No. B.S.

Time Management for 

Entrepreneurs 
Dan S. Kennedy 
 

Book Overview from the Publisher 

WARNING:  This  book is not for the faint of heart, fawningly polite, or desperate to be liked. This book 
is  expressively  for  entrepreneurs  and  business  owners  who  wear  many  hats―those  who  can't  resist 
piling  more  responsibility  onto  his  own  shoulders,  who  has  more  great  ideas  that  time  and resources to 
take  advantage  of them, who runs (not walks) through each day. ​Your time is incredibly valuable to you, 
and you are constantly "running out of it." 
 
Serial  entrepreneur  Dan  S. Kennedy delivers a fresh take on the mantra "time is money" as he shows you 
how  to  drastically  re-engineer  your  entire  relationship  with  time  and,  if  applied  faithfully,  achieve  peak 
personal productivity and make lots and lots of money. 
 
 

KEY POINTS COVERED IN THIS SUMMARY: 

1. Majoring  in  the  Minors  ​-  Identify  your  “majors” to stop wasting time 
on the “minors” 
2. Time Gun ​- Treat your deadline like a gun 
3. Blocks of Time -​ Block time in advance your yourself 
4. Minimize  Unplanned  Time  ​-  In  order  to  minimize  Unplanned  time, 
put more planned time on your calendar.  
5. 3  Lists  -  Create  these  3  essential  lists  that  will  reveal  how  you  can 
be productive on the right things 
6. Your  Time’s  $  Value  -  Know  exactly  how  much  your  time is worth 
in $/hr 
7. Clear the Calculator -- Clear your brain for clean thinking 

1) Majoring in the Minors 

Most people are not very productive because they are majoring in the minors (or minor tasks):  
● They're doing a lot of low-value non-important tasks. 

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 ● They're  just  drowning  in  all  this  stuff  that  they  think  need to do to the point where they 
have nothing left in the tank for what's important.  
 
The Power of 3 
 
If we want to be highly productive, we need to focus on the Power of 3.  
 
Identify the 3 things that you will do: 
● They should be highly-productive things 
● They should be things that we are really good at  
● They should be things that we enjoy the most 
 
Those are the 3 things that we are going to major in.  
 
These  are  3  three  things  that  actually  provide  the  highest  leverage,  the  highest  value  for  our 
business and for ourselves.  
 
These are the 3 things we need to focus on.  
 
That's the way we are going to be extremely productive 
 

2) Time Gun 
 
Here's a really simple idea based on Parkinson's Law. 
 
Parkinson’s  Law  states: Work expands to fill the amount of resources available for it. Resources 
can include time, money, etc.  
 
In a nutshell, this is what you want to do: 
● Put yourself under a d ​ eadline​ for whatever you want to accomplish.  
● Treat  it  like  a  gun  in  the  sense  that  there's  this  deadline  by  which  you  must finish that 
task or the gun will fire off.  
● Once  the  time  is  out,  it  should  have  already been done as there is no remaining time for 
it.  
 
The 2-minute drill 
You  see  this  in  the  field  of  sports.  The  2-minute  drill  is  the  idea  that  in  the  last  2  minutes,  the 
teams will do a lot more than what they have been doing in the last whole quarter.  
 

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Why does it happen? Because they're under pressure. They're under the gun to perform. That is 
Parkinson's Law at play. 
 
So give yourself a task and then reduce the time you allot for yourself.  
 
(Related reading: 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris) 
 
Put  yourself  under  a  time  gun,  the pressure to perform the task in maybe even 75% of the time 
you initially thought it would take, or even 50% of the time you thought it would take.  
 
Then  allow  yourself  to  get  things  within  that  time  frame,  and  you  will  become  exponentially 
more productive. 

3) Blocks of Time 
 
We need to block our time in advance and include blocks of time.  
 
For  most  people,  their  calendar  looks  somewhat  like  just  an  appointment  system  with  others. 
All they have on their calendar is a meeting with someone, a call with someone, an appointment 
with someone, or a meeting with someone and that's about it.  
 
But  what  we  need  to  do  in  order  to become highly productive is to carve out time for ourselves 
and block that on our calendar.  
 
Block time i​ n advance​ on your calendar f​ or yourself 
 
This includes time for: 
● proactive work 
● high-value work 
● deep thinking 
● work that needs to be done but is getting delayed 
 
Have appointments with yourself 
You  might  have  some  appointments  with  others in your calendar, but the key literally is to have 
appointments with yourself for the high-quality work that you need to do.  
 
Maybe  you  need  to  produce  content.  Maybe  you  need  to  do  marketing.  Whatever  it  is,  ​you're 
going to block out chunks of time, not just dribs and drabs of time, in advance​.  
 
Dominate your time 

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This  process  is  how  you  establish  your  dominance  on  your  time.  That's  when you know you're 
the master of your time rather than time being your master. That's the key to time management.  
 
The  longer  your  time  horizon  is,  the  more  productive  you  will  be  --  in  the  sense  if  you  can 
block  out  your  time  weeks  and  even  months  and  even  years  in  advance,  that  means  you  are 
able  to  impose  courage  on  your  time,  and  hence  you're  going  to  find  yourself  much  more 
productive. 
 
Most people find this very difficult to implement. 
● They're too scared of the other appointments that might come in 
● They think that others might need them  
 
But you've got to take over. 
● Set your own time.  
● Set your own priorities.  
● Set those blocks of time in advance.  
 
You  will  find  that  you'll  do  a  lot  more  proactive  work.  You  will  double,  triple,  quadruple  your 
productivity  just  by  doing  this  one  thing  because  you  will  be  able  to  do  your  highest  quality 
work in the time that you have made available to yourself. 

4) Minimize Unplanned Time 

 
This idea is really helpful when you apply it properly.  
 
