12 Time Management Strategies for Small Business Owners

What does a day in the life of a small business owner look like? What are the challenges that they face? A small business owner has lots of responsibilities because he/she often has to micro-manage every aspect of the business.

The pandemic has forced everybody, including small business owners, to streamline their lives. This includes making fewer video calls or noting down all activities on a planner. When you are working from home, it is very important to conserve your time and energy.

Heavy workload and a poor work-life balance can be a leading cause of stress and can be dangerous for your work-life balance. That is why it is vital to manage your time effectively. At the most basic level, you should plan your day by creating your small business timetable. You can use a whiteboard at your office, a task manager, or even a sheet of paper to jot down.

You should keep in mind the following things while doing your planning:

First, realise that the due dates in your task manager may not paint a perfect picture of what you should do today.
Try to get your to-do list limited to what you can actually do.
While you should try to allocate the maximum time to the core activities of your business, it is also necessary to set aside time for networking, employee interaction, and leisure.

Scheduling Tips for Small Business Owners

Actions Per Minutes or (APM)s, is a concept that is used to measure productivity in real-time strategy games. The ability to move as quickly as possible might mean the difference between victory and defeat. In other words, move fast or get left behind.

The sheer volume of actions is only half the battle. If there is no plan behind the actions, then you are just wasting your energy. In this article, we will show you how to plan your day and prioritise your work.

1. Get up early

Get up early, because getting up late is the start of an unproductive day. For example, by getting up early, you can have time for doing some workouts that you otherwise can’t squeeze into your busy day. This will make you feel more energised, and plan for a successful day.

2. Invest in a notepad!

Scribbling your thoughts on a paper notebook or planner can increase your productivity. You can organise your daily schedule, and jot down notes and ideas on a bullet journal, and keep your planning life separate from your digital life. You can write about tasks, appointments, etc., and allocate one page to each calendar day.

3. Get into a routine

Set a routine and start your workday at the same time each morning, say at 9.30 a.m., and work until a designated time, like 6.30 p.m. Morning is the time when you are most focussed, so try to utilise that time properly. When you get into the office, try to engage in the most thought-intensive processes of the day, instead of reading random emails.

4. Hire a book-keeper

If accounting is not your forte, you should hire a bookkeeper. It will free up your time and also reduce stress. The pandemic has increased the need for skilled accountants, who can easily handle the paperwork and file the receipts properly.

5. Limit Digital Presentations

Hold a small number of meetings and try to optimize them, since too many video calls can leave you and your staff fatigued. During the pandemic, you must have prepared lots of PowerPoint presentations on slides because face-to-face meetings were not viable. Now you should put a limit on them. Instead of a slide, try to communicate in three to five bullet points.

6. Time Boxing

One thing that can make your daily plan more effective is to break down your tasks into small chunks, and then scheduling those chunks. This strategy is called Time Boxing or Time Blocking. Use it to slot your tasks into small time blocks on your calendar. Though some people feel that it restricts their freedom and flexibility, a lot of people find it helpful in avoiding procrastinating throughout the day. This is of great benefit, especially to those who work from home.

For time management you can break your day into chunks of sixty minutes, thirty minutes, or even fifteen minutes. Assign tasks to each of these. Some tasks have to be done every day, like replying to emails or making phone calls. Others can be once a week, like employee meetings.

7. List your tasks

List your tasks in the order that you are going to do them. Put the most difficult or dreaded task first, especially if you are working from home. A strong ordered plan will always help you to stay on task.

8 Give priority to important activities

Many business owners tend to spend a significant amount of time on tasks that are not so urgent. To overcome this you can organise your tasks from the most to the least important. Small tasks like checking emails should be done last.

You can create an Eisenhower Matrix in the form of a 4x4 grid, labeling the columns as “important”, “not important”, and the rows as “urgent”, and “not urgent”. Then fill in the grid with all your tasks based on their importance or urgency. Thus you will get a clear representation of your most important or urgent tasks just by looking in the marked boxes.

9. Stick to your schedule

After you make a schedule try to stick to it. For example, let us suppose that an unscheduled meeting with a client turns up. So, it either gets added to your schedule, or gets postponed for another day, or gets canceled. It all depends on how important that meeting is for your business.

When you are planning, you are in planning mode; and when you are executing, you are in ‘robot’ mode. So, the more accurate those plans are, the more likely you are to stick to them.

10. Use Scheduling Tools

There are many easy-to-use scheduling tools like Google Calendar and Calendly. These are great time-savers, and help you to stay motivated and productive. You can also outsource the work to minimise extraneous time to a third-party-a-group scheduler. This will help you to tackle unnecessary emails and smoothen your workflow.

11. Long Term Planning

A high number of Actions per Minute only matters if those actions are guided by a strong game plan. Since most of our overall goals are long-term ones, you need to look beyond your daily schedule, and effectively plan for the weeks and months ahead. Some of these methods and tools are described below:

Kanban Method

It is a useful technique for keeping track of things on a larger scale and even dealing with things that don’t have a strict due date. Kanban is a great method for breaking down large projects into manageable pieces and then tracking their progress. It is employed by teams everywhere around the world to complete huge projects. At its core, Kanban uses cards and lists like “To Do” “Doing”, and “Done”. Cards keep details about individual tasks, while the list indicates the stages of the project.

Smart Goals

If you have a long-term goal that is several months away, you can set short-term “SMART” goals first. “SMART” stands for-

Specific-Your short-term goals should be as specific as your final goal.

Measurable-Your goals should be such that you must be able to measure and track your progress.

Attainable-Establish goals that you can achieve; then the challenge will be motivating.

Realistic-Be honest about your daily productivity potential, and do not bite off more than you can chew.

Time-Bound-Break up your large project into more achievable sections, and give yourself mini-deadlines each week.

Time is a precious commodity, especially for a small business owner, and time management skills are necessary to succeed. We are sure that the small business time table that we have described in this article, will help you in scheduling for your small business.

Also Read:

1) Which services are the most in-demand that small businesses can take advantage of?
2) How to Open a Small Pet Shop?
3) How to Get A First-time Business Loan: The Ultimate Guide
4) OkCredit: Simple, Paperless & Secure solution for businesses

FAQs

Q. Is multi-tasking an effective way to save time?

Ans. No, Contrary to popular opinion, trying to do more things at the same time leads to inefficiency and wastage of time.

Q. How do I schedule my internet breaks (browsing Facebook, watching YouTube videos) during the day?

Ans. Block off 15 minutes for these activities, and don’t let web browsing become a habit.

Q. What is Evernote?

Ans. It is a tool where you can jot down ideas, whenever it comes.