seolounge
Recent studies show that the average small business owner spends over 60 hours every week running their business. This leaves little time for anything else, like family, friends and hobbies!
With so many demands on your day, it’s hard to know how best to use your time. However, managing your time well is a key to success in any field of work – it can help you save money, increase productivity and lead to a better quality of life.
Try these six tips for better time management as a small business owner:
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1. Create a specific to-do list
As a business owner, the work never really ends. There will always be new tasks pulling your focus, and older, neglected tasks in the back of your mind. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay stuck in a cycle of confusion and procrastination!
The first step to effective time management is listing EVERYTHING you need to do. If walking your dog is an essential part of your day, even that needs to be on your list. You might also add how long each task usually takes, or how long you anticipate it to take.
Separate tasks into work vs life, and note where they overlap.
I do this using a Google Calander. I use different colours for different things. So red for booked in appointments, orange for client work, green for personal etc. It is very easy to move the most critical things to the start of the day and then move things to different days that you don’t have time for.
2. Prioritise your tasks
What’s essential to your survival, and what’s essential to running your business? The things that you absolutely must do to stop everything falling apart are your #1 priorities.
Order your tasks into categories – Critical, Priority, Upcoming, & Low Priority. These can be colour coded as well.
Be careful not to neglect your priority tasks to focus on critical tasks, because this can keep you stuck in a cycle and limit your growth. For example: You’re spending time working on social media posts each day, but if you set up a scheduling system for posts, you’d save time. But due to lack of time, you’re pushing back learning to use and set up scheduling systems.
Many business owners also find themselves neglecting rest in order to work more, which actually negatively impacts their productivity! So, make sure you aren’t spending all your time on your priorities, and neglecting things that might be more beneficial long term.
Within your four categories, identify how much time you can spend on each task daily or weekly (overestimate and plan extra time where possible).
3. Delegate tasks
Check through the tasks in your categories, to see what can only be done by you, and what you might be able to ask others to do.
Are there tasks you can give to employees, or outsource to freelancers or agencies? This might mean hiring an accountant to look after your finances so you don’t have to DIY, or a content creator to look after your social media. Maybe it’s getting someone to clean your house or walk your dog.
You can also make training employees a priority so you can trust them with more responsibilities. It may cost money short-term to pay others to do work you can do, but since you’ll be able to focus on growing your business, it’s worth it!
4. Give every task a deadline
Deadlines are extremely helpful for making sure tasks not only get done, but get done within a certain time frame. When deadlines are made clear, we know work has to be done, and employees know what to prioritise.
Use your priority categories to set due dates for every task you can, starting with the most important. If it’s a task that needs to be done daily or weekly, set a day and time for it to be done so it doesn’t get missed or go overtime.
It’s a good idea to plan at least a week in advance at all times. This means you always know what you’re doing in coming days, and have time to rearrange as necessary. You should also set deadlines a few days ahead of when they critically need to be met, so there’s room for any unforeseen issues to be corrected.
5. Set up a scheduling system
Whether it’s Google Calendar, a physical diary, an Excel spreadsheet, or another professional time scheduler, you can find ways to organise your time.
The benefit of an online calendar (such as Google and Outlook) is that it connects you and your employees, and allows meetings to be scheduled straight from emails. You can also have access to each other’s work calendars, so everyone knows when certain people are busy. Make sure to set up alerts on your phone or email to never miss a thing.
If an employee has some time free, this can be a great opportunity to give them a new task or get them to do some training.
6. Take care of yourself!
As a small business owner, your home life probably overlaps with your career quite often. Take care of yourself by eating well and exercising regularly – this will improve your mood and make it easier to focus on work tasks during the day
If you’re too busy being tired to focus on work, you’re only going to become less and less productive until you burn out. Your own health is the #1 priority in time management. This is something I have to remind myself of all the time.
Resources
For more information on time management check out these best selling books on Amazon
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