Time management is important for small business owners. You will get more done in less time when you implement these five time-saving strategies.
1. Plan Your Work
Planning your work is the most important strategy for effective time management. As a business owner, you are under pressure to make decisions, meet deadlines, complete paperwork and handle issues like customer service and getting to know your customers. If you don’t plan your days, your time will be taken up putting out fires and doing things that your employees, family, or friends could handle instead of you. If you want to get more done, try following these planning suggestions:
- Prioritize tasks in order of importance and urgency.
- Put a checkmark beside tasks that only you can do.
- Ignore unimportant emails until the time you’ve set aside to deal with them.
- Plan to spend the most time on activities that produce the greatest business benefits.
2. Prioritizing According to Urgency or Importance
More is demanded of a business owner than ever before, because customers expect to interact with their favorite companies digitally and in the social media.
Plan to do urgent and important tasks immediately and important but not urgent tasks next. These are followed by urgent but not important tasks and then not urgent and not important tasks.
3. Clustering Similar Tasks
Organizing similar tasks can save a lot of time during the day. Set aside time to deal with employee problems, complete and file paperwork, listen to messages, read emails, and handle other business tasks that are exclusive to your business or industry, such as inspecting the warehouse, testing products, meeting with vendors or touring the building. If you bounce around doing different tasks, nothing gets completed.
4. Delegating Responsibilities
Delegating responsibilities is often one of the hardest things a business owner must do to save time, but it’s essential if you want to reduce stress, get more accomplished and increase business success. Most business is based on the principle of getting others to work on your behalf.
5. Minimizing Distractions
Distractions at work can easily cause any business owner to give up on his or her daily plan. In business, every vendor, customer, and worker usually wants to talk to the boss, so it’s important to control your work environment, restrict access and avoid personal distractions like reading emails and answering the phone. Regaining your concentration after an interruption wastes a significant amount of time. Build a wall against distractions by locking your door and disabling your phone. The more you can concentrate on work tasks, the faster you’ll complete them.
Following the five suggestions above can help any small business owner and employer save time throughout the day. You’ll do better work, avoid stress, and generate more income when you approach time management proactively.
Especially now that most of us are working at home, time management has become that much more of a priority. Fortunately, tips like limiting distractions, as you detailed here, help keep one’s focus on their work. I would argue that establishing a set schedule, including a time to begin work and a time to end daily duties, helps.