Managing a small business has never been easy. From shuffling between administration, employee management, chasing leads, marketing, and caring for your customers: there is barely any time left to follow through with your business goals. With the current challenging economic climate, you can do less about your busy schedule. Until you reach the point where you can employ people to take up other jobs, here are some time management tips to get more productive in your limited time available.
Plan and stick to a schedule
It is counterproductive to show up in your workplace without a well-defined plan or tasks to complete that day. Lack of organization contributes to inefficiencies and time-wasting. Therefore, plan your day based on your current priorities by either organizing them into hourly breakdowns or creating a list of daily tasks. For example, you can schedule your Monday for sales calls, Tuesday for billing, etc., to plan your time effectively. Likewise, you may organize your Monday morning for cold calls and emails, use your afternoon for business strategy, and fulfilling orders. While it is great to have a structure, it’s also essential to stick to it for total time management and productivity.
Check distractions
Distractions can easily cause you to give up on your daily schedule. It is usual in the business world for every customer, supplier, and employee to want to talk to the business owner or boss. However, it is vital to have proper workplace control to limit access and restrict personal distractions such as answering your calls and responding to emails. It can take a reasonable amount of time to regain your concentration after such breaks. At this point, you should consider turning off your phone or locking your doors. The more you focus on work, the faster you can get things done.
Limit downtimes
You can barely get anything done when you suffer downtime in the workplace. Poorly maintained equipment can easily breakdown, or run inefficiently. This means you have to spend more hours to complete even the simplest tasks. A study has proposed the "lack of work" as the main reason many employees waste time on their jobs. This makes it necessary to prioritize your machines or equipment. While it is vital to ensure proper, regular equipment maintenance to keep your machines running consistently and smoothly, you may have to consider some corrective maintenance services since machines can break down even with the best maintenance service.
Embrace automation
With technology making today's business owners busier, you may wonder how the most successful entrepreneurs get anything done when managing their business. However, technology offers several opportunities to streamline your business activities and make them more manageable. Today, there are many applications and online tools to handle your most time-consuming and challenging tasks.
This way, you can focus on other things like marketing, product development, strategizing, or perhaps taking a vacation. Whatever your business model, there are processes you can automate to take care of your tedious jobs and complete them quickly.