● Look at your calendar for tomorrow.  
● See how much unplanned time you have.  
 
For  most  people,  there's  a  lot  of  unplanned  time  on  the  calendar,  and  as  the  time  shows  up, 
they decide on the fly what's going to be done and try to do those things. 
 
But what we need to do as highly productive individuals is m ​ inimize our unplanned time.  
● There should be very little time available to you that is unplanned.  
● Most  of  your  time  should  be  planned  well  in  advance,  whether  you're  doing 
appointments  with  others  or  you  have  a  meeting  with  yourself  or  do  what  you  need  to 
do. 
● You will have to say no to a lot of different things.  
● You have to be proactive in this whole process. 
● In the end, you will be able to minimize the time that you're wasting.  
 

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One  of  the  great  things  about  minimizing  unplanned  time  is  that  as  you  start  to  plan  your  day 
out ahead of time, you are pre-committing to what you will do. 
 
In  effect,  it  does  not  diminish  your  willpower.  Every  time  you  have  to  make  a decision on what 
you  need  to  do  next  with  the  available  time,  every  time  you  have  to  make  small  decisions,  it's 
draining  your  willpower.  But  if  you’ve  already  decided,  if  you’ve  already  pre-committed  to that 
time window, then you have an abundance of willpower available for your thinking.  
 
Again,  look  at  your  calendar,  look  at  all  the  unplanned  time  there  is  in  there,  and  just  start 
blocking it out. Just start planning things out. 
 
As  soon  as  you  do  that,  you  have  now  imposed  your  decision  on  your time. You have imposed 
your  courage  on  your  time.  You  are  the  master  of  your  time  rather  than  the  time  being  your 
master. 
 

5) 3 Essential Lists for Your Productivity 

 
If  you  want  to  be  highly  productive,  you have to have a list of these 3 things. Make these 3 lists 
available to yourself.  
 
1) A  list  of  things  that  you  do  really well. ​These are things you enjoy doing. You wouldn't 
outsource  or  delegate  them  to  anyone  because  you  just  enjoy  doing  those  things  and 
you are outstanding in those things.  
2) A  list of things you do okay with but which you don't necessarily enjoy. Someone else 
could do a better job at it and probably be more productive.  
3) A  list  of  things  you  absolutely  hate  doing  and  that  you  are  not  good  at.  Maybe  you 
continue  doing  these  things  because  you  think  you  don't  have  the  right  person  to  do 
them, or whatever it might be.  
 
What  you'll  find  is  that  the  list  of  things  that  you  are  extraordinary  at  is  not  going  to be a long 
list. It's going to be a very short list, with maybe 2-3 things that you really are very good at. 
 
Meanwhile,  it  might  turn  out  you  have  a long list of things that you hate, that you don't want to 
do,  and  a  long  list  of  things  that  you  are  okay  at  and  that you you don't really enjoy but you do 
them because you can do them.  
 
So, a short list of things you do extraordinarily well and enjoy but a long list of the other two. 
 
Once you have your lists made -- 
● Rigorously follow these lists.  

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 ● Remove the list #2 and #3 from your life. 
○ Delegate 
○ Eliminate  
 
Do  whatever  you  have  to  while  focusing  your  effort  on  the  things  that  you  are  extraordinarily 
good at and the things that you enjoy at the same time. 
 

6) The $ Value of Your Time 

Do you know the dollar value of your time?  
 
A really simple calculation: 
Your  Time  Value  =  (Amount  of  money  you  want  to  make  this  year)  /  (Number  of  productive 
hours you have in a year….Typically 2,000 productive hours per year for a person) 
 
40 hours per week x 50 weeks = 2,000 hours (Amount of time you have) 
 
And  if  you  know  the  money  you  want  to  make  this  year,  you  divide  it  by  2000,  that  would  be 
your dollar per hour value.  
 
Example: you want to make $200,000 this year 
 
$200,000 / 2,000 = $100 per hour (Your $ value per hour) 
 
So  if  you  are  doing  tasks  that  are  not  worth  $100  an  hour,  you  need  to  delegate  them.  You 
need to outsource them. You need to remove those tasks from your list 
 
If  you  want  to  make  a  million  dollars  this  year  and  you  only  have  2,000  hours available to you, 
well  now  you  have  to  do  $500  per  hour  tasks.  $500  per  hour  is  your  now  new  value  creation 
metric.  You  need  to  do  whatever  it  takes  to  get  out  of  low-value  tasks  so  you  can  focus  on 
doing the $500 per hour kind of tasks.  
 
This  is  key  to  extreme  productivity  --  knowing  where  you  should  be  spending  your  time, 
knowing your time value, and then spending your time according to that time value. 
 

7) Clear the Calculator 

 
This  is  an  idea  about  how  to  get  the  very  best  out  of  yourself  when  you're  working  on  a  task, 
when you're working on something in a given time window. 
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Think of a calculator  
 
Let's  say  you  do  a  calculation  (17  x  34).  Whatever  the  result  is,  you  don't  just  start  another 
transaction by saying 2 x 78 or + 44 + 32.  
 
You  have  to  clear  the  past  calculations  that  you  did  in  order  to  actually  be  able  to  do  the 
calculation properly. Otherwise it'll mess up, it will gunk up the whole process.  
 
The  same  thing  goes  with  our  mind.  We  cannot  be  thinking  about  25  different  things  when 
we're  trying  to  work  on one task. We can’t be thinking about our car, payments, a meeting, and 
all that stuff, all at the same time.  
 
You  have  to  clear  your  mind  of  everything  else  and  just  focus  on  one  task  at  hand.  That  is  the 
idea of clearing your calculator. 
 
Related Reading: 
Book: Deep Work 
Author: Cal Newport 
Idea: Attention Residue  
 
 

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