For business owners, there are always so many more things we want to do than are actually possible. It’s the nature of owning a business and it’s easy to get distracted with an endless to-do list. We all have long term goals, short term goals, clients, projects and day-to-day tasks. Along with this, we also have our family life which involves even more to-do lists, tasks and goals.

If you are feeling overwhelmed or trying to find more time in your life, make a list of three things you can stop doing. Doing a time audit is a surprisingly helpful way to accomplish more and free up mental space.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Stop bookkeeping – Check into hiring someone for a few hours per month to process business receipts, payments and contracts. If you have employees, you could be outsourcing your payroll and employee taxes. Ask other local event professionals for recommendations.
• Stop housecleaning – How much more productive can you be in your business for 3 hours compared to the cost of a cleaning service? If a cleaning company charges $75 for three hours of cleaning and your billable hourly rate for client work is $100 per hour, it makes sense to hire the cleaning company so you can spend those three hours on client work.
• Stop staying up late – A few more hours of sleep might be just what you need to be more productive. Try it out for a few days and see how you feel.
• Stop attending every networking event – I’m a big advocate of networking but ONLY when you can balance it with your family and personal life. Choose the events that will be the most beneficial to your career and business.
• Stop responding personally to every email – Can you create a few new email addresses with auto responses? Perhaps you receive a large number of inquiries for jobs at your business but are not hiring at this time. Create a new email just for job inquiries and set an auto response for it. Or if you have an assistant or associate, train him or her to review and respond to general emails that aren’t from clients or potential clients. This can save you hours every single day.

No matter how hard we try, we cannot increase the number of hours in our day. By taking time every few months to evaluate the tasks we can stop doing, we become more productive. Some things are just ingrained in our routine but not necessary for us to personally do.