The 10% Rule for Small Business: Six Questions That Give You Time Back

I don't have spare hours lying around. If someone could gift me a free Wednesday, that would be lovely. So far, nobody has offered.

I'm Chief Operating Officer of a finance group, a mum of two small children, and I'm building The Freedom Game around the edges of all of that. I want to do the school run. I also want the work to move forward. Anything I change has to fit inside a life that's already full.

If you run a small business, work for yourself or are building something alongside a job, you probably recognise the problem. The business needs improving. The person who could improve it is already busy keeping it running.

That's where my 10% rule comes in: find one recurring problem and make it a bit better this week. Then do it again next week.

The percentage is a useful reminder to keep the change manageable. You don't need a calculation proving you've improved by exactly 10%. You need one less thing making Tuesday harder than it needs to be.

Why the small version actually happens

You know the big version. Overhaul the business. Change the customer relationship management system. Rebuild the offer. Redo the brand. Create the perfect colour-coded calendar.

Those plans need a clear weekend and a lot of energy. When you have neither, they sit on the list making you feel bad.

A small fix can fit into the week you actually have. A saved reply. A payment link. One decision made once instead of seventeen times.

And quite often, improvement comes from removing something. Every tool you add needs learning, setting up, logging into and maintaining. Even a free tool has a cost when you're the person doing all of that.

Here are six questions I use to find the friction. Read all six. Pick one to act on.

1. What have I stopped noticing?

Years ago, I worked in telephone sales at a big UK bank. Breaks were timed so tightly that I got used to setting a timer when I went to the toilet.

After about eighteen months, that felt normal.

Then I moved into Premier Banking. On my first day, I set the timer before going to the loo. My new manager said something along the lines of: Marie, you don't have to set a timer to pee. We're adults here.

I cried. Properly cried. Until someone questioned it, I hadn't realised how much I'd accepted.

We adapt to things we do repeatedly. In a business, that can mean little frustrations become part of the furniture. You type the same email again. Hunt for the same file. Fix the invoice template every time you open it. Copy information between two systems because you've always copied information between two systems.

Each task seems too small to matter. But five minutes a working day, across 240 working days, adds up to twenty hours. That's time you could use somewhere else.

Your small move: keep a note open for a week. When you catch yourself thinking, “This again,” write it down. Don't immediately start fixing everything. By Friday, choose one recurring irritation you could remove in under an hour.

A template, a bookmark or a saved reply might be enough.

2. Do I already own something that does this?

I'm very much in favour of useful technology. ChatGPT and I are practically in a relationship at this point.

But the subscription you bought because a video made it look exciting, never properly set up, and keep paying for? That deserves a closer look.

When I joined the group I work in now, I had to build the operating structure for a new business: processes, customer journeys and workflows. I built it in Monday.com because the group already had it, people knew it, and it could do the job.

Before adding another business tool, I ask:

1. Do I already pay for something that can do this? There might be a feature I've never opened.

2. Have I set up my existing tool properly? A half-finished setup will always struggle to compete with a polished demonstration.

3. What specific problem can't I solve with what I have? I want to be able to name the limitation.

Sometimes the answer really is a new tool. I recently added Metricool after hitting specific problems in my content workflow. I could explain what I needed it to do and where the time was going.

That is a useful buying decision. “Maybe this will finally make me organised” is a much harder promise for software to keep.

Your small move: spend twenty minutes checking subscriptions. Find one you no longer use, check you won't lose anything you need, and cancel it. Or spend those twenty minutes setting up a useful feature in something you already pay for.

3. Which decision do I keep making?

When will I invoice? When do I take calls? How long is a call? What do I charge for this? What should I post today?

If you start from scratch every time, each decision asks for a little more of your attention.

Defaults help. Decide your usual call days and length. Set your standard price. Give invoicing a reliable trigger that fits your contracts. You can make an exception when there's a reason, but you don't have to reopen the whole question every morning.

One of the biggest changes in my own month has been scheduling content. The daily question of when to physically post has gone. The work can go out while I'm doing something else, including bath time.

Your small move: choose one decision you made several times last week and write down a sensible default.

There is a trap here, though. Tidying systems can be a very respectable-looking way of avoiding the scary work. Reorganising a folder feels safer than sending a pitch. I've done it.

Ask whether the fix removes a problem that keeps coming back. If it does, it may repay the time you spend on it. If you're polishing something that already works, check whether there's a pitch you should be sending instead.

4. What keeps breaking my concentration?

When you run a small business, you can be sales, delivery, accounts and IT support in the same afternoon. Every message has a plausible reason to interrupt you.

The cost goes beyond answering the message. It's finding your place again, remembering what you were doing, and resisting the three other tasks you noticed on the way back.

This is where an ambitious time-blocking plan can make things worse. We design a calendar for an imaginary person who gets up at five, never receives a call from nursery and works in perfect ninety-minute blocks.

That person does not live in my house.

I work with one protected block for the work that moves things forward. Notifications off. Inbox closed. Smaller tasks batched together where possible.

If the day falls apart, I have one block to rescue. That feels more possible than reconstructing a whole calendar masterpiece.

Your small move: put one realistic block in tomorrow's diary. Decide what it's for before it starts. Close your email for that time.

5. Where is money waiting on me?

Sometimes the work is finished but the invoice hasn't gone out. Sometimes a proposal is sitting in someone's inbox and you've never followed up.

Both are worth noticing before deciding you need a completely new marketing strategy.

Make invoicing part of finishing the work, in line with the payment terms you've agreed. Make payment straightforward. Use reminders where appropriate so that chasing doesn't depend on finding the energy to write another awkward email.

Follow-up deserves the same attention.

In banking, I looked after a portfolio of more than a thousand clients. I hated ringing people for no reason. So I looked through an account first and found something useful to call about.

There was a very different conversation available when I could say I'd spotted a way someone could improve their position. The call had a reason beyond my needing to make a call.

The same principle applies to a quiet enquiry. What could you send that helps the person decide? An answer to the concern they raised? A relevant example? A clearer explanation of the next step?

Your small move: send one overdue invoice or follow up with one person, bringing something useful to the conversation.

6. What am I polishing that nobody asked me to polish?

Video editing is mine. I would love to spend hours getting every cut exactly as I see it in my head.

Those hours don't exist in my current life. I use tools, including Claude Code, to help me get the work out. The result isn't what I'd create with a free week. It is, however, available for somebody to watch.

After I came back from Australia, I trained for the Paris Marathon. I worked part time, didn't have children, and could put hours into training. I got really fit.

It would be a strange comparison to hold today's output against that version of my life without acknowledging what changed.

Yet we do this in business all the time. We keep standards we set years ago: reply within an hour, write every proposal from scratch, do every task ourselves. Nobody has reviewed whether those rules still make sense.

Your small move: choose one low-stakes task where the extra polishing makes no meaningful difference to the person receiving it. Finish it at a good, useful standard and send it.

Keep the care where it matters: accuracy, promises, safety and the quality people are paying for. Look for effort that changes none of those things.

Give the time you save a job

Suppose one of these changes gives you an hour back. What is that hour for?

More email will happily take it if you leave the decision open.

It might be for the sales calls you've been avoiding. It might be the school pickup without checking your phone. It might be finishing at the time you said you would.

Automation gives you capacity. What you do with that capacity is the freedom part.

If you're unsure where the biggest friction is, the free Freedom Leak Map helps you look at where money, time, energy and opportunity are slipping away, then choose a place to start.

For this week: one question, one fix, and a reason for wanting the time back.

Ten per cent fits on a Tuesday.

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