Every day, you’re the first to get in and the last one to leave your office. Still, the mountains of unfinished work keep piling up. Sounds familiar? Don’t worry, you’re not the only one facing this problem. This is a pretty common scenario for all inexperienced entrepreneurs. Launching a successful business requires a lot of strategizing, networking, planning, and researching.
Consequently, you need to jump between numerous tasks and put your private life on hold. This way of life is extremely overwhelming and may trigger mental exhaustion, anxiety, or even worse, a burnout. To prevent this from happening, you need to learn how to manage your time properly.
Here is how.
Table of Contents
1. Use Automation Tools
We live in the era of sophisticated tech solutions. And, to boost your performance and save your time, you need to make them a part of your everyday life.
Start with time management tools. They will help you schedule your tasks more efficiently and remind you of your events in advance. Staying on top of all your obligations is the foundation of managing your time effectively.
You should also automate your business workflow. Use project management tools like Basecamp, Trello or Asana to enable the uninterrupted communication within your team and give them the opportunity to share files and leave comments in real-time. Whenever someone makes a change within the project or if the project is due soon, these apps will notify you. So, this is a great way to keep pace with your obligations and, at the same time, manage your employees’ tasks and performance effortlessly.
2. Eliminate the Major Time Wasters
To get the most of your productivity, you need to monitor your daily activities to see how much time you spend on each of them. The goal behind this is simple- you want to figure out what your biggest time wasters are. And, once you identify your major distractions, you need to find a way to remove them once for all.
For example, we all send a few private emails or post a few photos from the office on our Facebook or Instagram profiles. And, if you think that it only takes a second to do so, you’re wrong. Emails, social networks, and entertainment sites are the major workplace distractors and you need to learn how to control them.
For example, use the Pomodoro technique. I’m sure you’re familiar with this approach, as it has become a global hit over the past few years. It is all about the idea that we can stay focused on our tasks for about 25 minutes at a time. Simply put, you work in slots of 25 minutes, which are separated by 5-minute breaks. After four pomodoros, you take a larger, 20-minute break. This is a great way to manage your distractions and stay fully focused while working.
3. Surround yourself with the Right People
Steve Jobs has always emphasized the importance of teamwork for a company’s success. He once said that “great things in business are never done by one person.”
And, we couldn’t agree more.
Coming up with a brilliant business idea on your own is all right. But, to make it true, you need to have a whole team of people to back you.
Let’s say you’re launching an SEO agency in Sydney. You will want to hire a team of content developers, copywriters, link builders, technical SEO experts, graphic designers, and web developers, right?
You should also hire an HR specialist, a data analyst, a campaign strategist, and a project manager to keep your employees on track.
But, this is usually not enough. There are numerous sensitive aspects of your job you and your team are not familiar with. And, you need to leave them to professionals. This is especially important when it comes to solving some legal issues or managing finances. Even if you cannot afford to hire in-house advisors, you should connect with a reliable tax accountant from Sydney to consult with whenever the need arises.
Surrounding yourself with the professional, task-oriented, and collaborative people will help you make better decisions and build a positive corporate culture. Above all, you will be able to dedicate more time to those aspects of your job you love.
4. Learn to Prioritization
Both our personal and business priorities are shaped around their importance, deadlines, complexity, and ROI they bring in.
But, does this mean that we should focus on a major project and ignore other obligations we have?
Of course not.
To get the most of your workload, you need to learn how to prioritize it.
For starters, you should break down your monthly, quarterly or annual objectives into smaller, easy-to-achieve, and realistic tasks.
Why?
When analyzing your massive monthly projects that are constantly piling up, you have a feeling that you’re not doing anything to achieve them. The chances are that you will start making a bunch of random decisions that may affect your bottom line heavily.
On the other hand, by separating these tasks into smaller, weekly chunks, you will make actionable, goal-oriented decisions. Most importantly, this approach will boost your motivation as you will be able to tick your completed tasks off your to-do list and experience small wins throughout a week.
5. Communicate your Goals and Expectations Clearly
Like we’ve already mentioned, automating your business processes is a great way to save time and boost your team’s performance. Still, as a business owner, you need to pay attention to in-person communication with your staff.
Sit down as a team to brainstorm fresh ideas and find actionable solutions to any problems. When talking to your employees, make sure you communicate your expectations clearly to them. To do an exceptional job, they need to know what exactly is expected of them and what the major business goals they should focus on are. By giving them regular feedback and scheduling brief weekly meetings to keep on top of your priority tasks, you will nudge their ideas in the right direction, boost their performance, and save both your and their time.
6. There is always Room for Improvement
No matter how hard you try, there is always room for improvement. You should constantly work on your personal enrichment and improving your skills. By gaining new experiences, you will manage to make better decisions, manage your teams more effectively, and spend less time on getting your work done. Most importantly, by optimizing your skills, you will manage to take your business to the next level and be equipped properly to compete with the leaders in your niche.
