Starting and managing a business requires a significant time commitment, more than most people realize. While a major part of your work day will be devoted to selling your products/services and dealing with clients, those tasks only represent a portion of the responsibilities you're undertaking as an entrepreneur. You will find that making improvements to your time management skills will greatly increase your ability to accomplish all the tasks that need to get done, leaving more time for activities that make you money.
Juggling Responsibilities
For some entrepreneurs, realizing the extensive list of responsibilities that come with their new title as business owner comes as somewhat of a shock. At first, they may feel overwhelmed by the demands on their time or fear they won't have the time to get everything finished. The good news is that learning and implementing some simple time management skills can help you deal with those feelings and address your responsibilities more effectively.
First, you need to make a mental note all of the responsibilities you'll be taking on. For example, as business owner you'll be in charge of managing employees, including hiring, scheduling, training, supervising, and firing. You'll also have to keep track of inventory, supplies and other resources. Problems with vendors, suppliers and customers are a normal part of running a small business, taking your attention away from the focusing on day to day business activities. Finally, there's still keeping track of taxes, handling the books, doing payroll, and marketing.
To start juggling your responsibilities, you first need to decide which tasks you'll be able to delegate. You simply can't run a successful business if you try to do everything on your own, at least not once your business begins to grow. Make a written list, similar to the one above, of all the responsibilities involved in running your business. Include everything. Now take a look at the list and decide which of those tasks you absolutely must handle directly. As you make these decisions, keep your personal strengths in mind. If you have a natural gift for working with people, then don't shut yourself up in an office while your employees deal with the customers.
After you select the tasks you know you should handle, think of ways to cost-effectively delegate the other tasks. For example, you may not be able to afford a full-time accountant yet, but could you afford to hire a part-time bookkeeper who comes in once a week? Could you afford to outsource your payroll management to a private firm?
Once you have delegated some of the other tasks, you'll be left with a total list of your responsibilities and that's when you're going to need to start applying some time management techniques.
Time Management Techniques
Technique 1 – Cut down on time-wasting activities.
Instead of obsessively checking your email every hour, set aside a time in the morning and in the afternoon for checking and responding to your email. By the end of the day, this technique could save you an hour or more in productivity. Perfectionism and Overproduction is another example. Work your best but realize nothing is going to be perfect so don't waste time trying to achieve an impossible goal.
Technique 2 – Use Electronic Devices
Time management can be easier if you use electronic devices, such as Blackberrys, and computers to help boost your productivity. Use outlook calendar and have event reminders emailed to you so you can quickly keep track of your schedule at a moment's notice. Having your address book easily accessible via these devices and having your most commonly called numbers saved in your mobile phone can save you time since you don't have to devote time to looking up contact information.
Using a calendar is a valuable time management technique, particularly when it comes to specific tasks that need to done on certain days. By using a calendar, you can keep track of tasks and better plan your activities for each day. Incidentally, you should use the same calendar for planning your tasks as you do for scheduling appointments and meetings – you don't want to spend all day in a meeting on the same day you have to get information sent off to the IRS.
Technique 3 – Use Task Lists
The to-do list is another time management technique. At the end of the day, you should make a list of everything you need to accomplish the next day and prioritize those tasks. As you accomplish each tasks cross them off the list. The to-do list will help you stay on task, will help you get through the important jobs for the day, and will show you how much you've accomplished for the day.
Clearly planning is an important part of time management, but you must be careful not to over plan. One rule of thumb is to schedule 60% of your time but leave the reminder free for dealing with the unexpected.
Finally, time management is not compatible with procrastination. If you tend to procrastinate, defeat it by learning to break the tasks into smaller components. By breaking it down, you will feel that you are accomplishing more and getting closer to the finish line.
Technique 4 – Prioritize Your Tasks
Another important time management technique is prioritizing. Take a look at the list you made earlier. You can probably already recognize that some tasks are going to be more important than others. For example, is it more important to send information to the IRS or to provide customer service to your clients? That's up to you decide but once you do, you'll be able to quickly act on which tasks get first shot at your time.
Besides prioritizing, you can also save time by grouping similar tasks together. For example, if you have to make several phone calls, set aside a period of time to make all of the calls instead of spreading them out. If you need to make a sales visit, save time by running errands, such as going to the post office, while you're already out of the office.
Summary
Learning time management techniques is an invaluable skill for entrepreneurs who find themselves having to juggling dozens of different tasks. Delegating, avoiding time-wasting activities, prioritizing, making to-do lists, making the most of available technology, grouping similar responsibilities together, and using calendars can help you stay on top of your responsibilities without letting them fall between the cracks.
