1.Eliminate Mindless and Tedious Tasks From Your Daily Routine
Most of the time, taking out from a clogged daily routine solves time management problems. It helps business owners to shift their focus to what’s most important in their day.
One approach we would recommend is the experimentation approach. With this approach, the employer picks out daily tasks that they suspect is tedious yet unnecessary. Then they stop doing that task for a while to see how it would affect the business output.
For example, a firm decided to experiment with the monthly executive report they deliver to their customers. When they stopped that particular task, the firm didn’t get any customer complaints about it. This is a form of good feedback.
It means that the executive report is an unnecessary task, which makes sense to stop as soon as possible.
2.Plan Your Ideal Day
What should be done on a typical day for your business? Planning an ideal day is a handy tip, mainly because it helps to keep track of the limited time for all the activities you’ve got to carry out.
You should start by keeping a checklist of daily tasks, in their order of urgency and importance. For the other things (such as errands and pop-up tasks), having a specified time to deal with them at once helps a lot.
You can keep an “errand list” on a notepad or a phone for all the errands that have to be run daily and have them cleared out at once.
3.Find Your Perfect Personal Time Management Tool
Time management tools help speed up the process of trying to figure out how to be more productive as a small business.
We consider time management apps to be more effective for small businesses as opposed to enterprise software.
An example of such an app is Rescue Time. The app is designed to help you manage the tasks you do daily, and report on the time lost.
4.Prioritize and Value Your Time
Prioritization goes beyond penning down one or more tasks, which should be getting the most of the time in business. It involves the evaluation and determination of functions with the most implication on the company.
When you determine the operations that bring in the most benefits to the business, on the whole, it gives you a better idea of where most of your time needs to be directed.
For example, safety device companies prioritize research on how to make their products have less failure rate, as this is a high-value benefit.
5.Focus on Three Primary Tasks Daily
As a small business, you can also pare down essential tasks to just three. It improves time management, and you also get to see the improved overall output.
Picking out three primary tasks shouldn’t be too difficult for a small business. They should be within the production and distribution cycle.
For instance, companies generally choose cash flow tracking, resource purchase, and customer management as their primary tasks, and direct their daily time into those.
6.To Be Productive, Be Healthy and Happy
It may interest you to know that your wellbeing and that of the other employees directly affect the business.
Typically, firms witness a drop in their overall output when the employees had to work for longer hours in tiresome conditions.
It has been proven that when a worker is tired and has to work extra hours, it doesn’t equate to more work done. The quality of work goes down. When that happens, there might be a need for a do-over (a significant loss of time).
Give time for rests, breaks, and encourage other employees to make decisions that are beneficial to their health.
7. Be Accountable and Reward Yourself for Success
All the plans and policies in a small business will fall to ruins if they are not being accounted for. Accountability ensures that the business owner is aware of the effects – benefits – that the other time management tips have given to your business.
For instance, some small businesses have weekly or monthly evaluations to compare the results of time management operations. To take it even further, you can set up a reward system when you are beginning to see improvement.
Conclusion
Managing a small business is a bit of a paradox if you look at it. It isn’t as sophisticated as a full-fledged enterprise company, yet it can be challenging to decide what needs to be done and when it needs to be done daily.
Tips such as those mentioned above do the business a lot of good, as far as time management is concerned.
Let’s know what other tips you’ve found in the comment section below to help clear up confusion and manage time much better.
