Change your life (and your MSP) in daily 90 minute chunks

One of the best business habits I've ever adopted is working ON my business for 90 minutes every weekday.

I've been doing this for twenty years now ( yes I am that old. I know. It's shocking)

And I'd say it's one of my secret weapons. Because no matter what happens in my workday, so long as I complete my 90 minutes working ON the business, I can guarantee I'll get things done.

When I tell MSPs about this, I'm often hit with a series of common questions. Let me answer them here.

"Why do you do this?"

Because just like you, I'm a busy business owner with big dreams and goals.

And I know how easily your day can be lost to a problem or just "life".

When I started my first business back in 2005, I spent the first 90 minutes of every weekday working ON the business. And apart from a short break over lockdown, I've kept that habit going for the last two decades.

"How do you find and protect 90 mins every day?"

You can take a sci-fi approach to this, as you need to find and protect two things: time and space.

Time to get this important work done, and a place to do it. These two have changed for me over the years, but currently I get up at 6am and work on the business till 7.30am.

Don't laugh, but I do this in bed. Alarm at 6am, grab laptop, adjust pillows to sit upright, and get working.

Yes, I know that creates a weird vision for you 

In years gone by, I've done it in my home office or gone out to an external office space when my daughter was young and sometimes disruptive.

Other places that MSPs do this are local coffee shops, restaurants, or hotels - basically anywhere where you won't be interrupted.

"Wait, sorry, you do this at 6am every day? Are you mad?"

Maybe

When I first started this habit in 2005, I got up at 5am every day and worked for 90 minutes. In my previous employed existence I'd been a radio presenter and got up at 4am every day to do the breakfast show. So 5am felt like a lie in!

From a practical point of view, the reasons I do this at 6am are numerous. It's a time of the day where people don't normally work, so no one's expecting to get an email reply from me or even be able to get hold of me on the phone.

It's kind of dead time. And I've turned that dead time into productive time. The payoff is, by the time the workday starts at 9am, I've already done the most important tasks of the day. That makes me feel great every single day!

MSPs sometimes struggle to do this early in the morning, but find that they can protect time over lunch, in the afternoon, or for some in the evenings... even the early hours of the morning.

The specific time doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you pick a time that you can repeat every single day.

"How do you keep this habit going?"

Because it happens at the same time every day. You've probably read the same stuff that I have, about how you have to repeat something multiple times to turn it into a habit.

If you try and move your 90 minutes around the clock it'll be really hard to fix it as a habit. Same time each day is simple and beautiful.

"What kind of work do you do?"

Anything that's working ON the business rather than IN it. Typically, these are tasks that fall into one of three categories:

1. Things that win new clients
2. Things that get those clients to buy more
3. Things that get those clients to spend more

Almost every other task is working IN the business.

"Could I just do 60 minutes?"

You could, but you'll find that you get almost twice the amount of work done in 90 minutes than you do in 60 minutes.

It takes time to build a bit of momentum, and I often find that I'm in full flow by the end of the first 60 minutes. Working that extra 30 minutes just gives me a huge boost in output.

"Could I just do this as one day a week rather than a daily thing?"

You could, but I promise you won't get anywhere near the results you'll get by doing a little bit of time every day.

On the surface, dedicating a day a week to working ON the business seems like a great idea.

In reality, by the time you get to that day, it'll be interrupted by all sorts of stuff from other days that you haven't got done.

The beautiful thing about doing 90 mins every day is that even if you do have an unusual day where you lose that time, it doesn't matter. You just get back into habit the next day.

"How do I get started?"

How about you commit to doing this every day next week, starting on Monday? Just as an experiment. You're going to try it for a week. At the end, if it works, you'll keep doing it. If it doesn't work for you, you'll dump it.

Think of it as a trial.

And how about you give yourself a reward every day that you do it. We all respond differently to different rewards. For me, the thought of a Snickers is enough to get me to do almost anything.

Interestingly, I just calculated that over 20 years I've worked ON my business for 7,200 hours, which is more than 300 days. If I'd known that going into it, maybe it would've put me off because that seems like an enormous amount of time.

But of course I've done it in tiny, inconsequential chunks. The last 20 years has gone really quickly, but I've achieved some pretty cool things along the way, all thanks to these 90 minutes.