For anyone that ever found himself with too little time, money, energy or felt somehow overwhelmed, a note from my life that may fit your's: few things we do are necessary or productive. Sure, you feel like you must respond to that email or spend three hours on the phone today, but is it productive? Did you test it? Do you know?

I'm a big fan of testing, but it's most often not necessary. I can look into my social media bank account and tell you for fact I've never made a dime twittering for hours. But, what about its potential? I've also never added a single follower bloviating for hours either. No doubt my high quality posts secure followers that care to follow what I say. But, I've been flatly told by a few followers that they couldn't handle my high volume. Less volume = higher quality = less time dedicated to the process. And, if I chose to test this all I need do is tune it down, spend more time working for money, and look at my follow stats to see how it effects the numbers. Simple test, simple time saver.

But, I enjoy blogging, tweeting or whatever social media interaction I spend time on today. Ah ha! Then, it's recreation, not work! And, it should be treated accordingly. Perhaps the first few posts are required to maintain a connection to my friends online, but each and every post after than is pure self indulgence, to be as tightly regulated as my drinking habit.

That's an easy one for the social media addicted, but what about other real-life daily time wasters?

Culprit number one for me has to be phone calls. My cell phone battery has died so it stays plugged in until I can bring myself to break contract with my present cell phone provider and buy the latest cool gadget that has my eye. So, it doesn't travel with me. Instantly, I find I'm no longer interrupted by [my] cell phone during meetings. Every interaction has my undivided attention. That alone improves my productivity. If only I could require the same of my prospects and clients. But, I found as I checked my mail that most of the calls are not actual emergencies but people panting for attention. Friends, colleagues and clients all demanding I drop the productive work I'm engaged in to pet their ego.

People do respond badly to voice mail. Usually they just hang up. However, there's an easy way around that problem. An answering service will eliminate the hang up problem. It also works to soothe the nerves on the other end to talk to a real person. But, it establishes boundaries.

"Mr. Nunnelley is with a client right now, but will call you back when he can. Can I tell him what you're calling about? On a scale from 1-10 how urgent is your call?" asks the virtual receptionist.

It dramatically changes the tone of the interruption. It goes from "I need attention right now... for no good reason." to "I need attention right now... er, well. It's not really that important now that I'm putting a value on it." If the engagement were urgent, the virtual receptionist can simply message me on a private system. But, as you already know it almost never is urgent enough to justify interrupting something important.

My inbound phone calls are so trite that I don't even use the virtual assistant right now. I will, when I start aggressively building my business in quarter four. But, most of my work right now is eye to eye and doesn't benefit from urgent responses to non-urgent phone calls.

It turns out those receptionist gate keepers were worth every dime. They allowed Mr. Company President to do his job uninterrupted and the modern world of instant always is not helping him one bit.

This is another good example of better time management. I have ten great examples of time wasters we can all eliminate. But, it's superfluous at this stage in this message. You get the idea.