MBA1064 How do you know you have too much on your plate?

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Hey oh welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. The podcast that knows that hey, you're busy. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you will learn. How do you know you have too much on your plate? As entrepreneurs we have a hard time saying no. We want to do it all. But let's get real. That's an easy and fast way to feel overwhelmed and never feel like a sense of accomplishment. So today I'm going to give you some great techniques that have worked for me so I can know I'm taking on too much. I need to start delegating because there's just way too much on my plate. Also let you know when you know there's not enough on your plate. That could happen. Too good problem to have. But seriously, if you don't have the right balance, your business will suffer. The business is not going to have the things that need to get done done because they're just sitting on your plate. You got to move fast. You got to get things done in business. Additionally, I don't want to see you burn out. I want you to make it out alive and enjoy the fruits of your labor. So let's make sure we don't have too much on our plate. Let's learn how, let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So let's set up a technique so we know exactly if we have too much on our plate or not. One of my favorite productivity activities is to have a to do list for my week. This is simply a Google sheet. Google Sheets is absolutely free when you have a Gmail account, and it's basically an Excel sheet stored in the cloud. And I have two columns. One column on the left is blank, and the other column on the right is the task. And when the task is done, I check it off, and I have a list of tasks that I need to conquer, I need to take on for the whole week. Each week, I make a tab at the bottom of the sheet. Sounds pretty simple right? Now. What's great about this to do list or sheet is I could see everything I have to do for the week. And on average, I have about 40 to 50 tasks on that sheet every week. Now, some tasks are gonna take me, you know, 20 minutes to finish, and some of them are gonna take me two hours. But as I finish each task, I check it off if I've done it or not. At the end of the week, Friday evening, I take a look at that list. I literally copy the tab and create a new tab for next week. And I basically just move over the things I did not finish from the current week or the end of this week. If I'm moving over more than 10% of the tasks that were originally planned out for the week, that's a red flag for me. That means I got too much on my plate. So let's say, for example, I have 40 tasks on my to do list for the week. If by the end of the week, I have about four, even five tasks that I just didn't get time to complete, I didn't do, I kind of feel like, okay, that's not bad. That's around the 10% mark. But if I have like eight or 10 tasks way above the 10%, that's a huge red flag. That means that I'm just trying to do too much. I just can't pull it off. If this is happening consistently week after week, let's say three weeks in a row or three weeks out of a month, something's gotta change. I gotta take a look at these tasks that are taking up a lot of my time. And in fact, I take a Look at all the tasks that I have to do in that to do list and ask myself, was there anything I could outsource? Could anybody else do these tasks? And when I say anybody, I mean anybody. I'm not talking about people that are just on my team. Can I hire somebody to do this and I'll find out? Yeah, there is plenty. Even if I have to train them, create a quick video tutorial and show them how to do it. The goal here is I gotta get those things off my plate because it's just overflowing. It's just falling off my plate onto the table. I just keep cleaning it up and putting on back onto the next plate. The next week's task list. And every week, you know, seven or eight things just never get done. I'm always behind the eight ball, right? Not a good feeling. And it doesn't make you feel like you're accomplishing what you're set out to accomplish. So this technique really helps me gauge with real data if I have too much on my plate at this point, you have to see it as a mission. I have to find a way to get somebody else or other people to do the things that are overflowing on my plate. An easy way to do this, just look at what takes you the most time on your to do list. The other way to look at it is what are some of the things that you wouldn't mind somebody else doing? You know, you just don't like doing it. Make your day a little bit better now. What if you have too little on your plate? What if you're just finishing your to do's and at the end of the week everything is done? Now if that's happening one off, I wouldn't worry about it. But if it's happening week after week, maybe you're just not pushing. Maybe you're not pushing yourself enough. Maybe you need to push yourself a little bit. I like to have slight overflow. A few tasks just makes me feel like I'm pushing and going a little bit hard to get everything done and to really get as much done as possible. Now, I want to say something. At this moment, if you are not in hustle mode, meaning you're launching your business, you're growing your business, you're building your business, let's say you're in a mode of growth and you're in sustainability, or maybe you're semi retired, that's totally fine. You don't have to be super busy all the time. You can take it easy. That's your choice. But if you are complaining your business is not growing and you're not being able to, you know, replace your current job with your current business, then this is hustle mode. You got to get it done. And you should not be twiddling your thumbs at the end of the week. You should be having lots to do with with only a few leftovers on your plate. In that situation where you're in hustle mode, then you gotta think of what are some things you could do to grow your business. Whether it's marketing, running webinars, outbound sales, creating great content for content marketing, there's plenty for you to do because, hey, you gotta grow this business now so you can hire other people to do the work for you. Or more importantly, hire great talent that are great at what they do. Think they do a better job than you can ever do, That's a great place to be. And that's when you really feel like you're growing the business. Thy ticket lady, Jennifer of Coolidge.

Well, many thanks, good sir. Here is my Discover card.

They accept Discover at Renaissance Fairs?

Yeah, they do here. Discover is accepted at the places I love to shop. Geth with the times.

With the times. You're playing the lute.

Yeah, and it sounds pretty good, right?

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Guys, to wrap up today's lesson, one of the hardest things of being an entrepreneur is being your own manager is managing yourself, putting yourself accountable and giving yourself enough work and enough pressure to really produce what you have to produce. So using the techniques I shared with you today, having that weekly to do list and seeing what tasks get left over at the end of the week really allow you to really see in hard numbers. Hey, it's my job to manage myself. Am I pushing myself enough or am I putting too much on my plate? Maybe I'm not managing my time properly or maybe I gotta let go a little bit and start delegating tasks. Listen, one of the things I learned as an entrepreneur is you're not that special. There are a lot of people that can do what you do. There are a few things that obviously you're not gonna outsource, like your vision and your leadership and your input in the product. But most of the things that keep us busy are things other people can do. So keep that in mind when you're looking at what's on your plate and seeing the overflow. All right, thank you so much for listening and thank you for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love this podcast, I want to hear from you. Leave us an iTunes rating and review everybody who leaves us an iTunes rating and review enters our weekly random draw we call Free Ride Friday. Every Friday we do a weekly draw with anybody who's left us a review and somebody wins a lifetime membership to one of our programs. This month, we're giving away Easy Course. Check it out at EasyCourse co. It's a $500 course on how to build your own online course in 30 days. Every Friday, we're going to give away a free membership. All you got to do is leave us an iTunes rating and a review to enter our weekly random draw. And you are entered into the draw every week until you win. Just listen on Friday to see if you won so you can grab a free ride. All right, thank you so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. One of the things that people don't tell you as an entrepreneur is that it's work. You have to do a lot of work, more work than I've ever worked in my life. But not only do you have to do the work like in a job, but you have to manage your work as well. You have to do the managing of the work to do the managing of your time. You have to do the managing of your load, of your tasks, of your responsibilities. This is something you're going to have to get better at as you grow as an entrepreneur. And the best entrepreneurs want to do this really well. I'm still really perfecting that art, and I'm just sharing with you today what has helped me, and hopefully it'll help you. All right, I'll check you in. Tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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