on 80 percent of things that aren’t the m0st profitable or productive, and throw in the realization that “time will be used in the measure we give,” and you have a recipe for a lot of time being wasted on the wrong things.

So what’s the solution?

How do you close the checkbook and still maintain your freedom and flexibility?

First you have to identify the things that you are regularly spending time on, and determine just how much time they really require.

For example, ask yourself:

• How often do I check my email?
• When I check my email do I read and reply immediately or do I read and tell myself I’ll get back to it later?
• Are there set times in the day that I check and respond to email or is my email box open all day (i.e. Open Checkbook)
• Do I put a limit on how long I will talk on the phone, or how often I’ll check voice mail during my focused work hours?
• Can I have someone else read, filter and even respond to my email and voice mails for me?

Before I began consciously closing the checkbook and reigning in my time, there were days when I spent more than 5 hours on email, 3 hours on various social networking sites, and another 2+ on returning phone calls. That’s a whopping 10+ hours and at least 7 of them weren’t actually necessary!

HINT: If it’s not a business buliding activity then you’ve got to question the validitiy of doing it.

So the second thing you must do is the same thing I advise my Financial Fitness clients to do when they find that their spending is out of whack. You’ve got to tell your time where to go, rather than wondering where it went.

I tend to like a free form way of operating, but too much freedom can actually lead to a crazy type of entrapment. That being said, if you want to make the most of your day there has to be some structure into when and how long you will engage in the activities that haven’t proven to yield you the highest results.

Set a schedule for when you will check emails, how often you’ll post on Twitter or Facebook,  and just how long you will take to reply to an email before you delete it. When you pre-plan these things you can respond automatically rather than spending necessary productivity time that should be spent on revenue generating activities.

*One great way to do this is schedule some activity that is time sensitive. You could register for a exercise class at 4:00 PM that takes you 15 minutes to drive to so you know that you have to be finished a significant amount of work by 3:30 PM.

Third, you have to be honest with yourself about your high energy/high output times and plan your day accordingly. That being said, you want to block out chunks of time for those activities that will require the most focus, but get you the best results.

If you know that it takes you a while to get the juices flowing after you wake up, early morning might not be the best time to plan to work on a project that you need to have full energy on. Conversely, if you start to wind down mentally in the mid-afternoon it’s not the time to attempt to dig into a big task.

So, identify your high energy times and get clear on your high productivity business building tasks, then close that “checkbook,” allocate your time accordingly, and watch how much more you’ll get accomplished before 2 ‘o clock rolls around.

http://www.Sanyika.com