Harsh truth:

If you can’t take 2 weeks off without your business crashing and burning, you don’t have a business.

You have a higher-risk job.

We become entrepreneurs for freedom but just build prettier prisons. So today, you’ll learn an exercise to help your business run smoother (so you can step back, hire, and do work you enjoy).

It’s a 4-minute read.

Let's dive in.

How to win back your time

Two weeks ago, I was listening to Eric Jorgenson discuss the power of writing books.

I can’t wait to write one. But as he spoke, I felt a pang of sadness:

I don’t have time.

But then I realised something. I never have time. In fact, I’ve only gotten busier as my business got better. There’s always more content to create, products to build, things to learn, and tasks to do.

‘More time in the future’ is an illusion. You must improve your processes and systems—being free doesn’t happen by mistake. That’s what I’ve been working on for 3 weeks now. I’ve already won back 5 hours a week, and my new full-time executive assistant starts today.

Let me show you what I did.

Begin with a hypothesis

We need a time-constrained statement to help shake off the cobwebs of limiting beliefs.

Here’s mine:

If I built my business smarter, I can make $50k/month with just 2 hours per day.

I made $500k last year, but it was hard, bloody work. And 80% of the income came from four months. My hairline cannot survive a launch-model business, and burning out every quarter is not congruent with my plan to write books.

That’s why the 2 hours constraint is important.

If a goal doesn’t challenge you to change, it’s not a good enough goal.

This leads us to our next step:

Tear apart your time.

Write everything you do and how long it takes. You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and most people who lack time just lack efficiency. List your daily steps and ask:

Let's unpack each.

Cut the crap

The first question filters low-hanging fruit: stop doing shit that doesn’t matter.

For example, I realised my ‘2-minute Twitter checks’ were more like 20 minutes, and quick email glances were never quick. So now I have a 30-minute window for distractions at the end of my day.

Funnily enough, I’m usually too tired to care. Mission accomplished.

The second question’s harder.

Hire help

I don’t have the word count to be your therapist, but if you think you need to do everything yourself or that a $50/month software is expensive despite saving you time, you have a wiring issue.

I don’t say this rudely.

I’m from a working-class village in the North of England. If you said I had a scarcity lens problem several years ago, I’d have googled the cheapest optician to fix it. Undoing this crap is a lifetime job. I have the words ‘time not money’ plastered on my whiteboard as a reminder of which resource is truly rare.

Now, you don’t need a full-time executive assistant (yet).

But if you are considering hiring, I recommend this hiring masterclass from Noel Andrews and Olly Richards.

I’m new to the hiring world but it’s an art every entrepreneur must master. The wrong hire can ruin your business, the right hire can catapult it. Their advice was seriously high ROI, hence the promotion.

But remember, low-hanging fruit first.

For example, when I became an entrepreneur, I hired a cleaner and started getting my groceries delivered, which gave me back two hours per week.

You can also hire a part-time VA to do tasks like uploading content to social media and deleting the million cold pitches you get in your DMs (no thank you, bro number #13942).

Treat everything non-creative as non-essential. If software makes life easy, get it. Robots are awesome.

But what about stuff you can’t outsource?

Make it effortless

Anything you do more than once should be made easy to do again. If you don’t build systems for what’s important, you’ll waste all your time on shit that’s not.

Consider your newsletter.

You shouldn’t outsource your writing for three reasons. Writing is thinking, relationships don’t happen by accident, and no one has ever become a raving fan of someone else’s ghostwriter.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your process.

For example:

Pretend you’re training someone else to do your job and write every step in a checklist. It will feel silly but don’t underestimate how much more effective you’ll become.

For example, here’s my Monday:​

Here’s the start of draft one’s process:

Constraints create freedom

If checklists seem restrictive, good. It’s like plugging holes in a ship—you go much faster when you stop leaking energy at every step.

Of course, you might not have the luxury of 3 weeks to overhaul your business.

But why not take an hour?

Pick one thing you can improve. Can you automate, delegate, eliminate, or systemise? Repeat that process each week. In a year, that’s 52 things running smoother. The compounding effect of this is insane. You’ll have more energy, make better decisions, and have the time to do the work you love.

That’s the key.

Too many people ‘wait’ for the perfect conditions to pursue the life they want. But time only gets more scarce. You must create space to build things that excite you. Not only will you be happier, but the world will be a better place for it, too.

Let me know if you want a video of how I hired my EA. I’ll wait a few weeks to find and fix my mistakes first. Again, I highly recommend the hiring webinar.​

Hope this helps,

Kieran