Good time management is an essential skill that all small businesses must learn to master. Good time management will help you accomplish in less time and help you achieve your goals faster.
Here are the top 5 time-saving tips you will want to employ:
Plan Your Work
Planning your work is the essential strategy for effective time management. While planning and scheduling is an ongoing activity, the best time to plan a day’s activities is at the end of the preceding day. That way, you can get a running start on important tasks each morning before you start getting interrupted or losing focus. If you don’t start each day with a plan, your time will be taken up by putting out fires and doing things that your employees, freelancers, 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.
- Carry a schedule and refer to it often.
- Keep a phone, tablet, diary, or daily planner handy to record appointments, deadlines, and ideas.
- Set designated times to handle interruptions, employee conferences, and other matters, and insist that people wait until that time except in urgent cases.
- Ignore phone calls and emails until the time you’ve set aside to deal with them.
- Plan to spend more time on activities that produce the most significant business benefits.
Prioritizing According to Urgency or Importance
More is demanded of a business owner than ever before. Customers want to interact with business owners digitally or through social media. However, if there is a problem, the customer will quickly pick up the phone and often chase down the owner of the company for a resolution. This is highly stressful for the owner.
a. Eisenhower Method- President Eisenhower said, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” The Eisenhower method categorizes tasks as important, not important, urgent and non-urgent. 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.
b. ABC Method-This method involves ranking all your work and chores with the letters A, B and C in order of importance. You can also prioritize within each category by listing them as a number 1, 2 or 3 in priority. Prioritizing begins by completing A-1 tasks first, A-2 second and down the line to C-3.
c. Pareto Analysis-The Pareto principle is often called the 80/20 rule. What it means is that 20 percent of your customers generate 80 percent of our revenue. Another interpretation is that 20 percent of your work will produce 80 percent of the business. Pareto analyses favor doing the most critical 20 percent of work that generates the biggest returns.
d. POSEC Methodology-The POSEC acronym stands for “Prioritizing by Organizing, Streamlining, Economizing and Contributing.” You can organize your daily goals according to their urgency and available time. Streamline or simplify nuisance tasks or matters that others can handle. Economizing refers to personal wish lists that you enjoy doing or things that should be done. Eliminate both if there’s not enough time. If some time is available, concentrate on what should be done instead of what you enjoy. Contributing is about social obligations, giving back to the community and paying attention to customers and worker complaints, which are essential tasks.
Avoid Clustering Similar Tasks
Organizing similar tasks can save a lot of time in the course of a 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.
Delegating Responsibilities Responsibly
Delegating responsibilities is one of the hardest things a business owner must do to save time. Still, it is 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. Organize your business tasks in the following way:
- Work only you can do
- Work that you can do, but others can help you complete
- Jobs that others can do, but you can help them finish
- Work that others can complete without any help
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. Therefore, it’s essential to control your work environment, restrict access to your office and avoid personal distractions like reading emails and answering the phone. To regain your concentration after an interruption often takes over 1 minute. This can quickly add up fast. Start a no walk-in policy by locking your door and disabling your phone. The more you can concentrate on work tasks, the quicker you will complete them.
Following these five top-time savior strategies will improve your time management skills and make you an overall happier business owner who saves time throughout the day.