Time Management for Small Business Owners
Up to 39% of small business owners have reported working 60 hours a week or more, and if you’re one of these admirably productive people, chances are you could use a little help with your time management.
For an even more productive work week, keep reading up on our suggested time management tips and give them a try yourself!
Organization
While it may not seem like much in the moment, the time you spend searching for things that you want to access and can’t find – specific emails, a particular business card in a stack of them, and logging in and out of different apps to get the information you need on a client, just to name a few – adds up over the days and weeks you spend doing them.
Not only can getting organized reduce the amount of time you spend looking for things, but it helps you feel good, too. What could be better than looking for something and finding exactly what you need right where you knew it would be?
There are loads of ways to maintain organization both in your everyday life and in the growing online world. Online presence is important to have in order for your business to stay relevant, but with how many individual websites you’re managing and posting media to, it can be hard to keep track of all the information. That’s why one of our top tips in this section is to secure yourself a password manager to make it quick and easy.
Schedule Based on Productivity
Because humans aren’t machines, our productivity and energy levels fluctuate throughout the day based on many different reasons. The trick to maximizing your productivity is to face your most important tasks when the momentum of your productivity and energy levels are at their highest.
Research has shown that the most productive time of the workday tends to happen within the first two hours. Use this time to take on your most cognitively-challenging tasks, like completing creative projects or strategically mapping out your day. If you struggle with concentrating in the late afternoon, tackle softer tasks like responding to emails instead of rushing to meet deadlines or scheduling end-of-day meetings.
Limit Distractions
Staying on task is key, but given that most of us will face both small and large distractions around every three minutes, that can be incredibly difficult – especially for those of us who work at home with children.
Below, we’ve included a small set of strategies you can try – and you should try doing more than one at a time to maximize your focus!
- Keep healthy snacks at your desk or workspace. Getting up and looking for something to eat is just as distracting as hunger itself.
- Find playlists that you can work to – some people prefer instrumentals or ambience, as songs with lyrics may tempt you to start belting out, which takes up some of your brainpower to recall the words.
- Turn off notifications and/or set your phone to airplane mode. Push notifications are one of the number-one distractors these days, so remove the temptation to check. If you’re concerned about missing time-sensitive notifications or urgent messages, you can do this technique for only short bursts of time when you want to get the most out of your focus.
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