I’ve found a way to double my time, and no, it doesn’t involved a time machine.

It’s super-simple, but since it’s working for me I wanted to pass it along.

I’ve reduced the time slots for people (non-clients) booking in my online calendar from 60 minutes to 30 minutes for each call.

I told you it was really simple!

Here’s why I did it …

Before this change, people slotted in for an hour. This led to calls that were frankly taking longer than they should have.

This isn’t to blame the other person – I’m partly to blame too. I like to talk!

But with one hour calls, we were spending too much time getting to the meat of the call. Too much time on the opening chit-chat, and the calls weren’t as focused as they should have been.

Since dropping them from 60 to 30 minutes, I find that we get down to business much quicker, and many of the calls are wrapping up in 15 or 20 minutes!

This one small change has effectively doubled my free time, which has reduced my stress considerably.

I should mention that I didn’t change my client calls – those sessions have remained at my usual 60 minutes for each. This just applies to other calls that are booked (potential joint ventures, “getting to know you calls”, etc.)

I should credit Gary Vaynerchuk for this change. I recently listened to the audio version of his new book, and he talked about the importance of having short meetings.

If a meeting only needs to take 5 or 10 minutes, Gary only takes that long. And it saves him (and other people) a considerable amount of time over the run of a year.

Give it a try – you’ll find that you can accomplish just as much (or even more) in half the time because of the increased focus.