Good time management is an essential trait for any successful business owner. The way you organise and plan your time will have a huge impact on how effective your day is and ultimately, how well you manage your business.
So it’s understandable that we all want to get a little more control over our time!
The following time management tips will help you to improve your ability to manage your available time, even if you’re up against the clock and running to a deadline.
1. Use a calendar
This will not only help you keep track of appointments and meetings, it will also help you see where your time is going. But it’s important to keep just one central calendar for all of your scheduling – regardless of whether it’s personal or business. Use them to allocate slots for all your daily essentials – including self-care!
2. Stop multitasking!
Multitasking actually makes you less efficient. It splits your focus and concentration, so you’re never giving your all to a task. It’s far better to focus on one task at a time.
3. Set yourself weekly goals
The goals you set for yourself will give you focus and motivation. By allocating time to them in your calendar, you’re also ensuring you are actively working towards them too.
4. Prioritise your tasks
This is especially important if you have multiple goals you want to achieve or client work that needs completing by a certain date. It helps ensure you don’t forget critical tasks, helps you avoid getting overwhelmed and ensures you’re focusing on the right thing, at the right time – essential elements of good time management.
5. Minimise distractions and interruptions
Close down apps and tabs you don’t need, cancel notifications and put your phone on silent. Let people know when your working hours are and stick to your working day yourself – it helps establish boundaries and lets people know when you’re available for them. If you want to get better at time management, you need to remove distractions and interruptions from your working day.
6. Take regular breaks
This helps to clear your head and recharge your batteries. Take breaks throughout your working day and always have a day or two off each week. This is essential for your self-care and your mental health.
7. Delegate and outsource tasks
It’s one of the basic business unspoken rules of business, stop doing everything yourself! If you want to get better at time management, stop doing tasks you either don’t want to do or can’t do well – and pass them to someone who can! It’ll really help your business grow faster (check out How a VA can help your rural business grow faster to find out how!)
8. Start saying no
This is essential for your sanity, stress levels and your time management skills! Say no to tasks that aren’t essential to your business, say no to tasks that don’t light you up, and say no to tasks that someone else can easily do. It’s far more cost and time effective, to outsource them to a VA or another team member.
9. Drop perfectionism – done is better than perfect
This is a big one! Perfectionism can really make you lose control of your day, as you spend too long on task, trying to reach that level of perfection you have in your head. The vast majority of the tasks you do in business simply need to get done – they don’t need to be perfect.
10. Set time limits
It’s easy to get carried away with a task and suddenly, you realise it’s eaten into your entire day! If you want to manage your time, start allocating specific slots of time to each of the tasks on your list. Not only will it help you better track your day, it will also force you to focus on the task at hand, as you know you only have a set amount of time available to complete the task.
Good time management is an essential trait for any successful business owner. By following the time management tips above, you’ll be able to improve how you manage your available time and get more control over your day, even if you’re up against the clock and running to a deadline.