5 Secrets for Effective Small Business Time Management

If you are a small business owner or are starting your own business, time is your greatest asset. In fact, time is your greatest and most valuable commodity. If you lose money or even your business, you can always get it back. However, when time has gone, that’s it. You can’t do anything to regain lost time.

So, effectively managing time is essential for the success of your small business. Making your organisational skills more effective, planning ahead, scheduling important tasks, and making priorities are all ways to improve how you use time.

Why Manage Your Time Effectively?

 This expression “time is money” is definitely true in the current business climate. That means that any time wasted is a potential loss of earnings.

For example, a study carried out by Microsoft found that in an average work week, only 3 full days are productive work days.^[1] That means a great loss of earnings for any business, great or small.

The biggest time wasters are work were found to be:

• Unclear objectives
• Lack of effective team communication
• Ineffective meetings
• Receiving to and responding to too many e-mails
• Not having work-life balance which affects productivity

How can you manage your time more effectively to ensure that you are making the most of your time? Here are our top 5 secrets to effective time management if you have a small business.

How to Effectively Manage Time

Both time and money can be spent in a number of ways. However, once time has been spent, it’s irretrievable. Here are some practical tips to help you manage your time more productively and avoid losing time unnecessarily.

1 Schedule time

Any successful business owner knows the importance of a budget to manage finances properly, avoid losses, and identify ways to streamline operations. The same is true of time. To manage your time effectively, you need to schedule it wisely. This is like having a budget for your limited supply of time.

So, you should know how many hours you can dedicate to certain tasks and you should also identify areas to ‘save time.’ For example, avoid the temptation to check your e-mails every 5-10 minutes but set aside a definite time in the day to read and respond to e-mails.

Scheduling your time properly will also reduce your workplace stress and make you more productive.

2 Prepare in advance

Advance preparation is also key to getting more out of your day. The best time to prepare your work tasks is at the end of the previous workday. Usually, at the end of the day, you have a clearer picture of what you need to accomplish tomorrow. So, schedule a few minutes to plan ahead for the next day.

This will not only make you more effective, but you will probably sleep better and this will also help you work better.

3 Avoid multi-tasking

Multi-tasking seems like you are getting more done in the limited amount of time that you have. However, multi-tasking will actually rob you of time and negatively affect your productivity.

To prove this point, the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review reported that only 2.5% of people can multitask effectively. The study even found that doing 2 tasks at the same time negatively affected performance.^[2]

4 Set achievable goals

Goals give you focus and help to use your time to achieve what you set out to accomplish. However, you should avoid the temptation of just focusing on your large goals. Break them down into small, more achievable daily goals and when you want to achieve them.

5 Organise your space

A lack of organisation can steal away precious time from your daily work schedule. The fact of this is highlighted by a study carried out in the U.S. It found that a lack of organisation causes over 40% of Americans to stay longer in the office at least 2 nights in the week.

So, have a system of organisation around your personal workspace, make sure that you keep documents in your computer organised, and create a system of organising your tasks into important and non-essential tasks.

In conclusion, you can’t get any more time in the day than the 24 hours that have been allocated to each person. The best way to ‘make more time in the day’ is to pay attention to how you spend your time and make the necessary adjustments.

Many speakers at Successful Speakers can share with your company their own personal experience of how to manage time successfully. People like Amanda Gore, John Varnos, and Mark Bunn speak on the importance of time management and how it can be accomplished successfully in the workplace.

For more information, please contact us.

Article sources:

1. Survey Finds Workers Average Only Three Productive Days per Week by Microsoft.
2. Supertaskers: Profiles in extraordinary multitasking ability by the Psychonomic Bulletin and Review