On today’s show I am going to go over three concepts that will help you better manage your time and focus on the parts of your freelance business that you love. But first: an update on my early morning walk. I’ve actually become so hooked on walking that I’ve been getting up earlier 5–6 days a week to do my daily walk in the morning. I walk fast for about an hour while listening to podcasts. And I have a loop around my neighborhood, which means I don’t have to think about which direction I want to go in each day. Let’s discuss three concepts to improve your business: delegate, automate and terminate. I actually stumbled upon these concepts gradually as my freelance business started to grow, and I realized I couldn’t do it all. There’s only one of me and there are only so many hours in the day—more importantly, there are only so many hours that I want to WORK in a day. But it’s not just about managing your time or even managing your energy. I believe you should delegate, automate and terminate so you can actually focus on the things you LOVE to do. I talked about this previously in episode 2 of the Deliberate Freelancer, Discover Your Unique Brilliance. I explained how a coach of mine I was working with on another project realized I was having some serious work-life balance issues and offered to help me. She drew a quadrant on a piece of paper and labeled each square: incompetence, competence, high competence and unique brilliance. Michael Hyatt talks about similar concepts in his new book “Free to Focus.” However, he breaks up his quadrant into the Drudgery Zone, Disinterest Zone, Distraction Zone and Desire Zone. The idea is figure out how you can spend the majority of your time in the Desire Zone—or by focusing on your own Unique Brilliance. What are the things you absolutely LOVE about your freelance business? Think about both the services you provide AND the business side of your business. What is your unique brilliance? What do you love to do? What WOULD you like to pursue that you’re not doing now? Or what would you like to scale up that you’re not doing as much of now? Now, on the opposite end, what would fall in your incompetence quadrant or your Drudgery Zone? Consider things outside of work also, things that you are required to do as a responsible human being, like clean your house or apartment. It’s that incompetent zone we need to tackle by automating, delegating and terminating. First, sit down and write out a massive to-do list. Don’t get too stressed over it—this will not actually be your to-do list, but it’s all the things you think you have to do right now, all those projects you have hanging over your head, those phone calls you know you need to make, that online research you know you need to do, the chores and errands you keep putting off. Now, make a second list called the business boredom list and write down all the things about your business that you don’t like to do. Let’s start with terminate: On the massive to-do list in particular, ask yourself if you really have to do all those things. What are the things on the list that won’t make much of a difference if you just forget about them, just terminate them? I encourage you to push yourself here, especially if you made promises you can’t keep or if you’re a people pleaser. Another aspect of terminate is actually terminating clients. Firing clients. They don’t have to be horrible clients, but are there projects or types of services you’re providing now that you want to cut back on or no longer want to do? Maybe the pay is too low. Or maybe it’s tedious work. Or maybe it’s taken too much of your time away from projects that you love. You can fire clients. I’ve fired bad clients, but I’ve also fired clients I liked because I didn’t want to do that type of work anymore. In that case, I simply said that I was going in a new direction and cutting back on that type of work. And I connected those clients with other freelancers to replace me. Now, you can’t cance