Tips for Managing Your Time Effectively

As business owners, it’s easy to work into the wee hours of the night. Sometimes it can’t be helped. But with some planning, there are several ways to manage your time so that you can focus on the things that you want to be doing and create a better work/home balance.
 
Identify your time wasters. You can do this by time logging what you do on a typical workday. Write everything down and how much time you spent on it. Then categorize these tasks, such as email, phone calls, meetings, breaks, errands, employees, etc. What took way longer than it should have? What takes up the majority of your time? What can you streamline?
 
Prioritize. Not every day’s tasks are the same, so set-up a priority list. Consider focusing on those urgent and important tasks first. Are some of those tasks urgent, but not important? Get to those after those important ones. Your everyday tasks basically follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. So, it’s most time effective to spend more time on those tasks that fall under that 20% category. What tasks are going to help your business grow? Meet its sales targets?
 
Time Block. Have you ever spent way too long typing up a response to an email? Or spend 2 hours going over the smallest design details for your next marketing poster? An effective time management skill is to set a specific amount of time to focus on a specific task and then taking a break. It keeps you focused on one task and from being distracted by others. Set 25 minutes to address an employee issue. Take a 5 min break to refocus. Set 25 minutes to complete paperwork, etc.
 
Teach Others. Delegation is key to great leadership and a huge time saver for business owners. What can you teach your employees to do effectively? Or what task can you work on together to complete?
 
All these tips come down to one key detail: PLANNING! If you’re planning what tasks need to be completed and in what order, you’re much more effective with your time.  Productivity is not the same as effectiveness. Planning your week will help you be effective. Time is precious. Hopefully these tips will help you make the most of your work time.
 
We’d love to hear how you’re managing your time effectively. Do you have a time management system in place? Do you have certain parts of your automated?