Time Management Techniques For Your Small Businesses

Time management is one of the common problems facing many business owners today. A lot of businesses have crumbled, and some workers have become stressed and burned out while working in their offices to produce results. Are you one of those business owners? Do you want to learn about time management techniques for your small business? Then keep reading.

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What is time management?

Time management is the planned and judicious use of time in other to work smarter and more diligently. Effective time management techniques bring about the following benefits to your business:

• Quick turn-up in projects that are assigned to you,
• Eliminate procrastination and get more done,
• Increases productivity and efficiency,
• Boosts confidence and reputation of the business, and much more.

Remember that ”Time is money”, a phrase that has guided generations of young people as they enter the working world. As Benjamin Franklin says in his book Advice to a Young Tradesman, it is better to spend your time wisely, because if you waste it by not being productive, then all the opportunities to make money are lost.

Now I will share with you some hacks on how you can manage your time effectively so, to increase your productivity.

Project prioritizing or ranking

Most business owners do not prioritize the projects that they have at hand. Workers randomly come to their place of work and start diving into any unfinished projects or rather new projects assigned to them.

This, therefore, makes them start working on those projects that are irrelevant at that moment, and when the most needed projects are requested, they start running around to do the project recklessly.

Situations like that can lead to unproductive results that demean the reputation of the business. Make sure you pay attention to that.

Some employees believe that working under pressure helps them to be productive and efficient whereas the reverse is the case.

Ranking and prioritizing your projects will increase your productivity and results. Also ranking your projects with software like Zoho projects or workflow makes the work to become much easier.

Take advantage of outsourcing

As a business owner, especially as a solopreneur, you will have piles of work to be done most time. This can sometimes lead to delays in production, losing customers, stress, and breakdown.

Instead, a good phrase to remember is as followed: “No man is an island”. Obtaining help from your employees will lead to a division of labor and produces more useful results for your business.

When you make use of social media platforms there will be a need for you to boost your visibility through sharing regular posts. And all these quickly add up to the work you have to do in running your business.

So, I recommend you take advantage of outsourcing some of your work to other people. When you employ the services of an employee from places like Upwork, LinkedIn, or Fiverr your work becomes easier and even more efficient in most cases.

Other places where you can outsource your work are as followed:

• Fiverr,
• Amazon’s Mechanical Turk,
• Freelancer.com,
• Guru,
• DesignHill.

Running a business alone might hamper the success of the business when you have a lot of things to do with your limited amount of time. That’s why it’s necessary to have employees (local or remote) to whom you can outsource work. This will lead to the growth of your business.

Avoid distractions and work while you work

Most business owners don’t know that distractions of any kind end up consuming their time. When distracted they won’t attain any meaningful results by the end of their working day. Meanwhile, avoiding distractions helps in saving time.

When you have a truckload of work begging to be done and you spend that time chit-chatting on Facebook or any other platform, your time slips away which is a bad habit for business. Often, the employees who indulge in distractions end up staying late at the office because they failed to perform their work on time.

Whenever you want to work on your tasks ensure that you disconnect your internet or rather switch your cell phone for better concentration on that work until you are done with it. You need to see the termination of your projects as a primary objective of your time rather than any distraction that comes your way.

Plan for your work and work from your plan

There’s a popular saying that “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Planning for your work ahead of time usually saves time. Time management and planning work together. Planning on how to handle your projects will give you more time to partake in some other activities.

When you make plans, you are also setting your goals and it will help you to make smart decisions for yourself and your business. The main thing that leads to success in businesses is the conscious and smart decision made by the business owner.

Identify what consumes your time the most:  You should always keep track of the things which consume your time the most. Is it watching television, or chatting with people?

When trying to maximize your time and work on your projects, avoid what is not directly leading you to your objectives. That is why you need the plan, so you can eliminate any wastage of time and tasks that are not moving you towards your destination.

This technique will help you focus more on the important projects that should be done before embarking on another work.

Consider taking breaks when working

Taking a break from work increases focus when employees return to work, thus improving their productivity. Workers are more productive if they take regular breaks. Taking breaks can help workers get back to work with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

It doesn’t have to be a long time away from work. A short break of about 15 – 20 minutes can do the magic of relieving stress and keeping employees’ mental health and well-being in check.

A study found that taking regular breaks can have a positive effect on employees’ mental health and well-being, as it relieves them of the stress that comes with working or seating and working on a particular task for a long time.

Use technology tools to automate your work

There has been an advancement in technology and these technological tools will be very beneficial to workers and business owners if they make efficient use of them. Employing the use of task management tools will definitely save you time.

Tasks automation tool will also help in increasing your business productivity. Here are some examples of Tasks automation tools out there to leverage for your business:

• RoboTask,
• Jotform,
• Zapier,
• Eventbot,
• IFTTT,
• Microsoft Power Automate,
• Insightly CRM,
• Xero.

Avoid Multi-tasking: individual capabilities differ at a certain level. In other to manage time well, focus on one project first before working on another project. Taking work bit by bit has proven to be helpful and time-saving.

Use time blocking strategy in your business

This is also a time management hack that helps businesses to harness their work time and get more done faster. It’s a means where you allot some time frame to a particular work or project you want to embark on.

Time blocking is a scheduling format that divides the day into time blocks corresponding to the amount of time you plan to devote to completing a task or tasks. Using this approach, you can increase productivity by providing specific hours for different tasks.

Also, the time-blocking strategy sets out a particular limit you are required to spend on any work you perform.

Your key takeaways time management techniques for small businesses

As you can see, the importance of time management for your business cannot be overemphasized. It helps you prioritize your tasks so you can have enough time to complete your work.

Also, as you are not rushing to complete your tasks ahead of the approaching deadline, the quality of your work will drastically increase. So, start using these techniques today and you will see the difference in your business.

Join AClasses Content Academy if you want to learn more about Content Creation Strategy and how to leverage content for your Business.