In today’s market, entrepreneurs and business owners get flooded with a massive workload. Truth be told, I personally work in excess of sixty hours a week. So, unless you implement a tactical approach, things can go haywire in the blink of an eye.
Time management skills are a crucial aspect of entrepreneurship. Everyone gets the same 24 hours in a day. How you use that time is often the difference between a successful business venture and a failed one.
Every eager-beaver tries their best to make the most of their schedule. Sadly enough, many of them often fall short due to the lack of an effective strategy. They’ve tried many things to boost productivity, but such misdirected efforts go in vain.
What I’ve found even more efficient than putting in crazy hours is to get more things done per existing hour, instead of getting overwhelmed with the idea of creating more hours in the day. Let’s face it, we all have lives outside of work.
And if you’re a parent like me, you have to balance your business with being there for your kids. Nobody wants to miss out on raising their children because they were at work.
Save the Day: How to Find an Extra Hour in Your Daily Schedule
Your daily schedule can be a great catalyst if you use it tactically. It helps you to proceed with your tasks in accordance with the allocated timeframe. However, identifying task urgency is very crucial to get the best benefits from your daily schedule. Stephen Covey’s time management grid illustrates it perfectly.
Source: Stephen Covey, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
It helps to sort the ‘To-do’ list with precision and can assist substantially in time tracking. Therefore, you will have a clear idea of how the process should be executed and which tasks need to be prioritized before anything else. Once you start planning your day this way, you will start achieving more throughout the work day.
As suggested by Jan Yager in her book, Put More Time On Your Side, it is essential to get methodical to survive in today’s competitive market. In the early phases of your business, you’ll find more room for improvisations and flexibility with your day.
Once things start to come your way and begin to grow, it becomes harder to change your schedule at the last minute. Hence, make smart decisions to avoid confusions in the later stages and save your vital time to make the entire process easy.
Over the course of your business venture, you’ll find many things that require special skill sets to meet client demands. Many entrepreneurs get preoccupied with the that, “Nobody does it better or faster than myself.” While this may be true in some cases, this way of thinking prohibits growth.
If you are constantly doing things for clients, you won’t get the chance to gain expertise in additional fields or do the activities that will allow your company to grow.
Maybe you’re afraid to hire someone. However, getting an extra hand or two to complete tasks, will make things more manageable and free up your time to do the things you were doing when you started your company to make it grow. In today’s gig economy you can easily find freelancers to partner with to help you accomplish almost any task imaginable in your business.
Hiring freelancers has been the most productive idea I’ve had to accomplish more things in less amount of time. Besides integrating expertise, they will also let you focus upon core aspects of your business.
When you’re prioritizing the tasks in your schedule, choose wisely when deciding what you conquer on your own and what you delegate.
Manage Your Work, Don’t Let It Manage You
Wearing too many hats? It’s time to declutter your brain from unwanted distractions. As you deal with new projects and meet more and more business leaders, as an entrepreneur, you have the privilege of learning many new things. During those moments, learn how to stop wasting time in the minor segments of your business and focus more on the core activities. If required, take a break from your busy schedule and strategize for further implementations.
Time is the most valuable resource that can be used to drive business growth. No one is perfect at utilizing every single moment. As inevitably flawed beings, sometimes we procrastinate, get distracted, or simply baffled to choose the right path. Other times we spend hours on tasks trying to figure something out that has only a minimal impact on the project we are working on.
How you approach time is the ultimate driving force to create the best outcomes for your business. Always consider your business venture as a learning process.
