In this article, I want to share three things that you can do to catapult your personal effectiveness. If you want to achieve better results, a bigger and better business, and better financial rewards, then one of the key things you must master is personal effectiveness.

We all have the same amount of time in a day, but your challenge is to get the biggest bang for your buck. How do you achieve more with what you already have?

The answer is not to work more hours. The answer is to make better decisions and ultimately to value your time.

Do You Truly Value Your Time?

There are loads of videos out there about time management and valuing your time. This video is a little bit different, because what I want you to do is get real with yourself.

I want you to be genuinely honest with yourself as I go through this video.

The question I have for you right now is this. Do you genuinely value your time? Do you believe that your time is your most precious resource, that you will never get that time back, and that what you do with the time you have really counts?

Time and energy are finite, and if you do not use them well, they are wasted forever.

I have to say, I never used to think that way. But doing what I do, and working with business owners over the years, I have become frankly intolerant of my time being wasted.

I absolutely hate being in meetings that are not focused, that drag on longer than they need to. I resent doing things that I do not need to do, where other people should be doing them, or where nobody should be doing them at all.

I take my time seriously. Maybe sometimes that makes me an arsehole. I do not try to be. I just genuinely believe that my time is valuable, and I have to make the right decisions.

Why Mindset Comes First

I want to share the three things that I have noticed top-performing clients do. These are the business owners who achieve the best results. These are the things that you can take from this video and implement into your own mindset over time.

And it really does start with mindset. You have to value your time.

For more practical business insights, you can explore additional resources at Marco Soares’ website and the Mind Your Own Business series at

1. Focus on What You Can Control and Influence

The first thing you need to do is focus on the things that you can control and influence, and ignore everything else.

We are surrounded by bad news. There are all sorts of things going on that make it tough to be a business owner in this country right now. The geopolitical situation is not great. The economy is not where we want it to be.

It is very easy to get stuck in the noise, the distraction, the frustration, and the opinions. In my view, all of that stuff is just a load of rubbish. You cannot change it.

Focus on the things that you can control. You can control a whole bunch of things in your business and in your personal life. People who genuinely value their time do not allow it to be robbed by external events that sit outside their control.

Catch yourself when you start getting frustrated or spending time on things that you cannot influence. Put those distractions to one side and focus on your business and your personal goals.

This principle is explored further in this article on focusing on business controllables.

2. Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

There are probably about 150 things in your business right now that you want to fix or improve.

The question is this. Of those 150 things, what absolutely must get done by the end of the quarter or by the end of the month to help your business move forward?

It is very easy to jump from thing to thing, especially when things get hard or uncomfortable. It is easy to convince yourself that distractions are important. They are not.

You either pay the price with discipline by staying focused, or you pay the price with guilt because you did not do the thing you knew you should be doing.

Keep the main thing the main thing. Permit yourself to put everything else to one side or onto a list for next quarter. Focus your time and energy on what genuinely matters most.

3. Spend Your Time on What Only You Can Do

The business owners who make the most progress focus their time and energy on the things that only they can do.

If you can pay somebody else to do lower-value tasks, then do it. If you already employ people to do work that you are still doing yourself, delegate it.

Where you focus your time matters. Doing low-value tasks because they are easy, enjoyable, or familiar takes time away from high-value activities.

You should be focused on things that move the business forward in the medium to long term. Developing your people. Defining and implementing a strategy. Strengthening financial planning and security.

Sweeping the workshop floor might make you feel good, but those days are long gone. Businesses need owners who focus on direction, leadership, and progress.

This ties directly into the importance of valuing your time as a business owner.

Final Thoughts on Personal Effectiveness

The three things I have shared are simple, but they are not easy to implement consistently.

If you want better results than you are achieving right now, you must do these things. As your business grows and becomes more complex, your managerial and operational burden will increase.

These three principles help you step back and create space to work on the business, not just in it.

Are you genuinely doing your best to improve the “on the business” work every week and every month? Are you dedicating more time to what a business owner who wants better results should be doing?

What are you going to do about it?

These things will make a massive difference to your personal effectiveness, but only if you commit to them and apply them consistently.

Adopt the £5,000-an-hour mindset. Value your time. Make better decisions.

See you next time on Mind Your Own Business.

You can find more episodes on our YouTube Channel.