60-Minute Entrepreneur. What do you do?

If you only had 1 hour a week to work on your business. What would you do?

Time has never been a commodity for the entrepreneur and during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s an even more valuable resource.

For many of us entrepreneurs, working from home may at first seem like there is more time to focus on building our businesses.

But, take a look at two sides of the entrepreneurial landscape that have evolved during COVID-19. First, there’s the group of entrepreneurs working on their businesses nights and weekends who have found themselves working 3 hours more a day at their day jobs as reported by Bloomberg. Second, there’s the group of founders who could run out of cash in less than 3 months Startup Genome.

Are you in one of those groups? Have you found yourself with limited time and competing priorities? If you are, then you are probably wondering how you can break out of old thought patterns, gain new insight, and scale your business.

Try this. Imagine yourself with only 1 hour a week to work on your business. Where would you focus? How would you approach the problem?

Imagining yourself with even less time available is a powerful way to help you decide where and how you are going to focus your efforts.

Now, if you’re still having trouble focusing then try one more tool and use the lens of Pareto’s Principle.

Pareto’s Principle, or as most of us know it the “80/20 Rule”, has become so common a phrase that we forget the power it can have when applied to decision making. At its simplest here’s how you can use it. Look at where you are spending 80% of your time and getting 20% of your results. Now, look at where you are spending 20% of your time and getting 80% of your results. With these two answers, you can cut out the work not giving you the most results and focus on the work with the biggest payoff.