If you have these fundamentals in place, there are tactics you can use. Begin them now:

1. Do the numbers; you can’t begin to manage your time if you don’t know precisely how you are spending your time.

2. Begin tracking & tallying your time. Every day, track the time spent on these categories (I did this for the first 20 years of my practice):

a. Total time spent working (this does not include “e” below).

b. Billable time for clients.

c. Marketing and networking time: speaking, writing, going to networking events to meet prospects; prospecting; proposal writing, negotiating, etc. This is everything that goes into finding, closing and upselling a client.

d. Administration: bookkeeping; insurance hassles; banking issues; directing your staff or assistant; cleaning the desk; filing; and so on.

e. Even though you are sitting at your desk, do not count as total time: phone calls to your girlfriend, boyfriend, cousin; mother; staring at the wall; wandering aimlessly; blogging (unless it is part of marketing); online shopping/social networking/websurfing/video watching; instant messaging, throwing the iChing, downloading your music, watching television; planning your social life, etc.

f. Tally the time every week and every month: Add up the total time, then each category time. Divide the total time by the category time to get a percentage. You may be surprised at how little you actually work on billable time for your clients. You may be surprised at how little you actually work.

3. Let’s say you spent 50 total hours this week on Billable time + Marketing + Administration. What percentage of the total was committed for each category? Let’s say you spent 15 hours on Administration (30%) and 15 hours on Billable time (30%) and 20 hours on Marketing (40%). Not bad. (Is your score so good? Did you commit 70% of your time to client work and prospecting? Did you spend 50 hours working?)